Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

If we were to follow this approach, where would we leave those who are retired or sick, who have disabilities or who have found themselves in need of a hand up?

1 o’clock

What would it say about us, as a society, if we allowed this type of mentality to guide public policy?

That is the background to the discussions that were held in recent weeks. The uncontroversial truth is that any insistence on trying to push through the Taoiseach's regressive policy would have been a fatal breach of the agreement which enabled this Dáil to nominate a Government. The fact that the budget bears so little relationship to the Taoiseach's stated priorities is its principal saving grace. When Fine Gael was much freer to set budget policy, as it was in the previous Government, it delivered five out of five budgets that where highly regressive and heavily weighted in favour of the highest earners. Last year, as a result of the confidence and supply agreement, this changed completely. Every independent review confirmed that last year's budget was more progressive. On budget night last year, the Taoiseach, who was then Minister for Social Protection, said at a press conference that it was the first fair and socially just budget for a very long time. I am very pleased that we were able to stop the attempt to return to unfair and socially unjust budgets.

It is especially notable that nearly all of the positive points being highlighted by Fine Gael Members relate to measures forced on a reluctant Government. In health and education, the only significant initiatives are those that the Government wanted to either delay or ignore. If one wanted, one could describe this as cynical or opportunistic. What matters is that Fine Gael’s core right-wing impulse appears to be as strong as ever. The Taoiseach announced last month that he wants this direction incorporated in a new Fine Gael manifesto that is to be finalised in November.

We make no apology for using our position in the Dáil to act responsibly and deliver important policies. Unlike any other party, we have taken a substantial risk by stepping away from the old model of how business was done here and have worked to be constructive. It remains our view that the people expect their representatives to focus on substance and this is what we have done. We have been subject to loud and passionate attacks from those in Sinn Féin and on the far left in the past 24 hours. No doubt this will continue during the remainder of the debate. They will forgive us if we do not recognise their right to tell us what we should do with the mandate we won. They faced the problem that they entered the Dáil with the intention of trying to influence nothing. If one looks back at the debates on the formation of the Government, one will see their shrill demands that there be a majority Government formed. The latter would have left them in peace to oppose everything for five years. They are not angry with Fianna Fáil because of what is in this budget; they are angry because Fine Gael’s impulses have been held back and this makes it harder for them to campaign. Sinn Féin is particularly sensitive, wanting to be taken seriously, on the one hand, but ,on the other, complaining every time it is challenged in a debate.

As we all know from the epidemic of bullying cases and the fact that the powerful local interest is always protected by party headquarters, Sinn Féin does not believe that others have a right to criticise it. When it comes to refusing to answer questions, it beats even the Taoiseach. When Deputy Adam’s and his party loyalists stand up to deliver the agreed line demanding other things in the budget, we all remember that they held the Department of Finance in Belfast but failed to produce a budget last year or this. As a result of its failure to have the Executive re-established, massive cuts are being implemented in schools, hospitals and social services throughout Northern Ireland. These cuts are of an order of magnitude greater than anything implemented here. Community groups doing essential work are unable to get funding and the situation will keep getting worse. Perhaps the real reason Sinn Féin is leaving Northern Ireland with no voice at the Brexit negotiations is that it wants to avoid introducing a budget and being accountable for it. The self-righteousness and the extra volume we are getting from Sinn Féin here is impressing no one.

While we are very pleased to have blunted the edge of Fine Gael policies and to have delivered significant measures to benefit all groups and especially those in need, we disagree with many of the Government’s priorities. I will address a number of them later on. It is important to consider first the overall budgetary situation and direction of our economy. We believe that the basic thrust of fiscal policy should be balanced and that we should have a steady reduction in the significance of the national debt next year and in the medium term. As part of this, we have insisted on a policy of proceeding with a rainy day fund to serve as a contingency. In its letter to the Minister, the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council said that the core assumptions behind the budget are acceptable. However, it raised a serious issue concerning our knowledge of the underlying state of the economy. The council, echoing some detailed research work, has said that we do not adequately understand the impact of many policies or even the correct way to assess where we stand in terms of the economic cycle. We know from the contortions involved in creating GNI* that getting correct statistics is an urgent matter. It is surprising that the Government continues to give no priority to dealing with this. This is the impression given in the budget documentation where the part of the CSO's allocation which will go to improving the reliability and usefulness of these statistics is tiny. It is also well below the priority given by the Taoiseach to other presentational matters.

As Deputies Calleary and Michael McGrath said yesterday, important assumptions underpinning budget figures announced by the Minister are unsure. In each case, the Government has decided to take an optimistic assumption concerning revenues or costs. Independent commentators have suggested that the revenue projection for stamp duty is not much better than sticking a finger in the air. In terms of the tax on sugar in drinks, there is no reason to believe that the UK will succeed in implementing its regime by April and this will have an impact on the measures announced yesterday. As such, there is more uncertainty built into the budget figures than has been admitted.

A more important point is that the budget contains a fiscal policy but the Government continues to have no general economic policy. It is remarkable how little has been done to review or develop the core economic model outlined before the recession. For example, IDA Ireland's priority areas are as they were a decade ago. The identified drivers of growth have not changed nor have underlying assumptions about the productive capacity of the economy. The reality is that the Government’s sole focus is on trying to find ways of politically benefiting from the economy rather than trying to influence its direction. In this, it continues to tell a highly partisan story which undersells Ireland. The fundamental reason that Ireland has had a strong recovery is the impact of investments and policy decisions made over decades. Investment in people, infrastructure and pro-enterprise taxation are the reason we have had strong growth. Complacency and regressive policies are why this growth has been accompanied by rising problems and unfairness.

One of the great lessons we should learn from past policy successes is that we have the capacity to shape the economy if we are willing to look beyond the endless search for short-term headlines. The best example of this is our high-tech sector. The Taoiseach loves attending photo opportunities at high-tech companies' facilities but he does not appear to understand why these companies are here in the first instance. They are here because a decision was taken to invest in research and to train people and build the expertise required to put Ireland at the cutting edge of what we knew would be a dynamic sector. Many of the sectors in which we are now strongest and which employ tens of thousands of people, directly and indirectly, did not exist when the crucial investments were made. Twenty years ago, the entire dedicated budget for research in education was zero. That was transformed. First, we rebuilt large parts of the third-level system, brought in institutional strategies and helped individual groups. This was extended to world-class research centres and increasing industry partnership. We did this through a diverse funding and policy model which did not try to direct everything into Government-defined silos. We built a research system and not just a few tiny centres for Ministers to visit and claim credit for. In implementing this vision, every target was met ahead of time, with Ireland dramatically improving its international standing on every single research metric. That is why we host so many world-leading companies. Unfortunately, the Government does not appear to understand this. To quote the Taoiseach's former favourite band, LCD Soundsystem, in doing this, we are losing our edge.

To compete and win in the future and to create high-value jobs, we have to be more research-intensive. One of the less noticed but most significant announcements yesterday came from the Minister of State with responsibility for science and technology. Under pressure, he admitted that the Government looks as if it will fail to hit its research funding targets by a wide margin. The new science strategy looks as if it is already going to fail.

As Deputy Lawless has pointed out repeatedly, we are missing enormous opportunities as a result of the Government’s failure to show a commitment in this area. There is much reference in the budget to Brexit, which we all understand is a long-term economic threat for our country, but the specific measures included come nowhere near the urgent or ambitious response we need. In fact, they come nowhere near to the policies that have been leaked and briefed during the past two months. The funding will not double our international footprint in the way promised. It will not provide direct funding for businesses being undermined by Brexit. It will, at most, offer to loan the affected companies an average of €3,300 each at a slightly reduced rate of interest.

Incredibly, the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation, central to trade development, will get 40% less for Brexit developments than the Taoiseach is receiving for his communications unit. Deputies Niall Collins, Donnelly and Darragh O'Brien have already addressed some of these failings and will do so further during this debate.

In terms of investments which can build a strong economy and support a strong society well into the future, yesterday's budget was basically silent. This is a reflection of a government which is increasingly focused on the short term. When the long-delayed capital plan is published in the coming weeks, it will no doubt be presented as visionary and transformational. It will be nothing of the sort. It will address many delayed and essential projects, and also basic demographic pressures due to numbers going to school, commuting to work or requiring care. However, the capital figures in the budget mean there will not be, in the next three years at least, any new vision for the development of our country.

Before going into detail about specifics in the budget, it is necessary to address the controversy of the Taoiseach's new strategic communications unit. At the most immediate level it is genuinely amazing that the Taoiseach has decided that selling a corporate message for Government is a greater funding priority than the service helping children with disabilities to access supports, town and village renewal, the PEACE programme or any number of important programmes which will receive less than this new unit. However, at another level this decision gives rise to concern about what we can expect from our new Taoiseach. He has long been known as our most media-focused member of Government. Privately and publicly, an active attention to how he is presented has seemed a greater priority for him than managing tough issues or proposing significant policy departures. His period as Minister for Health was a case study in deflection and obfuscation, culminating in a rush for the door.

In justifying the strategic communications unit, he recently said that there is a huge problem with people not knowing what the Government is up to, that there is a thirst for more information about Government and that this needs to be filled by a central co-ordinating body. Where does this evidence come from? Deputy Jack Chambers is insistent that he has never gone to a door in Dublin West and heard a demand that Government must spend more on communications. There is no doubt that it is the duty of Government to communicate with the public. However, the evidence is that this is not what the Taoiseach actually wants. The Taoiseach does not want to inform the public; he wants to sell a message to the public. We know by now that he sees no difference between selling the Government's message and selling himself and his party. At the end of the day it all remains, as he reminds us in every tweet, a "campaign for Leo". Frustrated at the refusal of the public to roll over in gratitude to Fine Gael at the last general election, he believes that the positive stories need to be sold better. That is not communication; it is propaganda.

If the Taoiseach wants us to take him as being sincere, there is something he could do. If he genuinely wants to improve communication of what is going on, he should give a commitment that the unit will also publicise bad news. Instead of scheduling the release of bad statistics on Friday afternoons with no ministerial comment, he could schedule them for a midweek morning and present them himself. He has bruised many ministerial ribs elbowing them out of the way as he gets into the photos for their announcements. Would he commit to giving as much of his time to answering questions when things go wrong?

In August, the Taoiseach was hyperactive in the media, but both he and his Minister went missing when the appalling homelessness figures were released. Last Friday, the Taoiseach had nothing to say about record hospital waiting lists, while his Minister was also nowhere to be found. The Taoiseach is already highly sensitive about the charge that he is more interested in style than substance. That is unfair; we know well he would like to implement a more radical and regressive budget policy. If he wants to stop people being outraged at the obsessive attempts to spin and manipulate news, he should back off on this new propaganda machine and start engaging with tough issues.

On the specifics of the budget, the tax package is, as I have said, significantly more progressive than was originally proposed. I am particularly pleased at the USC reductions, which we have achieved, and which ensure lower and middle income earners are helped. There has been something almost surreal in our dealings with Fine Gael on the USC. That party campaigned in the last general election with colourful signs emblazoned with "Abolish USC". There are many photos of the Taoiseach and his Ministers holding them. However, they have been reluctant to agree a much milder policy.

Fianna Fáil is also pleased to have protected mortgage interest relief from abolition. This relief has problems, but in the context of the current dysfunctional market and possible interest rate increases, abolition would have made a tough situation even more difficult for a vulnerable and substantial group. Our insistence on having that in the confidence and supply agreement has led to its delivery in this budget.

The overall social protection package is substantially better than it would have been if left to the priorities announced by Fine Gael in August. As Deputy O'Dea has pointed out, the cumulative impact of these increases and the ones we secured last year help. A €10 a week increase for pensioners, for example, is a step change versus where they would be if past policy had continued. At €343 million, the social protection provisions are the largest single element of the budget, which is quite different from what the Taoiseach announced as his priority.

We remain concerned that the Government has no apparent interest in issues concerning poverty. It is not addressing poverty traps and it is more interested in finding ways to label people rather than help them. In this respect, the marginal increases in community development programmes show a continued reluctance to take a long-term approach. As we demonstrated in the past, significant progress can be achieved in breaking intimidating inter-generational cycles of poverty and exclusion. However, this requires a whole-of-Government approach to working with communities. If the Government regards these communities as passive recipients of Government communications, then obviously it will not take the required action.

The experience of the Leader programme since the Government undermined it and substantially reduced its funding has been telling for communities in rural and regional areas. Extraordinary bureaucracy has prevented it spending what it has, which was already a huge reduction on what it previously had. It is undermining the community spirit that characterised the Leader programmes across the country. It has been hailed as the best example of that kind of community intervention by the European Commission.

This budget was designed to say as little as possible on housing in order not to spoil the big launch by the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, in the coming weeks. However, the basic thrust of policy is clear from the overall allocations. As Focus Ireland and others have pointed out, there is no increase in the targets for social housing to be built. While the scale of the problem has got worse in the last year, the building commitments have not increased. This is a concern, but in reality the continued failure of the Government to deliver on housing promises means that it will be tough for them to hit even these old targets. That has been the story of recent years - a series of initiatives announced, but no delivery on the targets contained in them.

The delivery gap between ministerial announcements and what is actually built is at the root of a worsening situation. The Government even underspent the allocation for helping families avoid homelessness by 11%. We expect that the House will hold a full debate on housing in the context of the Government's forthcoming publicity campaign and this will be an opportunity to go into this in more depth.

The chaos which developed in the health sector during the former Ministers Reilly and Varadkar years has continued to get worse. For the first time in decades, Ireland does not even have a Government strategy for its health services. I listened with interest to the exchange on Sláintecare that the Taoiseach had with others. My understanding was that the Fine Gael members of the committee had signed up for Sláintecare, but the Government itself does not have a strategy. It looks like we will have to wait for the publication of service plans before we can properly assess the significance of what has been allocated. What we do know is that the National Treatment Purchase Fund will, at our insistence, be expanded significantly and will help many people on waiting lists. The closing down of the fund's primary work by Fine Gael was an enormous error which directly caused immense damage. It tells a lot that the only substantive initiative in acute services mentioned by the Government is one it previously strongly opposed.

The Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Harris, have a adopted a policy of implying that endemic staff failures are at the core of why Supplementary Estimates are needed and targets are missed. Every time their failures are noticed they try to shift the blame by writing a stiff letter to the HSE demanding that something be done. Before Fine Gael got hold of it, the HSE had a record of delivering its service plans and staying within agreed budgets even in very tough times. This has changed because of the approach of the Minister's office to demanding that more be promised than is funded and that priorities keep changing.

The failure to deliver all promised mental health funding has become a serious issue and it is one which the Government has been warned about. The €35 million extra we secured for next year is less than is needed but it is probably at the maximum of what can be spent. There was bad faith last year in respect of the mental health budget and its allocation. We will be insisting that money gets spent, that there will be continuous monitoring of how it is being rolled out and that genuine relief is given to those who want to access mental health services. That access is not there at the moment, particularly for children and adolescents. The House will remember that Fine Gael announced the impending abolition of prescription charges and then proceeded to increase them massively. They have been a cause of real hardship and the reduction which we secured is an important step.

Resources for education are a priority in the confidence and supply agreement. We have insisted on reducing the primary pupil-teacher ratio because of research over many years which shows the damage which can be caused by large classes, especially to children from disadvantaged communities. We also continue to believe that giving teachers the opportunity to spend more time focusing on the needs of individual students is essential. Obviously the announcement yesterday was over-spun by both the Minister and the Taoiseach. Some 545 of the extra teachers are being driven by demand due to demographic changes. As the population increases, the number of teachers employed increases automatically to keep the ratio at its current level. The additional special needs teachers and assistants are badly needed. While the commitment which we secured to restore a dedicated guidance and counselling service in second level schools has not yet been fully implemented, the 100 extra posts next year will make a difference, especially in schools serving disadvantaged communities. The ring fencing of those posts is essential to ensure the proper delivery of guidance counselling in our schools.

As Deputy Byrne has outlined, we certainly do not welcome the continued reluctance to invest significantly in the DEIS programme. The series of initiatives such as DEIS which Fianna Fáil initiated and implemented while in government was central to securing the lowest ever level of early school-leaving and other essential educational objectives. Labour’s cuts some years ago were a disgrace. Unfortunately for this Government, new communications campaigns are more than three times greater a priority than extra funding for disadvantaged schools. It is extraordinary that there is no focus on DEIS or early school-leaving and that there is incoherence across Government with regard to the delivery of a comprehensive strategy for early school-leaving. The school completion programme, for example, in under the remit of Tusla, when it should not be. It should be under the remit of the Department of Education and Skills. The National Educational Welfare Board was incorporated into Tusla. It should not have been, it should be in the Department of Education and Skills so that there could be a whole-system approach to early school leaving and a continuum of services. Currently, those services, particularly those for early school-leaving, are in decline.

In respect of justice, the former Minister, Alan Shatter, has recently been on a vindication tour of the media. He has looked at the evidence and decided that not only does he not have a case to answer, but that he was one of our greatest Ministers for Justice and Equality. Thankfully, amongst those of his policies which are now being reversed is the approach to policing which saw gardaí withdrawn from vulnerable communities throughout the country. The expansion of Garda recruitment in the confidence and supply agreement will have a significant impact.

Fianna Fáil also welcomes the fact that there was some progress on the core priorities for agriculture in the confidence and supply arrangement. The increased funding for the areas of natural constraint scheme for farmers in budget 2018 is a small step in the right direction. It is important that the details of the criteria and roll-out of the loan programmes announced in the budget are made known without delay. It is disappointing however that there has been no movement on income tax averaging measures as proposed by farming organisations or increased suckler cow supports. The ultimate litmus test for budget 2018 will be whether the payment packages promised are actually delivered on time, as the delays up to now have caused hardship for the farmers who so desperately rely on them.

Overall, this is a modest and over-hyped budget. It does not contain major initiatives which will fundamentally alter the direction of economic or social policy. As we have now come to expect from this Government, the bigger the publicity campaign is the smaller the substance will be. The budget does, in general, conform to the agreement reached last year. In particular it does not enable the major shift of policy rightwards trailed repeatedly by the new leader of Fine Gael. It is a budget with which we have issues, but it includes important measures and is more progressive than any budget introduced during the Fine Gael-Labour coalition. The biggest problem remains a Government made up of people who lack any obvious interest in delivering on commitments as opposed to simply talking about delivery. Crises in vital areas such as health and housing can only be addressed if the excuses stop, the endless spin is put to the side and we start seeing delivery.

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