Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak. In my time observing budgets in this House in the last few years, I have observed that the set-piece on budget day is no longer what it was. There is an evolving system of how we present budgets in this House. There is a broader public debate out there which is important. With the budgetary process that has been proposed and amended in recent years, the Oireachtas has more input which is healthy and should be encouraged and fostered. All Departments should be more proactive in interacting with the various Oireachtas oversight committees to ensure there is a continual flow of information between the Departments and the committees, not just around the actual Estimates in a historical context but on a proactive basis as well.

There is no doubt that the economy is in full recovery. The growth projections for the next years are very positive. Unemployment has dropped quite dramatically and there is huge potential and opportunity for the State to reinvest in social capital and infrastructure as well. As a people and a society, we must become more cohesive. We must ensure that we disperse the largesse that the State has in the key areas that need support. The areas that need State investment and prioritisation are health, education and housing.

If we are to talk about failure to acknowledge problems and do something meaningful to address them, we do not have to look further than 500 yards from here any night of the week. People are sleeping on doorsteps on our main thoroughfares. That is the manifestation of the abject failure of the State to deal with a problem that should be solvable and should not be beyond the capacity of the State, the people, the Government or the Parliament to resolve. We have over 8,000 people registered as homeless. Families are sleeping in hotels not just for weeks but for years now. There is no point in us pretending that this is not a result of policy failure. It was obvious for a number of years that the failure of the State and the Government to interject in a meaningful, timely manner would create these difficulties. It is now evident every night of the week on Grafton Street. Outside Brown Thomas last night there were five people sleeping when I walked past. That is what is happening.

Those involved in the building of houses, primarily the banks including the pillar banks that were supported by the State, adhere to the idea that house prices should inflate. It is obvious that there is now a policy for inflation of house prices. A few key players benefit from that. Those who do not benefit are those in the sleeping bags outside Brown Thomas and those across all of society who are under huge pressure. We have conditioned ourselves to inflationary house prices as a policy that benefits the banks primarily and then the Government in the form of taxes. The banks do not want to fund builders to build houses. The fewer houses that are built, the better for the banks because more people will be looking for fewer houses. That repairs the impaired balance sheets of our pillar banks. Let us be under no illusions. The fewer houses that are built, the better for Bank of Ireland and AIB and all the other banks involved. They benefit from the fact that no houses will be built because house prices will continue to go up and they will have less of an obligation to set aside money for bad debt and for impairment. The Government will be quite happy as well with the property taxes and everything else that flows from this inflation.

We have a situation which manifests itself in the person sleeping rough on the street. We are also making another generation slaves to bricks and mortar. They will not have any opportunity to invest in the real issues such as their children's education, time with family, time interacting and volunteering in a community. We will put everybody who is not already on the treadmill on it over the next years. They will run themselves to death either financing a house or paying out massive rent because there is not enough houses being built. Either way, they will be flogged to death on that treadmill. It is dislocating society. In years to come, we as parliamentarians will look back and say it was the one thing we failed miserably on, addressing that fundamental issue of dear houses sucking the life out of individuals and families. They should be able to spend their money on helping the child who might need extra resource hours. Parents with an extra additional income should be able to use it to support their child in some other meaningful way. What they are doing is piling it week in, week out either into a mortgage or into an exorbitant rent. We have failed to address this. Everybody is involved in it in one way or another but nobody is willing to stand up and say we have to change how we plan our society in terms of houses.

We must also change how we zone and develop land while ensuring house prices are not inflated significantly. The Republic has a population of approximately 4.7 million people and, per square kilometre, is not densely populated. However, it has the highest house prices in Europe. It beggars belief we are back in the same position in which we found ourselves ten years ago. Young families are queueing up to buy houses for sale and committing themselves to 25-year mortgages. In those 25 years they will have children, but they will be unable to invest the time and human capital needed such as in their children's education to raise a family. Instead, they will spend the next 25 years on a treadmill, subsidising some hedge fund or pension fund, as well as the banks through exorbitant house prices.

This is not just a Government issue but also a societal one. If we do not address it, we will condemn another generation such as mine to paying expensive house prices. It is unnecessary. Houses can be built for €200,000, yet three miles from here a three bedroom semi-detached house costs between €600,000 and €700,000. Young people are being herded out to the suburbs again. We are not building a sustainable society or economy in our cities and towns. If the Government is going to do anything on the housing issue, it must be to change from viewing houses as an ATM for the State, banks and hedge funds to putting a roof over one's head and a place where an individual or a family can put down roots in a community.

In the past few years inpatient, outpatient and day case lists have escalated to the point where there are now 670,000 people on some treatment waiting list, with 10,000 on secretive lists, the hidden lists about which we know. Potentially there are other lists about which we have not yet found out, but we will keep on scratching. More importantly, we have conditioned ourselves to accept 549 patients on hospital trolleys as acceptable. This morning's figure of 549 did not even make the headlines in the newspapers. In 1988 when the first admitted patient had to stay overnight on a trolley in an emergency department, it was a shock to the system. The consultant who had witnessed it said he could not believe a patient admitted to a hospital had to remain in the emergency department overnight. This morning 549 patients were on trolleys when they should have been admitted to hospital. It has become a non-event and a non-issue which we do not discuss any more. We have conditioned ourselves to accept mediocrity in the health service. We have a health system which is at a standstill. There are now 670,000 people on some waiting list. Whatever else is done, we have to accept that we are failing abysmally.

There was cross-party consensus on the Sláintecare report. Some members had concerns, but they all signed off on the major points of how health care should be funded in the years ahead. In the short to medium term, regardless of whatever ideological views or objections Members may have, we must ensure the National Treatment Purchase Fund is properly funded and will become proactive in driving down hospital waiting lists. From past experience, we know that it does work. It is included in the confidence and supply agreement and welcome that €55 million has been committed to it for spending next year.

The next issue might be slightly parochial, but there is a larger vision which will interest the Minister of State from Galway and the Minister of State from Limerick opposite. The M20 motorway project a is critically important infrastructural project. I do not say that because it would just be good for Cork. In connecting Galway, Limerick and Cork, along the west coast, it would provide a counterbalance to the pressures on the east coast, primarily in Dublin. If we were to be imaginative, it would also help in providing a wonderful area in which to live. There are universities in Limerick, Galway, Cork, with international airports, a rail network and deep water ports, all of which would be within a two-hour journey from Cork or Galway if that link road were in place. It would become one of the finest and most sought after places in which to live, not just in Ireland but also in Europe. Investment in the project is critically important to ensure we will have an alternative to Dublin. Equally, it would open up the entire west coast to investment and accessibility for living. I urge the Government to examine the project and not push it down the road as it has in the past.

The other important part of the project is the provision of a proper north ring road in Cork city. We need the M20 motorway project in an international context and the north ring road for the constituency of Cork North-Central.

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