Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Cabinet committee D mainly covers infrastructure but it also covers transport, which is a key part of our infrastructure. It is a Cabinet committee. Cabinet committees do not deal and never have dealt with industrial relations disputes. These disputes are dealt with by the Workplace Relations Commission and then by the Labour Court if a resolution cannot be found. It is correct to say that Irish Rail staff have faced a prolonged pay freeze for the best part of ten years and are now being offered a small pay rise. It is important not to forget that there are lots of people who did not have a ten-year pay freeze; they had very substantial pay cuts and will not see their pay fully restored until 2019 or 2020. Many of those people will be the passengers who are affected when the rail strike occurs and we should be cognisant of and sensitive to that fact because these people are not being offered a pay rise and will lose money by not being able to get to work that day. Obviously, it will impact on businesses as well.

There are many strikes in public transport in Ireland. There is a disproportionate number of strikes in public transport in Ireland relative to other sectors but they are always resolved whether they involve the Luas, Dublin Bus or Bus Éireann or previous strikes in Irish Rail. They are always resolved and after talks at the Workplace Relations Commission or on the recommendation of the Labour Court. Unlike other sectors, there seems to be a requirement that there be a few days of strike before an agreement is made, which is disappointing and unnecessary because I do not believe that the final agreement made by the unions and the employers would be any different if there had not been a couple of days of strikes on the bus or the railway before the agreement was made because strikes are ultimately futile. All they do is damage the companies concerned, cost the striking workers money, inconvenience passengers and cost other people too. I would much prefer to see industrial disputes being resolved in the Workplace Relations Commission and the Labour Court without a strike just as they are in so many other semi-State bodies and so many other parts of the public service.

There is no date for the publication of the new national development plan, although we are targeting the month of December. It is intended that the national planning framework and the ten-year capital plan should be done at the same time and agreed and published at the same time because they need to speak to each other.

I support public private partnerships, PPPs, in principle. I think they have worked well. Much of our motorway network was built through PPPs, as was the case with many of our new schools, which are very fine buildings. However, I do not think PPPs are universally good. I do not like the idea of people referring to PPPs for public infrastructure as though they are off-balance sheet. They are not. It is just that the cost is spread over 40 years rather than over three, four or five but they are very much on-balance sheet. It is not free money. It is money that has to come out of taxpayers' pockets and PPPs can be very expensive. Sometimes it is cheaper to borrow the money up front given that interest rates are so low rather than go for a PPP model but there can be advantages as well, not least the fact that the risk is partially shared by the private sector and that, therefore, spares the taxpayer some of the risk. Second, it is a bit like a mortgage. While it might be cheaper to buy a house up front, sometimes one just cannot do so because one does not have the cash so it makes sense in those circumstances to pay it off over 40 years in the form of a PPP.

I am not up to date with developments at Dún Laoghaire Harbour Company. The plan was to transfer it to the local authority thus allowing it to be developed as an amenity for the area, which is the right future for that harbour. Some of the small harbours have already been transferred to local authorities, for example, Sligo and Wicklow. I am not sure what the reasons for the delay are in that particular case.

In respect of capital spending, I may have picked Deputy Micheál Martin up wrong but on budget day, the Minister for Finance did announce additional capital allocations to Departments for 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. While it is always the case that some capital projects fall behind schedule, it is important to acknowledge that over the past five years there has been considerable progress in terms of our public infrastructure, much more so than people might have expected during a period when we had very little money to invest in infrastructure. Over 200 new schools have been built, which include many fine buildings in my constituency. A total of 67 primary care centres have been built, including three in my constituency. Having not built any new public hospitals in the best part of 15 years, as I speak, there are now three-----

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