Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As I have already spoken extensively on the budget, I propose to focus on some of the issues that arise in the context of the Finance Bill 2017. I will begin by speaking about the process itself. Many of the contents of this Bill, which was published last Thursday, were signalled in advance. The Bill is being discussed generally on Second Stage before it is the subject of a line-by-line examination on Committee Stage. This process is in complete contrast with the process on budget day, when the budget is dumped on the House and various Ministers make departmental announcements at press conferences outside our Parliament. Nobody ever gets a chance to see the detail. The process of announcing the budget, which goes back decades, needs to be reformed and changed. The kind of scrutiny that is given to the finance Bill every year needs to be given to the entire budgetary process, including the individual departmental Votes.

The first issue on which I would like to focus is Brexit. This Finance Bill covers 2018, which will be the last year before the UK leaves the EU in 2019. David Davis has said this morning that the negotiations will continue right up to the wire at midnight the night before the date on which Brexit is due to happen. There is no sense within the Finance Bill of the urgency that is needed to tackle Brexit and the supports that are needed for business, in particular, to deal with it. I accept that funding has been promised, but we have heard no detail on that. Many Deputies attended a briefing across the road this morning at which representatives of Teagasc set out their thoughts on Brexit. Teagasc is doing some interesting work on innovation and on opening various markets to Irish farming. According to Teagasc's research, a hard Brexit, which looks likely at the moment, could lead to income reductions of between 30% and 35% in the farming sector. I suggest a similar point could be made about the manufacturing sector. We can see the impact that the fall in the value of sterling associated with Brexit is having on small businesses that depend on the UK market, particularly this year in the tourism sector.

There is no sense in this Bill of the urgency that is required, the preparations that need to be made and the supports that have to be put in place to assist companies that will be affected by Brexit. The representatives of Teagasc had some really interesting things to say this morning about what they are doing to open new markets, particularly in China. They are educating Chinese people about the value of Irish cheese and about new innovative products which use powders. A timeline is needed for that. Small companies need support to foster innovation and to start building new markets, but that support is not available. One cannot build a new market in a single day. The agencies are not receiving the support they need.

I would like to speak about climate change. As I listened to the contributions to this debate over the past couple of hours, I got more and more depressed.

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