Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the fact we are having this debate. Last week we had a multiplicity of announcements with great crash and thunder. This evening we have an opportunity to drill down and ask some pertinent questions about the real content of this plan, to see if it is fit for purpose and discuss alternative approaches.

I want to look at the plan under a number of headings, including housing; public private partnerships, PPPs; climate change; public transport; some of the proposals relating to the area that I represent in Cork; and the need for real socialist planning.

One of the stark deficiencies in the national planning framework is the scant reference and attention given to our need for far more public housing. The unmet housing need in the State today is in fact a multiple of the figure or more than 100,000 currently on local authority housing lists. For a start, those on housing assistance payments, HAP, and therefore in the thrall of private landlords, are taken off the list, even though their fundamental housing needs have not been securely met. However, these numbers in turn are dwarfed by the number of people, estimated to be in excess of 300,000, who have a housing need, cannot afford to buy in the open market and are excluded from applying for public housing. The planing framework document says that the provision by Government of housing support for those unable to provide for accommodation from their own resources is a key social policy. It does not seem to be a key social policy at the moment, or if it is, it is in name only. From the perspective of the locked out generation, just as much for those languishing for up to 15 years on allocation lists, it certainly does not seem like a key social policy. The short-term target for all housing construction in the document is between 30,000 and 35,000 units, which is not enough. To clear the backlog of unmet housing need we need State-led planning and construction to increase that by at least a factor of three.

I recommend to the Government and to every Deputy in this House an article in last week's Dublin Inquirerby the academics Mick Byrne, Michelle Norris and Anna Carnegie, entitled "Our Housing Policy is Built on a False and Dangerous Premise". This article picks apart the clichés about tenure mix. We hear a lot about tenure mix in Project Ireland 2040. These clichés which come from the political establishment are in reality a coded way of saying this Government has no intention of building enough public housing to cater for the existing lists, never mind the broader current and future public housing need.

We cannot resolve this crisis if we do not aspire to build and rebuild working-class communities on a scale we have not seen since the 1970s at least. The article points out that the problems associated with some working-class communities are to be located in wider capitalism, citing factors like industrialisation. The authors correctly point in the direction of achieving mixed tenure, in other words, effectively bringing all strata of the working and middle classes together by lifting the low income thresholds for social housing.

I must also address the issue of public private partnerships. With all the crash and thunder of the new announcements last week, the Government hoped that we would not notice that a new policy was being sneaked in through the back door. The framework includes a change of policy emanating from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe's Department. That Department wants to ramp up the role of PPPs beyond the previous cap of 10% of the capital budget. This is quite incredible, coming mere weeks after the disaster of the Carillon collapse in Britain. We have seen the effect this is having and has had in this country. There is now a major international debate about the value and wisdom of the PPP model. It does not deliver the goods, it delivers the goods more at greater expense than other approaches and in many cases it is very bad for workers' rights. What is the response of the Government? It does not just stick with PPPs, it ramps them up hugely.

I cannot think of anything that better demonstrates this Government's abject worship of the capitalist market at the expense of ordinary people. The 2040 plan would tie us into PPPs not just for motorways, but for projects building institutes of technology and the upgrade of 90 community nursing homes. It cannot be contested by the Minister that PPP deals, some of which last 40 years and therefore two generations, come at a greater cost to the public purse. Yes, the fiscal rules that he campaigned for and supports conveniently lead us to the door of these PPP arrangements, but it is time to call a halt. I will make some points about the alternative to this later in my remarks.

On the issue of climate change, the Government's record is in sharp contrast to the aspirations of ordinary people. What is the Government's record? Ireland is the worst performing country in Europe in the action it is taking. The State dropped 28 places last year and ranked 49th out of 59 according to the 2018 Climate Change Performance Index. Ireland is missing its EU 2020 emission reduction targets. We also produce highest volume of emissions per person in Europe, and the eighth highest in the world. Contrast that with the Citizens' Assembly held last November, where 98% of members recommended putting climate change at the centre of Irish policy making. This shows widespread support for action on environmental issues by the general public. A full 100% of members recommended that the State should take a leadership role and assume responsibility for adapting existing structures. I do not have time to go into all of the options available to the State to improve its record greatly on climate change, so I will deal with one, the question of public transport.

Successive Governments, led by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, have a rotten record on investment in public transport. The amount of money going into Dublin Bus, Iarnród Éireann and Bus Éireann is less than it was ten years ago. More than 1.2 million commuters travel to work by car. There is massive scope to drastically increase public transport use, but only by proper investment. For example, German railway transport gets roughly nine times the amount of current subvention per head of population that Irish Rail does. That is not including capital investment. Trying to balance the books on the back of public transport workers will not improve the quality of public transport. It will make it worse. That is why we need a properly funded public transport system. Irish Rail carries up to 155,000 passengers a day. In 2016, Irish Rail carried 43 million passengers. All of this plays a role in the creation of wealth in society. With increases in intercity and DART routes, efficient, reliable and affordable public transport is a key requirement for working people across the State. Simply returning the 2018 public service obligation to 2010 levels would see €73 million returned to Irish Rail. Reinstating the subvention taken from Irish rail since 2008 would see €730 million returned. Compare that to the fines of €610 million facing the State for missing CO₂emissions targets in 2020. This funding could begin to transform public transport services radically in this country. Investment in environmentally friendly infrastructure and modernisation would dramatically reduce car numbers in city centres, while also reskilling thousands of workers. A serious turn to investment in services through State subvention could see fares dramatically reduced and usage dramatically increased.

We calculate that with a €500 million investment, fares could be reduced by half, which would open to the door to a massive turn away from the car to public transport services. The Public Services International Research Unit has reported on the growing trend in municipalities and cities throughout Europe towards taking transport services back into public control as the failures of the private model and the efficiencies of public ownership become apparent through the state's ability to borrow and invest, control quality and favourable conditions for workers and commuters. In the UK, 76% of those surveyed, according to recent polls, support the renationalisation of transport. It would be enormously popular in this country to back public transport with major investment funded through a steeply progressive taxation system.

There are 171 references in this 158-page document to the word "sustainable", yet genuinely sustainable policies are noticeably absent from it.

I refer to proposals in Project Ireland 2040 relating to Cork city, including road projects, the event centre, light rail and a tidal barrier. Various road projects are mentioned in the document, including the Macroom bypass and the M20 motorway between Cork and Limerick, which is significant. I am an advocate of switching funding in order that the majority of it goes towards public transport as opposed to roads but there is no doubt that a motorway linking Ireland's second and third cities is a necessity. It is a third world scenario not to have that. How will the road operate? The Sunday Business Postreported last Sunday that there will be an increased use of public private partnerships. It said, "This raises the prospect of tolling on new motorways such as the M20 motorway between Cork and Limerick". I would like the Tánaiste, who is beating the drum in Cork on this issue, to answer whether the new motorway will be tolled. It should not be tolled and it is right that information in this regard should be put out there from the get-go.

The Cork event centre is badly needed for concerts and the like. As a member, I attended a meeting of Cork City Council in December 2014 when the funding proposals for this initiative were rolled out. I made the point that night that if we had a State construction company, it would deliver the project far better than the private sector or a public private partnership. I have been proven right in that regard. If a state construction company had taken on that project, it would be built or almost built by now, but not a single brick has been laid on the basis of the PPP model. How expensive it is proving to be for the taxpayer as well. The original plan was for a €50 million event centre with €20 million to be provided by the taxpayer. Now it seems that the Tánaiste has negotiated a deal for the same event centre costing €73 million, although the cinema has been taken out in favour of office space, with €30 million being provided by the taxpayer. Is €10 million being provided indirectly on top of that? The Irish Examiner reported last week that €10 million in State funding would be provided for so-called support infrastructure for the centre. What is that support infrastructure? This deal is shrouded in secrecy and people need to be told what exactly is going on. When this PPP is hammered out, who will control the building and the land? What is the State getting for its investment? Is it merely providing a donation to the private sector to do something that could have been done many years ago more quickly and for much less money, with the centre remaining in the ownership and control of the people?

The document refers to the much needed and long awaited northern ring road for the city. It says that a start will be made on that but I hope a middle and an ending will happen as well. Reference is also made to a feasibility study for light rail. Did the Minister of State ever hear of the land use and transportation survey, LUTS, which was a survey of transportation needs in Cork in the late 1970s? That was a feasibility study, which recommended light rail. We are 40 years on and we need feasibly studies matched quickly with funding.

There is not even provision for a feasibility study, let alone a project, when it comes to a tidal barrier and this tracks back to my earlier point on climate change. World renowned expert, Professor Robert Devoy of University College Cork, says that a tidal barrier is a necessity for Cork and will become even more of a necessity as time goes by as we experience rising sea levels caused by global warming. The OPW says a barrier would cost €1 billion. People who are well placed say that is not true. HR Wallingford, an international engineering and hydraulics company, recently said it could be done for €140 million. That would be cheaper and more acceptable to the people of Cork, particularly those in the city centre, than the clumsy and not very people friendly flood defence plan being put in place by the OPW. I reiterate my call for funding to be put aside for a tidal barrier. It will be needed sooner or later and now would be the best time to provide it.

I am in favour of rational planning in respect of the resources within society. I believe that such an approach does not sit well alongside the anarchy of the capitalist market. If Ministers want to see in real terms what I mean by that, they should look at the history of this country over the past ten to 20 years. The grand plans for infrastructure, including spatial strategies, and development which were the equivalent of Project Ireland 2040 in the early 21st century were put in place in 2000 and 2006 and then we had the global economic crash, the worst since the 1930s. That did not just mean the vast bulk of the projects were put on the long finger but progress that had been made during the imperious Celtic tiger period was pushed back because of cutbacks and austerity.

There is a long history in this country of great plans and great visions being ruined and wrecked by the vagaries of the capitalist market, the anarchy of the capitalist market and the inevitability which is built into the capitalist market, both internationally and in Ireland, of booms and slumps which cut across the potential for rational, serious planning of the economy and of our resources.

The projects announced last week, and others such as the Cork tidal barrier, can only be delivered soundly and securely by a society which takes its resources and then plans in a rational way. It will not happen on the basis of private ownership for profit, but can only happen by taking the main levers of wealth in society into public hands and democratically controlling them for the benefit of each and every member of society. There needs to be a break with the policies of the capitalist markets and a new, democratic and socialist society organised and planned for the interests of the majority or people, rather than the profits of an elite few.

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