Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak again on this year's budget. I acknowledge the Minister for Rural and Community Development, Deputy Ring, and the Minister of State at the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Moran, who are in the House. Both are dedicated hard workers. I thank them for their input into Kerry. The Minister of State, Deputy Moran, has visited flood areas and has assisted us with finance, and is still working on projects. We are hopeful of getting finance for other very necessary projects that have needed to be addressed for the past seven or eight years. I thank the Minister, Deputy Ring, for funding the local improvement schemes. I asked him about this several times at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Community and Rural Development and I am glad that he acceded last year. It has meant a lot to what are called public-private roads in Kerry. They are not private roads. They are public roads but they were never taken over by the local authority and the last 100 yd. or half a mile to a person's door is the most important part. I appreciate the fact the scheme is being brought back. There is a request in for more funding and I hope we will get that in the not too distant future to carry on that very important work. I also have to acknowledge the Minister of State at the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Doyle, who is here as well. He is working very hard in his role.

Class 3 roads are small link roads that do not really come under the community involvement scheme but there is very little funding for them. They have been waiting a long time. Some have been in a desperate state for 20 years and some people tell me their road has not seen a bit of tar for 40 years. Many Governments have come and gone in that time. Will the Minister, Deputy Ring, address this? Last night I mentioned the need for the Killarney bypass, which is a matter for the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, but I do not know whether he knows much about roads or has an interest in them. Nevertheless, I ask that the bypass be progressed because it would mean so much to the town of Killarney through which large volumes of traffic pass every day. For example, 18,600 vehicles use the current bypass daily. That is increasing all the time. I ask that it be put into a programme that gets funding. We were told in 2003 that it would progress in 2006. That is 12 years without a move on it.

I spoke last night about the health service. Morale and confidence in our health service in the county of Kerry is at an all-time low. The Ministers have been told several times no elective orthopaedic procedure has been carried out there in the past four months. People are roaring with pain and are suffering. That is terrible. All the stops must be pulled out to ensure these people who have waited so long will not have to suffer through Christmas and into another year without being seen. I asked the Taoiseach about this on the Order of Business. Some 124 people have been assessed and are waiting to have a procedure but there are more who need to be assessed. We do not know the figures for them but they are many. They telephone me and other public representatives every day. I ask that they be treated in private hospitals or sent to Cork, Limerick or Dublin. We will be taking them on buses to Belfast in the coming weeks. It is not right that our health service is letting all these people down.

I have asked that the Minister for Health go to Tralee General Hospital unannounced to see what is happening in the accident and emergency department there, where elderly people aged 80 and 90 years are waiting 24 or even 48 hours to get a bed. It is chronic. This is not good enough. We are told that in Cuba, which is a dictatorship, if a person presents for a hip operation today, he or she will have it tomorrow. That happens in other countries which have much less than we have.

The Health Service Executive is top heavy. There has to be managers, and there are good people there, but it is overloaded with managers and there is not enough front-line staff. With the €700 million extra that is being given this year, will we see any improvement in the services for the sick people and those who need attention? I worry that we will not. It is more money but we will be standing still.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy Creed, was in here earlier but the agricultural sector is very disappointed, especially those in the suckler cow sector. They are very hurt that they did not get anything in line with what they looked for, or even near it. The story of the €40 per calf if a farmer is in the beef data and genomic scheme is of no benefit at all because people have lost confidence in that scheme. They see the quality of the beef sector reducing under the scheme and when the five years is up many will get out of the scheme. Those in the suckler cow sector are in a dire situation. Farmers are not getting anything like what they should have got at the marts around the county. Prices are way down. The farmers who used to buy that kind of weanling on the eastern side of the country do not have the feed to buy them this winter.

When there is less competition at the mart, the price will not be long falling. To give one example, there was a man who used to take 720 heifers from one mart in Castleisland and when the mart telephoned him to ask why he was not coming to it he told them he was selling his bales for €50 a bale and was buying no heifers this year. That is what those in the suckler cow sector are up against. There is something every year. They are all reducing the size of their herds now. That will mean that in a very short time our beef industry will be in trouble because if farmers do not have the calves, they will not have the weanlings or the two year olds, the beef to sell to the factories.

I was listening to Deputy Deering, a Fine Gael Deputy. He said there was unfairness in the market and we all know there is. The beef processors and the factories are not being fair to farmers. If he knows that and he is supporting the Government, I ask the Government to follow up on this to see if anything can be done about that unfairness in the market. We all know there is unfairness and that something needs to be done.

The other thing that hurt me very much last night was the "Prime Time" programme. The budget was being discussed on the programme. It was like the word "agriculture" was taboo. It was never once mentioned in the programme and I watched most of it. I will excuse myself if I missed it because I could not watch all of it. All the time I was watching, however, agriculture was not mentioned at all. Can that be imagined? Agriculture was not mentioned at all on in the "Prime Time" programme on the national broadcaster in our country on the night of the budget. That signals to me and to people in rural Ireland that those people do not matter. What matters is what affects Dublin and the urban areas around the city. That is what is talked about and there is no interest in what is happening down the country. I can tell the national broadcaster, however, that when the farming community is struggling it follows on that the rest of the country will struggle after that. Farmers are the backbone of the country and always have been. They are not prospering and they are not being looked after and helped by Governments. I will not just blame this Government. Farmers need help just as much as anybody else.

On housing, there is much talk about landlords. They are being criticised all of the time. From my knowledge of landlords, 99% of them are fine. I heard the previous speaker talking about rents of €1,400 a month. That is happening in places - it is reaching that in Killarney - but more than half of that €1,400 is going from these landlords to the State. That has to be remembered. I asked here several times if some incentive could be given to landlords or some help could be given to reduce the tax taken from them. Give them some incentive to see if the rents can be kept down. The landlords have costs as well. I am not saying that €1,400 is a reasonable sum. It certainly is not but neither is €700 for people on social welfare. At the same time, the landlords provide the house, they have borrowings and they have to pay many different things. Out of whatever they get, most of those people are paying 50% or 52% because if a landlord has a couple of houses he or she is over the limit that brings him or her into the higher tax bracket. That has to be remembered by anyone talking about housing and landlords. Much of the cost of rent is going back to the State. I sincerely hope the State can do something. I have been asking the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to see if something could be done about this to bring down the cost of rents.

I mentioned the tenant purchase scheme. It is being reviewed for a long time. When will the review be complete? It is very unfair because there was no tenant purchase scheme for a number of years. Then a certain number of tenants reached pension age. A pensioner now, however, cannot buy out his or her house even though he or she might have the savings to buy it and might have been paying rent for 30 or 40 years. It is very unfair that these people cannot buy out their homes. I welcome the €5 for pensioners and social welfare recipients. It is not much but it is still to be appreciated. The extra funding for the back-to-school clothing and footwear scheme, special needs teachers and the capitation grant of 5% is welcome because schools are struggling. I know this is not anywhere near enough but at least the Government is recognising there is a problem. We will keep pressure on the Government to ensure that funding is increased again next year.

I turn to the €466 million taken out of the tourism sector. People in Kerry are hurting seriously from this VAT increase of 4.5%. It was thought, at the worst, that it would go up by 1.5% over three years and there would be a chance to get ready for it. It is an awful slap in the face to them. Many of these small businesses are closed from now until St. Patrick's Day. It is very seasonal for them. It is different up here in Dublin. It will not hurt the hotel or hospitality industry up here at all. Many people are criticising, and critical of, the rainy day fund. Those people are saying they are being doubly hit. They are being hit with a lack of services, more tax and all of the different things that have happened to people because of the breakdown in the economy in 2008. The Central Bank looked for the Government to put this rainy day fund in place. The Government is paying money back to Europe for what happened in the last depression and also getting ready for the next one at the behest of the Central Bank and the other banks. Many people are very critical of this. The amount of money being put into the rainy day fund each year now would match what was taken out of the tourism sector in this budget.

I welcome the change where sole traders and the self-employed, if their business goes wallop or whatever, will be entitled to social welfare. I raised this in Kerry County Council for many years. We had a promise from Deputy Joan Burton that if she got into office, which she did in 2011, she would sort out that anomaly. She did not. I am very thankful it has been done now. I see the Minister of State, Deputy Moran, is claiming credit for it.

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