Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to make a contribution on the budget. I will refer to some of the concluding remarks my colleague, Deputy Kelleher, made, particularly on Brexit and what might or might not be happening with regard to a possible deal between Britain and the European Union. We sincerely hope there will be a good deal and a good outcome to the negotiations. As I have had the opportunity to say in the House and in committees over the past number of years, a bad deal for Britain will result in a very bad deal for Ireland. I campaigned in Northern Ireland along with the SDLP, Justin McNulty, MLA for Armagh, and my colleagues, Deputy Breathnach and Senator Wilson. We canvassed in Newry and elsewhere prior to the Brexit referendum. At that time, I remember remarking to colleagues here that I had my concerns about whether the referendum would result in a "Leave" or "Remain" vote because people were voting on issues that were not relevant to the question that was being put to them in the referendum. They talked about immigration, hospital waiting lists, difficulties getting children into school and the cost of putting children through third-level education. All the issues of the day were merged into a vote to leave the European Union.

Earlier this evening, I had the opportunity to attend the launch of a book by Donnacha Ó Beacháin of Dublin City University, DCU. It is a very scholarly book entitledFrom Partition to Brexitin which he gives a great outline of Irish Government policy on Northern Ireland and the different developments over the years. The book was launched by the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern. All of the contributions by the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, the author, Mr. Ó Beacháin, and the president of DCU, Brian MacCraith, were very illuminating and referred to the great progress that has been made on the island since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement on 10 April 1998. It was very heartening to listen to the president of DCU and his colleagues from the law and government department speak about so many of their students as having no knowledge of the very dark period in our history. They were born after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement. It is very heartening to know that generation did not live through that troubled era. Hopefully, nobody on this island will live through such a troubled era in the future.

As a person who represents two Border counties, the Good Friday Agreement has been transformative. When the referendum took place and when the decision was made by the British electorate to leave the European Union, it really knocked the stuffing out of Border communities. It was a psychological blow to people like me who grew up in Border communities and saw the change. We did not go to play the underage team in our neighbouring parish in Fermanagh. That ended when the Troubles escalated. Unfortunately, the breakdown in normal living happened. In that era when we did not know our neighbours North of the Border a division occurred as a result of the blowing up of bridges and roads. The security apparatus and infrastructure that was put in place on both sides of the Border created very significant impediments to the movement of people, goods and services. Thankfully since 1998 we, particularly in the Border area but also the entire island and Britain, live in a transformed society. None of us has sufficiently registered in our minds the transformation for the better that occurred until Brexit happened and then we started to realise where we had come from in April 1998 and that thankfully we were living in a new era. It is in that context that I hope there is a satisfactory agreement between the British Government and European Union.

If there is not, our country will suffer greatly.

In my early days in the Oireachtas, working with the late Tánaiste and former Minister, John Wilson, prior to my election to the House, much of my time as a constituency representative was spent dealing with problems on the Border. People who may have had a farm north of the Border, who may have had a child attending a special school in Enniskillen or who may have travelled to bring a family member to a job in Fermanagh, Tyrone or whatever, were hindered while going about their daily business. Every weekend, on Sunday nights and Monday mornings, I could be certain I would receive endless phone calls from people returning to college in Dublin on the express buses, which were held up at the Border by the British Army or the Royal Ulster Constabulary and detained without any reason, leading to people missing appointments or being severely delayed. That irritation with which the Border communities lived was not normal. Thankfully, the signing of the Good Friday Agreement eliminated it from our thinking and psychology, but we sincerely hope that in whatever arrangements are arrived at between the European Union and the British Government there will be no border of any sort on our island. We in the Border community want to continue living in the way we do today. We do not want borders of any type reimposed on our country. That is the way it must be.

Similarly, from an economic and social point of view, the Good Friday Agreement was transformative. So much business and commerce has developed because of the new environment and milieu that were created as a result. The Minister of State will understand because some of the enterprises, such as the food processing companies and the daily co-operatives, serviced his county, and were either Cavan or Monaghan based but are all-Ireland companies today. Lakeland Dairies, for example, has three processing plants in our State and two in Northern Ireland, while LacPatrick, the former Town of Monaghan Co-Op, which will soon merge with Lakeland Dairies, has two processing plants in the North and one in the South. Those companies are all-Ireland companies and the raw material flows freely between North and South, depending on the need for it. Fortunately, that business and commerce has flourished because of the environment in which we lived, but it grew not because of people talking political ideology or waving flags of different colours. Rather, it happened because the political system created the environment for it to grow, benefiting all of us living on this island. I might harp on about it too much, but where I grew up and live, and to the people I represent, Brexit is an issue that concerns us every waking moment.

I have raised with the Minister of State on quite a number of occasions the issue of housing, to which my colleague Deputy Kelleher also referred. The Minister of State may recall that in oral questions I raised the totally unsatisfactory income eligibility limits that apply in regard to social housing. The Cavan-Monaghan area is in the worst possible zone and has the lowest level of income eligibility. On a number of occasions in the House, I cited to the Minister of State people on extremely low incomes who cannot be considered for social housing because their incomes are considered too high. I provided the instance of a one-parent family with the mother rearing three children, two of whom are in primary school and one of whom is in secondary school, while working in a poorly paid factory job for four days a week. She is in receipt of family income supplement but she was denied the opportunity to apply for social housing.

While I know the Minister of State understands the matter, it has not got through to the Minister, the Department, the Housing Agency or whatever that those eligibility limits need to be changed. How can we justify a person getting family income supplement while being unable to be considered for a council house? It defies logic. This evening I spoke to three families on low incomes who cannot get on the council housing list. They do not have a chance in the wide earthly world of getting a mortgage from a financial institution. The review that we discussed, therefore, is extremely important. At the end of May or June, I appealed to the Minister of State in the House to try to complete the review before the middle of July. Unfortunately, that has not happened. The Minister of State will know that people are paying high rents and they do not have a chance of putting a decent deposit together. At the same time, these people are on low incomes and they cannot even be considered for council housing. The people I am talking about want to do a day's work. They are in low-paid jobs but they are going about their daily work, in which they have pride. We cannot allow those people to be condemned to renting a home forever. It is not fair or acceptable. The Minister of State knows the profile of a county like mine or Monaghan, similar to parts of the west or the north of his county, and I appeal to him to try to get the Department moving on this issue.

To return to the local authority house loans, the deposit requirement is much too high. We know there are exorbitant rents in the private sector and a large proportion of people's income is spent on rent, often for inadequate accommodation. They have no chance of putting together the necessary deposit to buy a house. I appeal to the Government to reduce the deposit requirement in respect of local authority loans. I am sure the Ceann Comhairle would agree that in our early days in politics the local authority loan was critical to people getting home ownership. In the past 15 years or so, it has not had the importance it used to have. Week in, week out, in my early days in politics, we assisted and gave some guidance to people in State and non-State jobs whose only hope of getting a home was through a local authority loan. At that time, there were considerable levels of approval in every local authority for people being able to secure a home through sourcing local authority house loans.

In regard to the health sector, if we take as an example my and the Minister of State's region of Louth, Meath, Monaghan and Cavan, there are difficulties for people accessing orthopaedic assessments and follow-up treatment. I remember there were significant difficulties for us years ago but the National Treatment Purchase Fund dramatically reduced the number of people waiting for orthopaedic procedures, such as hip or knee operations. The number of people on waiting lists, however, has risen greatly. So many people in my constituency avail of the cross-Border directive and travel to hospital and clinic facilities in Northern Ireland to have orthopaedic procedures carried out.

I quite regularly read The Irish News, the Belfast newspaper, in which I saw an advertisement from the private hospital sector here looking for patients from Northern Ireland to come to its orthopaedic units in Dublin. A friend of mine, who works less than five minutes from where we are, told me he went through the cross-Border directive to have an assessment for an orthopaedic procedure at a clinic in Belfast. He told me he had spent some hours in the clinic, having scans done and waiting for the results, but he did not meet one person from Northern Ireland.

Everyone he met in the clinic that day was from the South, our State, from as far south as Waterford but also from Munster, Leinster and the Border counties of Ulster in particular.

We have spare capacity in our hospital system and we have private hospitals, with the private hospital sector advertising that it has the capacity to provide orthopaedic procedures for people from Northern Ireland if those people avail of the cross-Border directive. Surely it is within the capacity of the Department of Health and the HSE to ensure that capacity is used for the patients who are local to it and are within our own State. It is farcical that we make people seek these procedures under the cross-Border directive, many miles distant from their homes in the depths of Munster and elsewhere in the State.

On home care packages, it is ludicrous that so many people remain in hospital beds because the home supports are not put in place to enable the discharge of these patients and the freeing up of their hospital beds. It is not consistent throughout the country. In Cavan-Monaghan there are long waiting lists. There are patients who were approved for home support but there is a major time lag between approval and receiving the service, which is not acceptable. There are people in hospital beds who have no family support at home and cannot be discharged because of the lack of home support. Surely that can be addressed. It is not a cost burden on the State, but would be a saving. I appeal to the Minister of State to bring that back to his colleagues in Government.

On infrastructure, I have repeatedly highlighted that in light of the particular challenges that face communities across Cavan-Monaghan and elsewhere in the Border region, we need the best possible investment in our road infrastructure. We do not have railways. Our economy in Cavan-Monaghan is very heavily dependent on three particular sectors, namely, agrifood, construction products and engineering. It is widely accepted through business and studies that those three areas will be most adversely affected by Brexit because these are the three sectors that are most dependent on Northern Ireland and Britain for their export market. By their nature, those products are bulky. They are moved by heavy goods vehicles and we have a road infrastructure that is not adequate to minimise transport costs for business. I have continued to raise with the Minister for Transport the need for the east-west route, from Sligo, through Enniskillen, Cootehill in Cavan, Carrickmacross and on to Dundalk, to be upgraded. It goes right through the central Border region. Some parts have been constructed and upgraded through the building of the Cavan bypass, both stages 1 and 2, the Belturbet bypass and also the Carrickmacross bypass, but we have asked that the other sections of that route would be identified for upgrading because of its central Border location and the fact that, thankfully, we have substantial business and commerce located along that route. We need those roads to be upgraded.

I know that, in the Brexit negotiations and their outcome, there will be many issues over which the Government does have full control and on which we will depend on Europe for assistance. One area in which the Government is in complete control is deciding on infrastructure investment in our own State. I appeal to the Government that the infrastructural needs of the Border region be given priority because of the challenges we face, the nature of the terrain, and the nature of the business and commerce in the region. We need decent roads to transport goods to and from that region to try to minimise the cost.

I can well remember the case of a road that was as significant to the Minister of State's county as mine. When the M3 motorway was being considered for construction, time was lost because of objectors and objections. At the time, Glanbia in Virginia undertook a study of the time lost and the cost to the company from its collection and delivery lorries using the old N3. I was a member of Government at the time. I attended a presentation to the then joint committee on transport and I made the argument about the costs with which the likes of Glanbia were being hit because of an inadequate road infrastructure in the region.

To assist the business and commerce of the Border region, which will face particular challenges, I appeal to the Government to give priority to items such as the east-west route from Sligo to Enniskillen to Cootehill and Shercock in Cavan to Carrickmacross and on to Dundalk, which is particularly important for that part of south Ulster. I appeal to the Minister of State to bring that message back to his Government colleagues.

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