Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This Bill is what one might describe as virtue-signalling. In other words the Minister for Finance and the Department of Finance want to send out a message that times have changed and that we hope not to go back the time of the bank guarantee when all the parties in the House, with the exception of the Labour Party, voted for this guarantee. It was probably one of the biggest mistakes ever made in the country's history. The Government is saying that with a fund of €2 billion up front, and €500,000 a year, our economy is more structurally sound than it might otherwise appear to be. As a strategic tactic, I can understand why the Minister for Finance might want to send out virtue signals. However, I find it very difficult to understand how a Minister for Finance, who presided over a budget on budget day, which bore almost no comparison to what he brought to this House as his forecast and outline of his budgetary position at the time of the summer economic statement and other statements, can attempt to lecture anyone and how he suddenly found, miraculously, another half €500,00 down the back of the sofa to give to the Department of Health in the actual budget.

The Minister also discovered in recent times that the overrun in the cost of the children's hospital, which is a much-needed project, is of a scale the country has never experienced before. Can the Minister for Finance and the economic managers in this Government give us an explanation or account of their management as to how so much money has gone astray in just one area? They have been completely silent. They are now saying to us that this particular Bill is part of the fix of the economic difficulties we may face in the future. I do not believe that and I know some of the people in government and in the Department of Finance are probably far too intelligent to believe that either.

Strategically, virtue-signalling, by saying that a country is potentially more robust than it might otherwise be, may have its values. Bear in mind, however, that as a country we now have, when one takes into account our gross debt minus the other holdings we have, somewhere below 60%. That is the real situation and is the EU target. It may not be recognised or presented in this way, but that is what the figures show. It would be far better if we had a real conversation on where we really stand because we are now entering the scariest, riskiest point in our country's financial history as we approach the UK's decisions on Brexit.

I see this evening that an amendment on a customs union proposed by the British Labour Party has been defeated in the House of Commons by 327 votes to 296. At this point, I do not know what the fate will be of the other votes which are taking place later tonight.

The Minister's own commentary today confirms that we are at a very dangerous point. The Minister and the Taoiseach indicated that two significant stand-out risks are that overall a difficult Brexit will lower growth by in the region of four points and we can anticipate an increase in unemployment of two points over a period of time. These are not minor but are serious indicators. A proportion of those people who are now back at work face a serious risk of unemployment and families, individuals, towns and the whole country may again experience distress and hardship.

We have the largest cloud hanging over the economy since the bank guarantee, NAMA, the collapse of the banks and the working out of that. I was part of the Government that had to take up the reins of a mess when Fianna Fáil walked off the pitch and left Government Buildings practically in darkness. We had to pick up the pieces. In particular after 2013, year after year, as Minister for Social Protection, I had to see money from the savings made in social protection by getting people back to work go to the Department of Health to try to stabilise its position. Instead of Department of Health now being managed by the Government, which is challenging, the figures coming out of that Department are now worse than they have ever been. For many people, unfortunately, the experience of the health service is nothing like it should be in a country as rich as this one. Not only that but we are now facing a really difficult and dangerous strike by nurses who are looking to have their legitimate pay issues addressed in a competent manner by this Government which should be responsible for managing economic events.

Instead, we are going to have a buffer in place of €2 billion from the Strategic Investment Fund, followed by €500,000 a year. As has been said by many other speakers, we have absolutely no idea at what point it may be used, except that all the indications are that it is there as a kind of backstop to limit the impact of another financial, banking or fiscal crisis which is part of a European framework.

There are certain issues that are giving rise to populism and are a danger to European democracies. In this country, we have an acute housing crisis that is up-ending all the previous assumptions among young people, who have are in employment and are educated, that they should be able to afford to rent accommodation at a reasonable cost - for example, less than 25% of their income, although many countries would say 15% of their income. They should be able to aspire to eventually purchase or build their own home as their parents and grandparents were. We have allowed that particular expectation and assumption to be up-ended.

I recall the Minister quoting Yeats in his last budget speech, saying the centre must hold as opposed to saying the centre cannot hold. On housing, the Minister should know should know the centre is not holding. There is distress among so many citizens that there are so many homeless people. Instead of that problem being tackled, it is actually getting worse.

How does one undermine an economy and a democracy? One does that with catastrophic events like the bank guarantee and what happened afterwards. One does that also by consistently undermining people's reasonable expectation that with education, hard work, diligence and application, they should be able to rent at a reasonable price and, at an appropriate time, be able to access a very secure long-term tenancy or to purchase or build a house.

The Minister may be seeking to shore up the Irish economy and to build people's confidence in this country that we can come through what may be a very difficult time with Brexit. It is an event nobody in any part of this House favours, other than perhaps those from Solidarity-People Before Profit, who have said they are Lexiteers and are in favour of a left-wing exit of some kind from the EU. However, I am not aware that others support Ireland quitting the EU.

What we have is a situation where we are debating this very modest Bill to virtue signal in respect of €8 billion over a number of years. We would be far better in economic strategy terms to utilise the funds we have available in a careful way, given we have to be careful with money, to address the key crises that could undermine democracy in this country. We have not really had a discussion on how exactly we are going to respond to Brexit, and we cannot have that discussion given we do not yet know the outcome. What we were told by the Taoiseach today is that we are not going to see the actual details of the Brexit legislation until some time towards the end of February, and the assumption is that it probably has to be passed before 25 March.

If ever there was a time when a Government has managed to put a whole load of carts before the horse, this Bill is one example. If we have a very difficult Brexit, we will need to be able to have command of our financial resources and manage our debt situation in such a way that we can best maintain all the features of Irish Government expenditure that we wish to see maintained. That includes current expenditure in terms of all necessary areas, such as education, health, social welfare. We know what happened when the economy went into crisis. I can remember the report called An Bord Snip and all the things that were to be cut or eliminated. Let us remember that once countries have signed up to these events, it is not possible to call them back. At this point, I find the idea that the Government would spend time on this legislation genuinely extraordinary. The Government should be putting its best and brightest brains to addressing the significant issues we have, particularly in the area of capital investment in housing and the investment we require in education.

We also need to take into account that there are expectations, to put it mildly, in terms of what is going to happen broadly on tax policy and tax structure in Europe. We know already that quite a number of European countries are moving to digital taxation, particularly in regard to the very big IT and social media companies, because they are generating no tax revenue from all the spending their citizens are doing in these areas. It is perfectly understandable that this is happening yet the Minister, even in the clean, cool air of Davos, could not acknowledge that Ireland has a problem in regard to how it deals with corporation tax and how it is not sustainable in the long term that social media companies and other companies would not contribute a fair share of corporate taxation to the different countries they operate in.

This flies in the face of what is happening tonight in the UK Parliament in that we are potentially moving to a very difficult Brexit, if not a disastrous Brexit. In the context of the Belfast Agreement, there is pretty much unanimity that we do not want a hard border in Ireland but I do not think this Bill is going to do anything to help any of that. The Government is probably doing this on foot of Fianna Fáil's original plans around this legislation, which were basically to get Fianna Fáil in a position where it could begin to restore its reputation for fiscal rectitude, having wrecked the economy through the bank guarantee. The Government's decision to go with this Bill is not appropriate at this time and it will not lead to a good use of funds on behalf of the people of Ireland. The need to invest in housing is pretty much the elemental crisis this Government is facing yet is failing to manage. As I said, despite the overruns on the children's hospital, which amount at this point to several multiples of the potential annual transfers to this fund, the Government seems incapable of being able to manage that.

One of the first decisions the Government made was to abolish the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. I do not believe it was loved by very many people but it was an oversight body which was meant to look at and query the spending of funds by different Government agencies and Departments. We are now back to the good old days in that it is rolled into the Department of Finance, so it is very difficult now to even ask the Minister for Finance and Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform for a specific answer on a question around what has been happening to the children's hospital and the massive budget overrun. He just passes that off, as the Minister for Finance, to the Department of Health and it, months later, sends a blah-de-blah reply with no actual detail on the information that, if there was proper accountability, it should be able to identify and answer for.

It is regrettable that the Government should decide to roll along with this at this point in time. We would be far better served by having a detailed discussion on the likely impact on businesses of a difficult Brexit. Let us consider the position of people running a small business which is importing and exporting to and from the UK. They will have to meet the costs of, for example, customs clearance if there is a hard Brexit. We know that in regard to our imports of food from the UK there is likely to be what has not been seen in the Irish economy for ten years, which is a significant increase in inflation. We are doing this against a backdrop where, in the context of the nurses strike, the Government is unprepared to discuss and establish a pay discussion forum for public service employees. Public servants took a lot of cuts and experienced a lot of difficulties, and while there has been a process of restoration, many people have not got much, if anything, in the way of an increase.

We are facing some very difficult times. This Bill is a distraction and, as I said, it is virtue signalling in the hope that somebody in Bloomberg or some place like that will pick it up and say, "This is very good, Ireland is putting away a few bob for the rainy day." We know what they say about bankers and a rainy day.

They say when it is a rainy day, the bankers will take the umbrellas away, but when the sun is shining, the bankers will be out with the umbrellas. To be honest, this is a kind of rather strange economic interlude but it is a distraction from the real issues that face us, namely, the difficulties around Brexit that we should be here tonight discussing.

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