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

I, too, cannot support this proposal on the following grounds. How can the Minister of State tell me it is prudent to put money into a rainy day fund on the day when our hard-working nurses the length and breadth of the country were standing outside their stations in a limited way because they wanted to continue to provide their services in hospitals? They did not want to be out on the picket lines but they had to be because the Minister of State, the five Ministers with responsibility for health and our Taoiseach did not give them what they want, which is fair play. That is all our nurses want.

In Kerry, we have been waiting for a community hospital to be built in Killarney. We are waiting for the beds in Kenmare Community Hospital to be opened and for additional beds and an upgrade to be provided for Cahirciveen Community Hospital. We are looking for beds to be opened in Dingle Community Hospital. It is unreal to ask a person in Dingle to have to go outside the Dingle Peninsula for respite care or to a hospital to convalesce after a hip or knee operation or some other serious surgical procedure. It is unreal and inhumane to tell them they cannot go to their own hospital where beds are empty. In many cases, offices are put in where beds should be located. Why in the name of Holy God should we talk about a rainy day fund when we are allowing that to happen? Why is it normal or natural that Deputies Danny Healy-Rae and Michael Collins and myself have to put people onto buses on a weekly basis and send them to the North of Ireland to have operations carried out, whether it be to do with tonsils, hips, knees or cataracts? We cannot provide that basic healthcare here. We are sending them up North on buses for those services and the Minister of State is talking about a rainy day fund.

Our farmers are not getting a fair deal at present. Many are under severe and unreal financial hardship. One hears people talking about bigger farmers. Bigger farmers mean bigger trouble. Small farmers means more trouble again because they do not have an income. They are trying to balance a very small budget, educate their families, ensure they have healthcare, and pay their loans, whether for farm buildings, the house they are living in or infrastructure they put on the farm. They are just trying to pay their bills. The Government is talking to them about putting money in a rainy day fund. Tell them that makes common sense.

The Government should talk to our fishermen. Myself and Deputy Ferris raised an issue here about spur dogfish. All fishermen want is a small change to be made. Deputy Michael Collins has been highlighting fishery issues. All we need are small changes to be made to improve the lot of our fishermen but what is the Government doing? It is cutting tonnage for the people who go out to sea. I know one group in particular and the tonnage for their boat has decreased from 134 tonnes to 26 tonnes. That is unviable and untenable. They cannot make a living.

With regard to infrastructure, myself and my brother, Deputy Danny Healy-Rae, adore Kerry County Council. It is probably the best county council in Ireland, and probably in the western world, but it needs more money for basic infrastructure. I want to highlight schemes in other parts of County Kerry for which we are waiting. In Castlecove, Caherdaniel and other parts of south and west Kerry we need basic infrastructure. We need extensions to existing sewerage schemes and sewerage schemes to be provided where they do not exist. Our excellent county council will spend that money very wisely once the Government provides it. We proved that point previously when we lobbied for local improvement schemes to be reinstated in our county and our country. They had stopped from 2011 to 2016 but they have started up again. We proved we can deliver them in our county. The roads are ready. All we want to do is spend the money, but we need more of it. There are hundreds of these roads. Contrary to what a previous Minister said on one occasion when he went down to Kerry and forget himself, namely, that the road up to a person's house is not all that important, the road up to a person's house is probably the most important road in the whole world to that person because wherever he or she goes, he or she has to go out that stretch of road every day. The more of those we can do in our county and in our country, the better for the people who are our bosses - the taxpayers, the people who pay for everything.

With regard to other road infrastructure we need in County Kerry, give us the rainy day fund and we will spend it every day of the week. It need not be raining because we have many projects and so much we need to do. As my brother outlined, we need an extension to the bypass in Killarney. We need additional car parking in places like Killarney town but to do all that we need money.

It is true that housing is a critical problem. I am very sorry to say, and I am not critical of Ministers, that when I see a wrong being done I want it to be put right. I have asked time and again for an incentive to be put in place with regard to all the vacant houses in our towns and across the countryside. A small incentive would allow people to do up those properties and bring them back onto the market. Is that being done? It is not being done in a meaningful way.

We need to build more local authority houses. We need to bring in a tenant purchase scheme that is real, not the current unreal one which debars 80% of the people who should be eligible to purchase their houses from purchasing them simply because they are not in full-time employment. At the same time, they might have enough of a retirement fund or income from some other source to allow them pay for the house in which they are living but they are being told "No". We waited seven years for a tenant purchase scheme to come in and when it did, the Government made a mess of it. It gave us something that was unworkable, untenable and unreal, which means that many people cannot buy their houses.

When it comes to other issues such as banking, I put on the record of the Dáil yesterday a report that was brought to my attention and to the attention of the Government last week. It was done by a respectable former detective Garda inspector and clearly outlines criminal activity that was perpetrated. The fall guys for that criminal activity were respectable managers of building societies, many of whom I know, who gave great service over the years.

They were shafted and they were the fall guys for the bad practice that was carried out.

I am asking the Minister of State to use this rainy day fund to try to put right an awful lot of the wrongs that we have in society at present. Being financially prudent is smart and we were all taught that we should save up a few bob for a rainy day but not when there are so many issues. If one is in a house and there is a hole in the roof and the water is falling in, one would not advocate continuing to put money away for a rainy day. If the rain is coming in, one will try to plug the hole in the roof and that is what we should do. As a Government and as a society we should put right the wrongs that are there at present. We should use this money now and not save it for some aspirational problem that will come in the future and for some Minister or Government to use it at their whim, perhaps for political advantage at that time. I ask the Government to please be sensible about money and forget about the rainy day fund because it is raining on the people of Ireland enough right now and they are our bosses.

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