Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I commend the Chairman and members of the finance committee, as well as the staff who supported them in producing this important report.

Unfortunately, PPPs play a significant role in the construction of health facilities. This is despite the fact that serious and grave concerns exist about them, some of which are outlined and highlighted in the report. There are a significant number of primary care centres around the State, built using the PPP model. I can always tell which ones were built this way because they are the ones with no GPs or staff. Last year, I tabled parliamentary questions on the number of primary care centres under construction. The reply was interesting. Of the 32 primary care centres then under construction, 13 were being built using PPPs.

I am sure the Minister of State will say that people do not care who builds the primary care centre, they only want to ensure that it is built. My response to that, however, is that a building is no use if there is no one in it. Several primary care centres which were built using the PPP model are completely devoid of staff. It is pointless to have a building where a GP cannot afford the rent or where there is not a full complement of staff. We need to ensure that our primary care centres belong to the State and can be staffed with directly employed GPs and with rent and other bills covered by the HSE or that they can be offered to a self-employed GP at a rent charged at a fair and affordable rate.

I also wish to make a broader point. Over decades, the failures of privatisation and PPPs became clear and those who promoted them were exposed as they offered false promises. In most cases PPPs are an expensive and inefficient way of financing infrastructure and services since they conceal public borrowing while providing long-term State guarantees for profits to private companies.

Earlier, the Minister of State stated that the committee "made a number of recommendations to review and promote the Construction Contracts Act 2013 and potentially implement alternative protections for subcontractors". I have a particular interest in this area and I urge that in any review he would include protections for workers. The best protection for any worker, of course, is to join a union, however these companies very often do not recognise trade unions. PPPs are effectively State-sponsored privatisation. In many instances they do not honour or acknowledge the third-party machinery of the State or the minimum rates for the job in the relevant sector and ride roughshod over workers' rights. I have seen a PPP in action in a school where I represented workers. It was a design, build and operate contract. They came in and the workers, who had been State employees, were essentially offered an ultimatum that they could switch to become employed by the contractor, and were offered a contract to work in the school once built. There was no union recognition, however, and I do not believe that the State should do business with people who do not recognise trade unions or third-party industrial relations machinery. One cannot rely on the goodwill of employers. Generations of my family would have been out of a job if one could rely on the generosity of employers; one cannot rely on employers' good nature. We must ensure that wherever and however the State spends money and whatever contracts are entered into, workers' rights are protected and are put front and centre.

PPPs originated as an accounting trick as a way around governments' own constraints on public borrowing. This remains the overwhelming attraction for governments and international institutions. A state with the financial clout of this State and the capacity to raise finance of its own should not be forced to engage in PPPs. They are not a solution and merely hoodwink us that they work well. They have been proven time and again not to deliver for those who need them most. There is a better way, which delivers the best interest of the State and the people, namely, direct State investment. That applies to the health service, the education sector and across the public service.

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