Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle.

During the past three and half years, the Brexit process in Britain has degenerated into a shambles. This has been driven by the machinations of the hardline Brexiteers who are increasingly unconcerned with the damage they have inflicted and will continue to inflict on their own country and on the rest of Europe. During the referendum, it was already abundantly clear that their opposition to Europe far outstripped any concern which they had for Northern Ireland. These ideologues dismissed John Major and Tony Blair when they went to Derry to point to the likely damage to communities still struggling to get over a violent conflict foisted on the people by illegitimate forces. In fact the Tory Secretary of State at the time went as far as to claim that everything would be fine and that there would be no issues with trade or customs or indeed anything at all. A governing group, distinguished by their disregard for facts and a history of being able to walk away from the consequences of their failures, is simply carrying on regardless. Brexit has marked an unprecedented and far from finished radicalisation of British governance. With this has come the reality of damage to others and a threat of much more to come.

For Ireland, Brexit represents an historic threat to hard-won economic, social, political and cultural progress. The reality is that Ireland cannot get through Brexit by carrying on with politics as usual. This is the unmistakable and fundamental background to both the overall parameters for this budget and the fact that this Government has not yet been replaced.

To get through Brexit, Ireland needs to be focused on meeting the most urgent challenges. We need to be present in key discussions, to speak with a clear voice, to help businesses and communities and to respond quickly to close gaps in legislation. None of this would be possible without a functioning Parliament and Government.

In this debate we have already heard entirely predictable and repetitive attacks on Fianna Fáil for the fact that we have enabled the introduction of this budget. However, the clear evidence is more and more obvious every day. Our decision to postpone the holding of an election because of Brexit uncertainty was the correct one. This time last year we looked at the impending Brexit deadlines and the obvious lack of a majority in the House of Commons for a reasonable withdrawal agreement. As we said then, the growing instability in London was a direct threat to Ireland and, far more importantly, by every available indicator Ireland was completely unready for Brexit. Consequently, despite the goading of other parties, including absurd speeches from Fine Gael Ministers about having printers oiled and the manifesto ready, we took our unilateral decision to guarantee parliamentary and governing stability for Ireland through this year. Bizarrely, there are people in this House who continue to claim that we should have pulled everything down, leaving Ireland with a weakened position and no way of expressing the national unity which exists on a key issue.

Sinn Féin, Ireland's most consistently anti-European Union party, has been the loudest of these voices, both throughout the year and in this debate. That party's lack of basic self-awareness is not new, but it is becoming even more extreme than it was in the past. Their decision to collapse the political institutions of Northern Ireland over a heating scheme nearly three years ago is almost on the level of the Tory European Research Group's work in terms of the damage it has caused to Ireland. A functioning Assembly would have long since asserted the will of the majority to support permanent special arrangements for Northern Ireland and at a stroke, much of the bluster about democratic legitimacy would have been destroyed. Northern Ireland's schools and hospitals would also have been protected from crude across-the-board cuts imposed by civil servants with no democratic mandate. Sinn Féin decided that Northern Ireland did not need a voice during critical phases of this Brexit mess and thank God it was not in their power to inflict the same damage in Dublin.

We have also been attacked in this debate by the far left for not pulling down the Government and Dáil. I can only congratulate the People Before Profit Deputies for the sheer creativity of their position. Having campaigned in favour of Brexit in Northern Ireland, they have since then loudly demanded that we stop any damage of Brexit on this island.

We stand by our decision as the right one for our country. It is because of this decision that the essential Brexit mitigation measures implemented in recent months have been able to proceed and the new measures announced yesterday have been prepared.

Even the Government's most sycophantic backbenchers have to admit that Ireland was manifestly not ready for Brexit in March, when we came within days of a chaotic Brexit happening. Less than 5% of key Brexit funding had been allocated, staff were not in place and critical facilities were not ready. Since then, vital information and training has been provided and there has been a significant increase in funding.

The House must also understand that Brexit has been hitting key communities and sectors for three years already. The Government's own Brexit research in 2017 and 2018 showed that the biggest hit would come not from restrictions on trade but from sterling devaluation and volatility. The massive devaluation since 2016 has inflicted real pain on smaller businesses, farmers and the agrifood sector. Added to this is the prospect of long-term volatility, something which undermines the ability to develop stability in trading relations. Ireland remains far behind certain other countries in key Brexit preparations and there has been zero information available about important facilities and procedures. The mitigation measures contained in this budget should have been in place long before now. I would remind the Government that its stated policy last year was that there would be no need for additional budgetary measures to cope with a no-deal Brexit in March. Thankfully it is finally taking action.

This said, there are critical Brexit challenges that have not yet been addressed. Many of the investment measures announced repeatedly in the past three years have not been implemented properly, with unreasonable restrictions and delays a common feature. Farmers have spent most of this year listening to Ministers claim that help is on the way but it has not come yet. The core challenge of diversifying markets and products has not received the scale or urgency of attention it needs. This budget has been constrained by two overall forces; by the challenge of Brexit and by the limited room for action left by Government policies characterised by escalating costs and a failure to implement urgent policy.

The Minister was correct when he said yesterday that the scope for significant action is limited. The Fine Gael policy of making big announcements but loading the financing into future years was always going to mean that there was little space in this year's budget. When one adds major overspending and uncertain revenues it was clear from some time ago that the threat of a chaotic Brexit had to take precedence.

We should all realise, however, that this budget is based on very unsure foundations in several areas. It is in no way clear that the Government's spending figures are reliable. So far, the Government has racked-up €6.3 billion in unanticipated spending. In recent months, weeks and even days there have been very significant changes in the figures provided to us about the likely outturn of spending this year and the figures for maintaining existing services next year. It is also not clear whether this Government's projected revenue figures are correct. In recent years the Government has repeatedly failed to anticipate or explain the origins of revenue buoyancy, but of course this has not stopped the Taoiseach from trying to claim credit for it. The publication of a new study of corporation tax revenue is welcome. It does not, however, address the fact that revenue and spending projections on budget day have, for many reasons and including the actions of Ministers, been inaccurate in recent years.

The final reason for uncertainty in relation to this budget's figures is that many of the underlying projections for the short-term impact of Brexit are little more than educated guesses. It may well be that we have a sudden and dramatic fall in trade and economic sentiment. Equally, it may be that it takes time before the impact of Brexit is felt. If one reads the different independent assessments of Brexit's impact the one consensus is that its principal impact will be medium to long term and it will have a significant negative impact on Ireland's growth. Having tried for much of 2018 to cause a Brexit election the Taoiseach has announced that he wants to campaign with the claim that he got Ireland "through" Brexit. This ignores the reality that Ireland will be nowhere near through Brexit anytime soon.

Given the lack of resources due to the need to fund announcements made in previous years and due to overspending by Ministers, the allocation for Brexit is limited and is certainly nowhere near meeting the scale of the projected impact of Brexit. The entire budget for mitigating the impact of Brexit is only a fraction of the economic hit predicted by the Minister yesterday. With regard to gross national product, the Minister said that a chaotic Brexit will push Ireland from 3.1% growth down to a 0.1% contraction. This is more than €6 billion and will rise every year from next year onwards. It is very clear that the €1 billion Brexit funding, which is overwhelmingly a once-off and mostly a reannouncement of established plans, will not be the reason Ireland gets through Brexit.

In the coming weeks we will be pushing for much greater urgency in the actual implementation of Brexit supports. Over the past three years there have been literally hundreds of occasions where Ministers have announced and re-announced the same funding. Ministers seem to believe that a problem is solved by breaking out the Government's new branding and sending up a drone to film a video of the Cliffs of Moher. Every indication now is that at some point in the coming months, and perhaps even in three weeks' time, we will be faced with the full reality of a destructive Tory Brexit. We dodged a bullet in March and its long past time that the chronic delivery deficit on Brexit schemes was tackled.

Deputies will remember the six months during last year when the nation was subjected to a near permanent campaign concerning the national development plan. Ministers and backbenchers toured the country announcing projects that in nearly all cases would not begin in any meaningful way for nearly a decade. Since then the reality has dawned on how much of a sham that marketing campaign was and just how unreliable the specific promises on projects. When massive overspending was exposed the Government informed the Dáil that nothing would be cut or delayed. Billions more euro would be spent but this would have no impact. In recent days it has emerged that many projects are in fact being "re-profiled" which is a new word for "delayed". We need a bit more honesty from the Government and the publication of a full and updated list of the projects that will be funded by this Government, not those that may be given the go-ahead by a Government in six or ten years' time.

The specific measures Fianna Fáil has been able to secure in this and previous budgets have been limited, but there have been important measures that took the edges off Fine Gael's regressive instincts. During the last Government every budget was regressive due to the dominance of Fine Gael's preferences. The unfairness of those budgets was reflected in increasing inequality, neglect of social housing and socially damaging policies in education. Fine Gael capped this off with campaigning in he last general election with the most regressive tax platform ever proposed for an election. Under the confidence and supply arrangement, which underpinned recent budgets, a decisive shift in favour of social supports and public services was secured. The Taoiseach gets particularly annoyed when this is mentioned. He regularly goes out of his way to deny the idea that Fine Gael has implemented anything because it was forced to. Perhaps the Taoiseach should reflect on one comment made on the night of the budget in 2016 concerning the move away from regressive incomes policies. A senior commentator, known for his close connection with the media, addressed a press conference after five Fine Gael budgets and stated, "for the first time in many years we have a fair Budget". Those were the words of one Deputy Leo Varadkar. In recent months the Taoiseach stated in public that this budget would include a number of specific provisions that have not subsequently been announced. These include cuts in the higher rate of tax and changes to the help to buy scheme. It was the Taoiseach's preference that less funding be allocated to public services and he wanted to begin a down payment on his massive and regressive tax cut promise. Our demand was for a more progressive approach and we stand by this.

The differences in the approaches of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe and the Taoiseach have been hard to miss. Since May the Taoiseach has become a born-again advocate for action on climate change, though of course the proposed action comes nowhere near the rhetoric. In fairness it is hard not admire the sheer neck involved in solemnly announcing to the nations of the world that Ireland will stop drilling for oil without mentioning that we have failed to find any after nearly fifty years' of trying. Fianna Fáil welcomes the Taoiseach's conversion to action on climate change. We are not prepared, however, to accept the Fine Gael claim that he is leading on this topic. The fact is that Ireland's laggard status is significantly linked to the decision of Fine Gael in 2012, in which EU Commissioner Phil Hogan was a leading charge, to abandon the climate action legislation proposed by the Green Party and Fianna Fáil. The Taoiseach and his colleagues said then that the plan was too ambitious. Their preferred approach was to do nothing. Seven years later when the Government has finally come around to proposing a plan I think we have every right to question the strength of the commitment behind it.

In our negotiations on this Budget the establishment of a just transition fund was a core priority, as was the principle of ring fencing the fund. The House will remember that earlier this year the Taoiseach announced his preference to distribute the carbon tax receipts through general payments. The Taoiseach said, in the House, that he wanted to give the tax back in an individual dividend to every household. I watched the RTÉ news last night and I admire the Taoiseach's brass neck in almost claiming that it was he who had decided to ring-fence the fund, which was completely not the case. In the all-party committee and in the budget negotiations Fianna Fáil opposed the Taoiseach's approach and insisted on a ring-fenced fund that would address the reality that to achieve critical reductions the communities reliant on traditional technology methods have to be helped to have a secure future and to transition to a low-carbon economy. Ring fencing was a core part of Fianna Fáil's policy on that committee, along with other parties.

Deputy Cowen's work on this matter has been ongoing for some time. The fund announced yesterday substantially reflected the proposals that he made on our behalf. It is important that carbon taxes be focused on more than disincentivising consumption. We must be more ambitious and responsive in helping industries and communities to transition and we must develop a connectedness between the revenue raised from the tax and initiatives dealing with climate change on the ground and in communities.

The just transition fund will help hundreds of families in economically hard-pressed communities. In order to prevent the cynical politicisation of grant making, which has become a hallmark of the Government in the past three years, we have insisted that an independent chairperson be appointed. We have also received assurances that the fund will not be used to support yet more Government marketing launches and that Ministers will not be involved in allocations. We hope that this model will not only work for the communities involved but will be capable of being expanded in future to provide tangible and non-political proof to the public that a socially just transition to a low-carbon economy is possible.

I find the approach of Sinn Féin and the rest of the hard left in opposing the carbon proposals to be remarkable. Their position is that they are in favour of using tax to alter most types of behaviour except environmental damage. They are more focused on trying to find a reason to don yellow jackets and march to the barricades. The carbon proposals are reasonable and proportionate and will enable concrete steps to protect jobs and the environment. This is only one part of a much-needed and more urgent agenda, but it is an important part nonetheless.

The housing emergency that Fine Gael has presided over is having a deep and damaging impact on society. Indeed, it is changing basic expectations that have long defined how Irish people see themselves. For the first time in our history, home ownership has fallen below the EU average. The age at which people can buy any form of home is rising steadily. The dream of living in one's home community is becoming unattainable for large parts of our society. Most scandalously, five years after the Government admitted that there were issues in housing, there are 10,700 people homeless, with 70 children becoming homeless for the first time last month alone.

The Government's response to this has been a mixture of ignoring the problems, failing to deliver on commitments and blaming others for everything. Last weekend, the Taoiseach delivered a speech to his party that showed that, when it came to housing, he was living in another world to most Irish people. He claimed that Fine Gael had had nothing to do with housing until the last few years, that the problems were historical and, most remarkably, that everything now was going great. Clearly, the Taoiseach hopes that no one bothers to look at the facts. The record shows that it was Fine Gael Ministers who decided to implement savage cuts to social housing in 2012 and abolished the affordable housing scheme. In the confidence and supply negotiations, they were forced to increase spending on social housing and to reintroduce a meaningful affordable housing scheme. Many of the additional measures are now having an impact, but the chronic delivery deficit in housing means that we are nowhere near turning the corner on the housing emergency. The policy of hoping that the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, putting on hard hats and having their photos taken will sort out the housing emergency has comprehensively failed.

No area has caused as many problems in this budget as health. It became increasingly clear in recent weeks that the Government had little understanding of what was going on and was focused on trying to get through to the election rather than having any real impact. I believe that the Government has given up on health. The Minister, Deputy Harris, has become renowned for the fact that he is available to have his picture taken at any event so long as he is not asked about the funding or operation of the core health service.

A deeply cynical strategy has developed of trying to present health budgeting as an endemic problem that has been with us forever. This is not true. A detailed study of health budgets by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, showed that the HSE took over from the failing health board financial management approach and succeeded in delivering a string of annual budgets without unanticipated supplementaries. Before Fine Gael got its hands on it, the health sector was delivering its plans on budget. Since then, a series of dramatic overspends have been announced. What changed was what the former chief executive of the HSE has termed "administrative vandalism" by Senator Reilly and the Taoiseach, former health Ministers. They removed the HSE board and took its financial oversight role into their own offices. Every year when the HSE produced its service plan, the then Ministers and their Government colleagues demanded that services be promised without providing the estimated costs. As the IFAC has said, the failure in budgeting has come from the very top. In this light, the decision of the Minister for Finance yesterday to highlight the re-establishment of the HSE board as critical to better budgeting was a remarkable cap on eight years of damage to health planning and service delivery by Fine Gael Ministers.

It is important to note that the figure announced for health yesterday does not match estimates for maintaining existing levels of service next year even though the Minister claimed that services would be maintained. It appears that, yet again, the health sector is being denied the opportunity to plan services based on an open and transparent budget. I predict that the situation will be very serious for our health services in 2020.

The opposite forces are at play in the near systematic refusal of the Government to implement urgently needed mental health services. Each year, we have insisted on the inclusion of mental health funding in the budget. Each year, the Minister for Health has failed to spend the money. This year, an incredible €25 million out of an allocation of €55 million has not been spent. There is no other area where there is such complete agreement about the need for extra services and the nature of the services that should be expanded, yet the Minister continues to use mental health funding to balance out his overall spending. This is a scandal and one for which the Government will be held to account. The same applies to the failure to employ therapists, including physiotherapists, speech and language therapists and occupational therapists, which were budgeted for last year and provided for under the confidence and supply agreement, but the Government breached the agreement and reneged on its implementation.

The abolition of the National Treatment Purchase Fund by Fine Gael is another example of its failed health policies. In the face of strong opposition from the Taoiseach, who was then the Minister, we secured its re-establishment and now its further expansion under the confidence and supply agreement. It is remarkable that, at a time of record waiting lists, the only positive initiative in helping people to get assessed and treated is one that was forced on the Government.

The expansion of home help hours by 1 million is an important move that we are pleased to have secured and that we will be closely monitoring.

In education, the budget marks no overall change, reflective of the approach of a Government that refuses to have an overall strategy and neglects key sectors. Provision for demographic changes in our schools is little more than the Government fulfilling its constitutional duties. There is no sense of a vision for the future of our schools.

Fianna Fáil will always be proud of the fact that we provided the first ever comprehensive recognition of special educational needs in our schools and began a dramatic development in critical support services. In recent years, there have again had to be many campaigns to gain access to these services for children in all parts of the country. The expansion of special needs supports announced yesterday was a core priority for us and was a welcome, though not yet sufficient, step forward.

The House will be aware that we have also insisted on reversing the deeply regressive decision to remove dedicated funding for guidance and counselling in schools. This decision was especially damaging in disadvantaged communities. We have been informed that the Minister for Education and Skills has failed to implement the agreement in full and that approximately 100 guidance posts remain outstanding because he decided that they were not a priority. This is unfortunate, short-sighted and a breach and will have to be reversed.

For a number of years, the higher education sector has been falling into an unprecedented funding crisis. With the exception of the extra funding that we secured for the sector last year, the Government's policy has been to reduce radically support for each student and to concentrate new funding in new superficial competitions. The Government was at it again yesterday when the Minister talked about funding for reform. The reality is that this is a way of making cash-starved institutions fight among themselves for the few scraps that the Government has thrown on the table. At the same time, critical research funding has been funnelled into narrower schemes and Ireland has, in a few short years, gone from being one of the most dynamic and growing forces in research to an also-ran in many areas. The complacency and lack of interest of the Government for anything in research other than cutting ribbons has caused real harm. The damage being inflicted on higher education and research is a direct threat to our economic future. As we outlined in detail earlier this year, there is an urgent need to take a different approach. As the budget has confirmed yet again, Fine Gael does not understand the problem in this as in so many other areas and has no intention of doing anything.

The Taoiseach referenced investment in the arts and culture and an increase in the Arts Council's funding. I will alert him to something that we heard of yesterday and was not revealed during the talks. I spoke to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform this morning, but he was not aware of it either. The Minister for Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht is proposing to move the funding of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann under the Arts Council, an arrangement that was dismantled 20 years ago.

The two do not go together. There will be uproar in the Comhaltas community if the Minister proceeds. I ask the Taoiseach to speak to the Minister, Deputy Madigan, and to ask her to cease from proceeding with the measure, as it will do huge damage to Comhaltas and the extraordinary work it has been doing for the country. We all know about the success of the fleadh in Drogheda and what it did for Drogheda, Cavan and other locations. That is masking an increase for arts funding when one shoves the budget of Comhaltas in under the Arts Council budget, but more importantly, how the two work together is the real issue in the long term. It will be very damaging to the work Comhaltas is doing. It is unnecessary and I am not aware of anyone pushing for it or asking for it.

Rural Ireland is today confronted with two major challenges. The first is the Government's ongoing policy of withdrawing services and neglecting community issues, something demonstrated at great volume by marginal funding of the Department of Rural and Community Development under the Minister, Deputy Ring, and the move to politicise even the smallest announcement.

The second is of course Brexit. The rural economy is more exposed than any other and both farmers and the wider agrifood sector have been suffering from the impact of Brexit since 2016. For all of the warm words and pre-election announcements of funding, little or nothing has actually happened. The supports announced in May as part of a co-ordinated attempt to try to save Fine Gael councillors were re-announced yesterday. It appears that the policy now is to allow the damage to be done before offering to help. In this and so many areas, this is a Government which is complacent and which has continually failed to turn promises into action. A chronic delivery deficit has resulted in massive overspending and under-delivery in area after area. The room for manoeuvre in the budget was so narrow directly because of the failure in recent years to get on top of consistent problems with control and delivery in many Departments. The approach of putting politics first has put the emphasis on launching documents, not on managing their implementation. Having dodged a bullet in March, where the lack of essential preparation by the Government had left Ireland badly exposed to a no-deal Brexit, we are in a better situation today. However, the key Brexit challenge remains a long-term one and that is where the Government has long since run out of ideas. It has presided over a growing emergency in key public policy areas, most especially health and housing. It has shown a near-systematic failure to deliver on commitments. At each stage, its first instinct is to try to return to its regressive instincts on tax and services and most of all, it is incapable of self-reflection. In area after area it has looked at its record and decided that it has been wonderful and, to quote the Taoiseach, "the worst thing we could do is change policy". This is a fundamental divide which will be at the heart of the next election when it is held.

This budget has been shaped by many factors, of which the need for Ireland to have basic stability at a moment of crisis in the Brexit process is the most important. The room for action has been limited by ministerial failures, overspending and the delay of Brexit action which should have been taken long before now. However, it is the responsibility of everyone here to respond to the situation as it is and not how we would wish it to be. The time will come when we can have the debate our country so badly needs about tackling urgent problems and restoring belief in the idea that progress is possible.

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