Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Like every person in this country, I hope the question of bailing out the banks will never again arise. The bailing out of the banks is one of the recognised purposes of the rainy day fund. It has a couple of other purposes. It turns out that Brexit, which is genuinely one of the greatest challenges we have ever faced, does not qualify for the rainy day fund. If a number of enterprises close down as a consequence of a really hard Brexit - we hope this does not happen in any way - the rainy day fund will not be able to come to their aid. I am sure the Minister's officials will confirm that the rainy day fund will not be able to come to the aid of enterprises or other institutions that need urgent funding as a result of a hard Brexit. I think there has been a great deal of agreement in this House about Brexit. Nobody wants any Brexit, if at all possible. We have to face the possibility that there could be a difficult Brexit or even a very hard Brexit. If the UK just drops out of the EU as part of a very hard Brexit, the situation could be genuinely very difficult for Ireland because the World Trade Organization, unfortunately, is in total disarray and is unable to form panels. I hope nothing like that happens.

Having spoken against the creation of the rainy day fund, I must explain that I opposed the Minister's decision to raid the strategic investment fund for €1.5 billion because this country has another crisis, in addition to Brexit, that relates to capital funding. I am referring to the housing crisis. If the Minister walks around Dublin city tonight, within ten minutes he will have seen five or six people sleeping rough and begging on all the streets leading to Grafton Street. It is really hurtful for many people to see this in the capital city of a country as rich as Ireland. The strategic investment fund has a clear purpose. It was established when the previous Government was in power. One of its potential uses is to put appropriate capital funding into certain areas. This would include putting appropriate funding into the housing market. We have a great deal of State land in this country at the moment, but we have no capacity to fund social housing on that land. The Minister has locked away €1.5 billion which was previously in a strategic investment fund. This is an example of playing around with money. It is an accounting trick that involves transferring money from one set of reserves to another set of reserves. The difference is that there are strict controls on what the rainy day fund reserves may be used for. As those reserves came from the strategic investment fund, they could have been used for a variety of significant purposes. They could have been used to make a key investment in the development of housing for those who need it so badly. Having set up, funded and seeded the rainy day fund as recently as October or November of this year, the Minister is now crying off from his original plans. In fairness to him, he announced on budget day that he would do this, but all I can say is that it makes a joke of Fine Gael's stewardship of the economy.

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