Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The ongoing tragedy of the loss of life in this country and the potential for that to continue means that the Taoiseach was absolutely right when he said that as we lessen the restrictions, it will be done in a slow and gradual way. That makes sense. Mike Ryan, from the World Health Organization, says that we will also have to be very fast in our response so that if clusters appear, we have got to quickly identify them, isolate everyone and manage that part of it.

I hope that application of being fast in our response can apply in other ways. I sense from the public, particularly around the education area, for example, that if we find that international experience, and we need to know this quickly, shows that there is the potential for a safe reopening of educational facilities, we should be quick to respond to that because mental health and a range of other issues have to be taken into account. There are specific areas, and the Taoiseach mentioned people in the disability sector in education, which tends to have smaller groupings that are much more easy to manage. The parents involved in that area, if they are looking after a child at home, can often be doing so in very difficult circumstances so if there is the ability for us to open up such facilities quickly, we should act quickly, while listening to all the health expertise.

Similarly, we will have to be fast when it comes to managing the economy recovery. I had intended to ask a series of questions but if the Taoiseach does not mind, I will use my remaining time to make a wider statement on the need for speed in the economic recovery because the scale of the shock in that respect is beyond compare. I was slightly encouraged yesterday when I heard some figures showing that our manufacturing output had held up slightly during the downturn. I checked with some contacts overnight who were directly involved and have a good idea in terms of what is happening and they reported back to me that, unfortunately, the figures are masking an incredible contraction, even in that area of international manufacturing and the high-tech sector. While ostensibly the figures look as if they are holding up, they say demand is crashing across the world and that the prospect there is not as strong as it might seem from the figures of recent months.

Similarly, there is concern when one hears talk of what is going on in the Brexit negotiations. The economic implications of that adding to the shock we are experiencing is something that possibly could hit in the next year, just at the time when we do not want it. Figures were reported in the newspapers today of large numbers of people, particularly younger people, remaining unemployed until the end of this year and into next year. One newspaper quoted a figure of 300,000 people. Those sort of figures raise real concern because the consequences of that in terms of mental health is not insignificant.

We have to act fast to get our younger people, in particular, back working, to get the economy lifted and for that to be part of our health strategy. As to how we can do that, we can look to previous periods when we managed our way out of economic difficulties. We have to be careful not to apply lessons from the past in this case. I do not believe this is similar to what happened in the management of, and recovery from, the financial crash because that was due to an underlying structural problem in our economy where our property sector had bubbled up, and private debt and the loss of tax revenue meant that a restructuring of the economy was needed.

That is not where we are today, because our economy going into this was in relatively good shape. If anything, the structural problem, as identified by Danny McCoy and IBEC a number of months ago, was that the State needed to expand its capability in housing, public transport, water and other infrastructure to support the economy. The underlying problem was not that we needed to contract anything; in fact we were in an economic situation where we were going to have to expand our State enterprise and capability. Similarly, we should be careful to avoid the experience of the 1980s, when - for those of us old enough to remember - youth unemployment was a damaging and disastrous consequence of that economic recession. We managed to get out of that in the late 1980s by getting our budget in order but this will not be the same because that is not the problem now and therefore we should not revert back to that as a solution. The circumstances were very different then. Our mortgage interest rates in the early and mid-1980s were at 16%, whereas now, the State's creditworthiness and the underlying strength of our economy before this crash mean the circumstances are very different.

That leads me to the economic analysis that our response must be an increase in borrowing. It would be a fairly dramatic initial increase, which would continue as the economy lifts and we could reduce the deficit. We should not be afraid this autumn and over however many years it will take us to effectively provide the correct economic response to this crisis. Our ability to do that is contingent on having low interest rates, and we are right not to just rely on the ECB in that regard. We should be maintaining our creditworthiness but that will be best achieved when we are seen to be acting quickly in using this economic strategy to address the underlying fundamental problems, namely, the need to increase our public infrastructure, to get our young people back working and to protect against any Brexit shock. Anyone looking at a country doing that would say that country is on the right path and is a good safe haven in these difficult international times. The question is how we can practically use that borrowing, in real terms, to manage those three difficult and amazing challenges, that is, to improve public infrastructure, to get our young people back working - which was not a problem six months ago but sure as hell is now - and in so doing to stimulate demand, while managing any Brexit risks at the same time. It is important that we do it at speed. If someone is on the dole for six or nine months, and I have been there myself, it very quickly saps one's confidence and ability and people would only hunker down and increase their savings, which would bring us into a worse position. Therefore, we need to be quick.

We need to be quick in the building of public housing. I am glad that our construction workers are going back to work next week. They have a good record and the ability to practice good health and safety. We should all be enterprising, in both local authorities and Departments, to get housing supply back quickly, including high-quality housing close to town centres. We can do something similar in transport. In Dublin, for example, we are using this opportunity of empty streets to reconfigure it. We should be getting every engineering company and every capability in the State to make this quick transition and do what we have to do to improve bus, cycling and walking infrastructure. That is not a huge employment centre but it would be one aspect of the economy. We need to act quickly to do it and in that it would be an immediate economic stimulus. Similarly, in health, we need to make sure our procurement rules are flexible in order to employ every Irish online computer consulting systems company to make sure we get real efficiency in our health system as we move towards a much more online system in these coming months.

We are talking about months, not years, when it comes to turning the economy in the latter part of this year into next year and the year afterwards.

With regard to retrofitting, why not have 20,000 apprenticeships starting this autumn? If I am correct, these are the numbers ICTU estimates we need to meet our retrofitting targets. Let us start now. There will be work in this for the next 20 or 30 years so this is good work to get started on but we should start with 20,000 apprenticeships because that is a very productive and good use of money that will produce savings in a range of different ways.

I could go on in terms of employing people to re-wet our bogs. Deputy Fitzmaurice and others have spoken about a farming scheme that would involve going to every farm, asking the farmer to put aside a hectare and telling him or her that we will pay him or her for that to be a native woodland area. Let us start fencing it out this autumn and getting the agricultural adviser visiting and paying people because this is a better direct protection against any Brexit shock to the farming community than any other and has significant benefits down the line. We need to be quick in terms of getting that sort of thing going.

It is the same with the food sector. The real problem will be in our retail and leisure sectors and creative industries so we could be quick in the food sector and decide to ramp up our organic scheme. Some of the empty retail spaces will come forward so let us convert them using our community enterprise schemes, local enterprise offices and local authorities to say we are setting up a new market retail community and new distribution systems for local food to get to local people with local cooks being involved in new ways of doing business. We must be quick here. It must be on every street of every town and in every way create a vibrant new economy out of this downturn.

I am sorry. I have gone over time. I have not even given the Taoiseach a minute to answer a question. I apologise. It is important. We must be quick with regard to the economy now.

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