Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ar an gcéad dul síos, déanaim comhghairdeas leis an Teachta Chambers. I congratulate Deputy Chambers on being appointed Minister of State. I do not think he has quite made it to Cabinet yet as the previous Deputy alluded to but I know she meant well. I wish him well and look forward to working with him.

This legislation is a comprehensive Bill. I do not normally advocate a lot of borrowing. However, I do not think we have any option but to borrow, especially from our European friends, as we like to call them. They were not very friendly or helpful to us in our economic crash a few years ago when they bulldozed in the money in the morning and then they fleeced us for it. They charged us 6% when the IMF gave it to us for 2.9%.

The Minister has a big role to follow with his lead Minister, Deputy Varadkar. This Bill is well intentioned, like the road to Damascus. It is well intentioned but lined with landmines. We have a big problem with the Central Bank and the pillar banks. The pillar banks are not working.

They may as well shut up shop because they are not functioning. They have not been functioning for a decade or more and they will not function in the future. The contempt they hold for this House and for the public is palpable. A former Member of the House is their spokesperson, and there are many former political advisers who have likewise become spokespersons for the different banking associations. Deputy Michael Collins and I met them to discuss the terrors they put on people who were trying to pay back loans. We met the representatives of the various banking federations but it was a waste of time.

There are some good aspects of the Bill and some provisions that give serious cause for worry. As we say and hear all the time, SMEs account for a huge number of jobs in this country. Most SME owners - I must declare that I am one myself - have a good relationship with their workers and want to keep that relationship because it is imperative for the future success of their business. We are not all, as Deputy Boyd Barrett would like to think, big operators who are reckless with our workers and mad for profit. In my own county of Tipperary, we have had huge direct investment in job creation and in companies paying corporation tax. I support that, and the contribution of those companies is massive. Their factories probably provide 5,000 jobs in the greater Clonmel area. Merck Sharp & Dohme is there more than 50 years. These are long-stay enterprises, not fly-by-night entities that run away after they get their special deals.

Chasing the Apple money is like a chasing a rainbow. When the sun comes out, one sees plenty of rainbows, but there is no crock of gold from Apple at the end of that particular rainbow. Now there is talk of getting interest on the Apple money as well. Before any of that we have to wait for the courts to decide and for any appeals to be gone through, from third parties or anybody else. It may or may not be a case of "live, horse, and you will get grass" but that seems to be the ideology.

On the other hand, we have the sectoral agreements, in respect of which there is a clamouring every day to revisit the court decision. Those sectoral agreements were made with the big financial people - the Construction Industry Federation, or whatever - but things are different for small employers. I know I am straying a small bit from the legislation but this is a very important point. Small employers cannot pay the wage that large employers can pay. Workers in rural parts of Ireland do not expect to get the €25 an hour that is paid in Dublin. The local authorities employ people and machinery and they would not give €25 an hour for the machine and the man. We must cut our cloth according to our measure and we must be very careful of the damage we could do in this area.

Deputy Michael Collins alluded to the mixed messages and statements that are going out all the time in regard to this legislation and other measures. It is devastating tonight to hear that the pubs may not be reopening on Monday. I read on my iPhone ten minutes ago that NPHET, which seems to be the gospel for everything, has indicated there may be a delay. I wish Dr. Holohan and his wife all the very best but there are serious questions to be asked, even about the sittings of this House. I said in the convention centre that we could not afford such a salubrious place. Like the small businesses, we have to cut our cloth according to our measure. Publicans and other small business owners pay tax, VAT, rates, PRSI and insurance. They must be allowed to reopen. Many of them, who are watching this debate tonight, will have had to order in new stock before next week. I never owned a pub or had anything to do with running one but I was often at a pub counter and I talk to and support a lot of pub owners. It is unreal when we see the house parties that are going on around the country. At the same time, the pubs and the respectable publicans are controlled and if they break the rules, objections will be raised to their licences. It is ridiculous.

Today is Tuesday and the pubs are meant to open next Monday but we are now getting mixed messages and it seems they might not be allowed to open after all. Yet there is a situation going on that I raised at the very start of the crisis. It is why I asked the Taoiseach earlier whether he really believes there is a pandemic. I have concerns, as do many other people, that we never closed the airports and ports. That was never done while so much was asked of small businesses. I mentioned pubs but I am also talking about shops and everything else, including farmers and sporting people. Big Tom is resting in his grave, Lord have mercy on him, but there are many country music artists struggling. I know many of them and many of the ceoltóirí clubs and scoileanna rince. They are all closed and all the independent artists have nowhere to perform. We are all over the place in how we are dealing with this.

We got the roadmap - I do not remember how long ago it is now - and stage 4 was to see the pubs reopening, but doubt is being thrown on that tonight. It is totally unfair to publicans. Their stocks were taken back and they have nothing in stock now. They must borrow to restock. In those circumstances, it just does not add up for me or any ordinary person that people can come into this country from Dallas, Texas. I have seen the list of flights coming into Dublin Airport and it includes lots of Covid hotspots in Spain and other places. At one stage we were getting a briefing from the HSE once a week but nobody has given us such a briefing for a while. Deputy Shortall asked at one of those briefings if we could be enlightened as to how many personnel were stationed at the airports and ports monitoring people coming into the country. No answer was given and there was only head-scratching and looking around. The HSE representatives thought the Garda was dealing with that issue. I said at the time and I will say it again that it is like drawing water from a well with a leaky bucket. One will never fill one's tank that way and if we do not seal our borders, we will never survive. Before we get into borrowing, microfinance and the different schemes, we must deal with the basics first. If we do not have a good foundation - and we do not - we are not serious about dealing with this pandemic. NPHET certainly has a job to do, and that is to advise. It is for the Government to make decisions but all we are seeing is inertia, lethargic efforts and unclear, mixed messages.

The Taoiseach alluded last week to the possibility that the pubs might not reopen. It is shocking to have this uncertainty. Many of them will never reopen anyway ever again because of legislation that was passed here in recent times, but we need to support the ones that can reopen. The hairdressers were able to open, thank God, but there was huge expense involved in it for them. The schemes that were introduced, including the microfinance scheme and the rates break, were brought in with big announcements and a big spin machine by the former Taoiseach. The county councils have not had a penny yet to offset what they lost via the rates measure. I am glad to see the Minister of State writing that down. Members of my council told me ten days ago when they sent out the rates bills for the second moiety starting in July, which they had to do, that the council has not got a shilling from the Government to offset the loss from the rates holiday or the parking moratorium.

We have had all the announcements. Even this Bill has grand platitudes, but it is not enough. If the procedures are too cumbersome and there is too much form-filling, SMEs cannot afford it and they will not do it. They need stimulus grants and the public needs the same. We need to encourage people to spend and stimulate the economy. I took a walk down Grafton Street earlier tonight and it is just not happening. People are worried. The Taoiseach or somebody else said earlier that they are saving their money. We must look at a scheme similar to the one introduced by the former Minister for Finance, Charles McCreevy, to encourage the release of money that is being saved into the economy. We do not want people to spend all their savings but they should be encouraged to spend some of them and should not be penalised for doing so. There should be schemes that encourage people to do home refurbishments or change their car and thereby stimulate different industries. We should leave some savings residue in place but people should not be penalised if they take out some of their savings before a scheme has matured. We need money in the economy now and airgead in the póca for people to spend.

Pious platitudes, grand schemes and great-sounding legislation are not enough. We must secure interest-free loans for SMEs and ordinary families. We must get support from our European colleagues to do so. I see that Austria has raised €1 billion or €2 billion on a scheme that it put out for tender, and it got that money at very reasonable interest. There are ways of doing these things but it is not by having too much legislation, red tape and bureaucracy. The mixed messages must stop.

We must remember that Brexit is looming large. It is looming large for the farming community on which all of rural Ireland depends. It is looming large for the haulage industry, which is in an awful situation. All of that is coming down the line. Deputy Verona Ní Mhurchú said that Brexit could be even worse than this. If that is the case, it will be one huge whammy. We know it will be bad but we have lost sight of it completely. We must deal with it because it will have an enormous impact.

The first thing we must do is let our people live again. We must stop the fear factor and do away with the figures that are being issued in the main RTÉ headlines into people's homes. They have people driven demented with fright, especially the elderly, and the situation is creating mental health issues. We see the billions being wasted on the deal with the private hospitals and in the overcharging for Covid-19 testing. As Deputy Michael Collins said, if the tests can be done for €40 or €50 in west Cork, why are we sending them to Germany at a cost of €195 each? What is wrong with us? There have been no proper tendering procedures and no proper evaluation of the vast amounts of money that have been spent to tackle Covid-19. I do not like repeating myself but I said some months ago that what is going on is a scamdemic. Every day since, I feel it more that I was justified in that description. There are too many scams going on. We are making too much money for the big businesses that own the private hospitals and clinics. People who had private health insurance could not get treatment even though they had been paying into schemes for up to 40 years. Now the private health insurers have the audacity to charge those people €275 for a test that can be done in west Cork for €40.

This is daylight robbery. Like most schemes, it seems there will be latitude for people to make huge money.

I wish the Minister of State well and I will support the Bill but I have huge concerns about it. We must let people live. They are not being let live at the moment because they are being corralled into their homes and are frightened about going anywhere. All the mixed messaging is not good.

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