Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I am coming in now. Deputy Thomas Pringle was supposed to speak but I am stepping in for him.

I wish to focus on our health services because that topic is high on the agenda given the pandemic we have been facing in recent months. A report published last month found that the European Commission made 63 individual demands of member states to cut spending on healthcare provision or privatise or outsource healthcare services between 2011 and 2018. The reason was to meet the arbitrary debt and deficit targets enshrined in the Stability and Growth Pact. These demands affected the peripheral economies of Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal and ourselves that were hit by the sovereign debt crisis with particular harshness.

The Stability and Growth Pact has proven to be one of the most contested and controversial features of economic and monetary union and the broader EU. The pact imposed two numerical ceilings on government expenditure. The first was the debt-to-GDP ratio, over which there is a major question mark now. The ratio must be below 60%. The second is that the annual deficit of member states must be limited to 3% of GDP or less. The power of the European Commission to surveil and control the national budgets of member states was significantly strengthened in 2011 by the adoption of the six-pack and in 2013 by the adoption of the two-pack. These policies have driven nation states to outsource more healthcare rather than invest in our public elder care, mental health services and other services on which there is continued serious pressure.

From the introduction of the European semester running from 2011 to 2018, the Commission made 105 separate demands of individual member states to raise the statutory retirement age and reduce public spending on pensions and aged care. It made 63 demands that governments cut spending on healthcare and outsource or privatise health services. This is why we are in the situation we are facing now in a pandemic. There has been a conscious ideological front in the EU to privatise rather than pump money into our public services. This is the reason many countries throughout Europe had to go into lockdown as nursing homes were badly affected by Covid-19. They were trying to get older people out of the hospitals and into nursing homes. Our nursing homes were unable to deal with this surge in many cases. All of that will come out in due course.

This is about taxation and big corporates being able to pay their way to society rather than getting off with low tax on profits. While the Apple tax ruling today probably justifies the behaviour of multinationals and the Government in that they operated within their remit, it is immoral that a multinational with billions of euro paid only 0.005% in tax. The ordinary man and woman on the street cannot believe it. They cannot face that such a thing can happen when we are all under the cosh of the Revenue and the State to pay our taxes. Most people do not mind ordinarily, but they do when we see the contradictions and how the neoliberal ideological idea allows these things to happen. It is morally wrong wherever an outcome like the ruling today arises.

This has to change, as does the idea of private being good and public being bad. That has been the future of the EU in recent decades but it has to change. I support the idea that we need a socialist outlook to society that meets the needs of everyone and not only the few. That has to be done through progressive taxation across the board and up to and including multinationals. That should be brought to the European Council this week.

See this speech in context