Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendment. The Sinn Féin amendment calls for oversight on this, and it is completely lacking anywhere else. It was said earlier that we could not pass an extension of maternity leave last night because it was too complex, but what we are looking at here is seriously complex and we are not getting the clarity on it that we deserve. To be honest, what is going on here is beyond the understanding of most of us in the House. We understand the urgency and accept that this is a gigantic stimulus package that is necessary to ensure that during Covid-19 and afterwards, whenever we emerge from it, small and medium businesses and workers can begin to operate again following what will probably be a recession from the pandemic. One could not argue against it or oppose it.

It seems that we have a Dáil made up of born again Keynesians who now see that stimulating the economy and putting money into public services and into jobs with small and medium businesses is how one does what the left has been saying for years, which is that one injects resources into the economy to stimulate it. That now appears to be the wisdom of the hallowed halls of the finance ministries. One would not know it from the debate in this House, but in Europe there is another debate raging. That debate has much to do with how these funds should be spent, how much should be loans and how much should be grants. Interestingly, there is talk about reforms being attached to them. This is where I wish to make my most important contribution. People in this country remember the word "reform" well, particularly those who were described by the former Minister for Finance as the low-hanging fruit - those at the bottom of society who depended on the welfare state, those who suffered from disability and public sector workers. Reform always equals attacks on pensions, labour rights and the welfare state and the privatisation of public services. Clearly, that debate has not ended.

I know I will hear the cliché being trotted out that there is no magic money tree. I accept there is no magic money tree, but we seem to forget that when it comes to tax havens, such as what we saw with Apple today, the Cayman Islands, the double Dutch and, indeed, the Irish tax haven.

The European Commission is floating other clever ideas, including a suite of environmental taxes such as carbon and plastic taxes. Who could argue with that? The problem, though, is that it does not do what it says on the tin. The tax is usually passed on to ordinary people and not the big companies.

Because the details are scant, it is very important we have a level of scrutiny applied to the Bill and I think we will need the State to answer questions. We were told earlier that the wage subsidy scheme, for example, could apply retrospectively. We have giant companies in this country such as Ryanair and Boston Scientific that put their hands out for the wage subsidy scheme. We have no scrutiny over their profits, cash reserves or anything else yet we paid out the wage subsidy scheme to them. There is therefore a concern as to how this fund will be used and where it will go to. As individual responsibility is demanded of all of us, we must also demand corporate responsibility and have some kind of scrutiny over how this money is given out. It is important for us to comment here on what the debate raging in Europe is about and how it will impact on whether we pass this Bill. We have to come out of this pandemic with a notion of a caring society that wants to repair the damage done. If we are to learn lessons, we need to learn lessons about investment in our public services. We have seen the void and the gap that has been created in health, childcare, public transport and education, all areas that need to be invested in. We do not want to end up, when we strip the spin away from this scheme, looking back at something dressed up as a package of funding but which is really austerity and corporate bailout, mark 2. We need to understand how that debate is taking place in Europe and how it will impact on what we do here.

See this speech in context