John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----if it were not for the decisions taken - this is a point I was going to come to later - the really tough decisions that involved incredible burdens for the Irish people which were taken by the former Taoiseach, Mr. Brian Cowen, and the former Minister for Finance, the late Mr. Brian Lenihan, then this country would not be in a position to borrow anything at any rate because our credibility internationally and in the markets would be bust. This is something Members on the other side of the House would be best to remember from time to time. Sometimes one must take tough decisions. We now have the benefit of credibility and a record of paying our debts. I accept that some of those burdens were unfair but it has enabled us now to be in a position to borrow billions of euro and to enable this State to fulfil the contract between the State and the citizen.

I do not think at any other time in its history has the State fulfilled the unwritten social contract and expectation that exists to be delivered by it to its citizens as it has since the onset of the virus.

There are those who say they represent those who get up for work early in the morning. The key message for me today is that our focus must now be on those who cannot get a night's sleep because of the worries and anxieties they carry, and who wake up wondering what today will bring. While they have not lost their jobs, some of them have been told they can reopen and get back to business but then have been thwarted. This has happened four times to publicans in Dublin. Others have mentioned Aer Lingus workers. There are also the taxi drivers and, along with my colleagues, I will meet some of their representatives today. Their asks are not huge or significant.

To interpret what the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has said, it is that now is not the time to be penny pinching. The previous Government was incredibly generous, and rightly so, about the needs of the ordinary working people in the country. Now is not the time to start tightening the belt or to consider tightening it, particularly for those front-line workers, who now include teachers. All Deputies will have had texts and messages from teachers in schools where a child who had come in with some symptoms was taken home and is isolating. Those teachers are now wondering and living anxiously to see whether they have contracted the virus. Gardaí have successfully policed during the pandemic in the consensual way that only the Irish police force can. It is admired abroad for the way in which it polices its communities and it continues to do so. In a very short period, public servants processed hundreds of thousands of payments that provided necessary assistance. There are also the self-employed people, whether in the entertainment industry, music industry, crafts, social and cultural industries and others, who just have not been able to get back to work. They are the people among the 200,000 who have not gone back to work and who should be our primary focus as we move into the budgetary cycle. Essentially, this is what the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has said today.

I was a member of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight - Deputy Boyd Barrett will also appreciate this - and I always took on board what IFAC said and took its advice very seriously. I thought it was always very measured. It was very critical of the previous Government. That criticism was never really taken on board or treated seriously by the media. It was heavily critical for a period of four years until, finally, the previous Minister for Finance took on board the message of being over-reliant on corporation tax.

I have mentioned the sectors I want to highlight. Consider the €13 billion deficit for this year and what the previous Government spent. One or two of my colleagues were criticised because they said there were people who receive the Covid payment who did not need it. This was communicated rather poorly. The message was clearly that there were people who received the Covid payment for whom it represented three or four times the income they were receiving for short-term part-time work. This continues to happen and I would like to see it invigilated. The taxpayers deserve to know the money they pay in taxes is redirected correctly, fairly and justly in terms of social protection measures. This is not to say people are scamming but everybody knows there were students who might have had part-time work that earned them €30 or €40 a week and they got the €350 Covid payment for months. Some of their friends who had a part-time job in SuperValu or Dunnes Stores and continued to work to stack shelves for €240 or €300 a week saw their friends getting €350 for doing nothing. This should not persist.

Yesterday, my colleague, Deputy O'Dea, made a point about looking at the huge budget that has been expended and looking at what might be needed. For example, taxi drivers want small things, such as the return of the wage subsidy they were on because essentially they are paying mortgages on their cars. They want no new licences issued until this is over, which is perfectly reasonable. The smallest ask of all is that those with cars coming up to ten years old at the end of the year be given an extension because they are repaying. Chauffeurs, limousine drivers and coach driving companies have been mentioned, as has everybody involved in tourism.

Last night, the point was made very strongly, and I urge the Minister to consider it, that those involved in the travel agency business do not get paid until people actually travel. They did their end of the booking of holidays last year for consumers' holidays that were to take place this year. They do not get paid by the company at the other end of the travel route until the holiday actually begins. These holidays were cancelled and the travel agents have to pay back the money. They have no earned income for this year and they have lost some income they had to pay back from last year.

If Covid has shown one thing, especially in Dublin, it is that the city has become utterly reliant on tourism. The city is dying. There is grass growing in parts of Molesworth Street. I come into Dublin every Sunday and street furniture was introduced on a number of streets and it was very successful. People could sit outside and feel safer in the fresh air having a coffee or a glass of wine. Dublin City Council was very enthusiastic about this. That street furniture has not been there for the past three weeks. There is very little reason for people to come in. The city is dying. We have been down at the convention centre. The headquarters of PwC is beside the convention centre. Recently, I spoke to somebody and I hope I have the figures roughly correct. There are 1,500 work stations in that building but only 100 of them are active at present. This explains why on all of the plazas running parallel to the convention centre on the tram tracks, and on the streets off the tram tracks behind it, the coffee shops and restaurants are closed. No one is going into the newsagents to buy newspapers. The workers are not there. No one is using the sandwich bars or buying their lunches. We are hanging these businesses out to dry.

We stepped up to the mark in February and March. IFAC is saying very clearly in its advice to the Government that this is not the time to step back from this mark in the interests of fiscal prudence. The citizens of this country need the Government to support them, whether they are publicans, taxi drivers, those involved in travel agencies, tourism and hospitality businesses, public servants and teachers and children who need personal protective equipment, PPE, whether in a fee-paying school or not. I do not have a fee-paying school in my constituency. Every child in the State is equal and deserving and has a right to the best health and safety provision the State can provide.

The key message I want to impress on the Minister is that our focus needs to be on those who have not been getting a night's sleep for the past three or four months worrying about their businesses, their rising debts and their inability to pay back loans and mortgages. The State stepped in for a period and it must sustain that assistance during the most trying period in the history of the Republic.

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