Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While budget 2021 looks to the combined challenges of Brexit, Covid and housing, it fails to bring about structural change to our economy to make it more sustainable for all sectors of our economy. We are spending €3,600 for every man, woman and child in Ireland but I do not get the impression that this money is being spent any differently from the money spent last year or the years before that.

This was the opportunity in a generation to reform how we work and live in this country but today we did not take it. While budget 2021 talks about an interdepartmental group to consider remote working, a similar announcement was made last year to look at hot desking of vacant desks in public buildings throughout the country for civil servants who were commuting into Dublin. We have seen no movement on that initiative 12 months later. There is no new provision for funding for the national broadband plan. In fact, the spending announced today was spending that I secured as Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment some years ago. As a result, disappointingly, there is no indication of a fast-tracking of the delivery of the national broadband plan to isolated rural homes as promised in the programme for Government.

Budget 2021 also talks about a recovery fund but there is little detail of what it will do to reform our economy to live with Covid-19, to allow more people to work and study remotely, or to support new ways of doing business.

While I welcome today's announcement of the shared island initiative, which I hope will build co-operation across the island and develop key cross-Border projects, it must include the development of the Beara-Breifne Way, which currently runs from the Beara Peninsula in west Cork to Blacklion in County Cavan. The way needs to continue from there along the Ulster Way to the Glens of Antrim, completing the Ulster Way and ensuring that the route, which would be Ireland's answer to the Camino, is marketed in a similar way to the Wild Atlantic Way.

While the investment in housing announced today is welcome, it will not deliver in the short term. As a short-term measure, we need to encourage families living in our cities to give up their homes and relocate to rural towns and villages, to streets that have not seen a football kicked on them in a generation, while helping to ease pressure in our cities. I propose that we provide a €15,000 grant to first-time buyers purchasing an existing property in a town or village with a significant residential vacancy rate. The Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government is providing a subsidy of €30,174 on average to provide a new serviced site in the city of Dublin. For every family that takes up this offer, gives up a house in Dublin and relocates to a part of the country that has been decimated by depopulation, it would save the State more than €15,700.

There is no doubt that the funding secured for the health and disability budget is welcome, but it is vital that it be converted into the delivery of services for those who need them. For example, the 5 million additional home help hours are very welcome. In the past, however, home help hours provided for in various budgets have not been delivered on the ground. Home carers have had a challenging year because of isolation and a reduction in available home help as well as family help thanks to cocooning and Covid-19 restrictions. Some 60% of intellectual disability centres are yet to reopen. In terms of the carer's support grant, giving just €25, or less than 50 cent per week, over and above what is being given to ordinary taxpayers under the stay-and-spend scheme is not an adequate acknowledgement of the work that carers are doing across the country, in particular full-time carers.

Although I welcome that funding is being provided to address the impact of Covid-19 across various sectors of the economy, the fear is that it will not prepare any of them for the new reality post Covid and post Brexit.

I have suggested that we establish a pilot microgeneration scheme on farms. Down the years, the Government has subsidised the upgrading of the electricity network to farms. That should be used to allow farmers who have large amounts of roof space on isolated sites that are suitable for the deployment of renewable energy to generate electricity for their neighbours. Such a pilot initiative in the agricultural sector would be an ideal way of identifying challenges in microgeneration in advance of implementing the commitments that I signed Ireland up to under the EU renewable energy directive.

I welcome the pilot environmental programme in agriculture, for which €20 million has been set aside. If Deputies will recall, however, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, announced €3 million for a similar scheme 12 months ago. Not one cent of that has been drawn down. It is imperative that any environmental scheme that is put in place be utilised. It is also imperative that we develop environmental schemes that are farmer focused and farmer designed and deliver benefits to rural communities across the country.

I am disappointed that the Government did not take a suggestion that we proposed, namely, a suckler cow environmental scheme that paid €200 per cow for up to 20 cows to sustain and support suckler beef production. This would have been based on the innovative smart farming initiative of a number of years ago that involved the Environmental Protection Agency, Teagasc and the IFA and that I supported as Minister.

I will work with the Government to ensure the funds that are made available are utilised to achieve the goals it has set out, but I am concerned that budget 2021 is just tinkering around the edges instead of providing the type of real reform that could bring life back to rural communities, regional Ireland and our towns and villages while also responding to the challenges of Covid-19 and Brexit.

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