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

It is difficult to understand how the previous speaker could have issues with this budget, of all budgets, or with the budgetary approach of the Government during the pandemic. Essentially, billions of euro have been spent on the most vulnerable in our society. As I have mentioned on a number of occasions, there is an unwritten social contract between the State and its citizens whereby the citizen hopes that in a time of crisis the State will be there for the citizen. The manner in which the State has behaved over the last ten months has been impeccable, and exemplary in comparison with some neighbouring countries, in how it has sought to look after its citizens during this time. Has it always been right? No, and some of the wrongs were corrected, particularly in respect of the pandemic unemployment payment being restored to €350. The Government must always be acutely aware, and my party colleagues are aware, of the difficulties for people who have to live on €300 or €350 per week, particularly coming into winter when fuel costs are higher.

The thing that characterises the pandemic from a fiscal perspective is that, unlike the financial crash ten years ago, no country in the world is unaffected by the pandemic. Even though the financial crash was described in global terms, many countries were unaffected by it. However, nobody has escaped the impact of the pandemic, and every country must do what it can to ensure its citizens get through it safely.

With regard to the commitment to and care for those who are out of work and who previously had their mortgage payments suspended, the State must go back and talk to the banks about that. The State bailed out the banks. It was that act which allowed us to borrow, and borrow at the low interest rates that those on the left talk about, as well as how we should spend the money that is borrowed at low interest rates. They never mention the fact that if we had not bailed out the banks, and none of us liked it or was keen on doing it, this country would not have any credit rating abroad and would simply not have been able to borrow, even for the pandemic, the amounts of money it has had to borrow to look after its citizens.

I welcome the significant educational input of the budget. The Minister, who was present earlier, could not go into all the detail due to circumstances and time limits, but the educational input will result in the pupil-teacher ratio being reduced. That was never more important than now in terms of class sizes and the impact of the virus. There is an increase in resources for children with special needs, and we are only at the first stage of this. I raised an issue in my constituency in the last Dáil, and the Minister for Education and her Department are beginning to move on this. There is only one autism spectrum disorder, ASD, unit in the postal addresses of Dublin 6, Dublin 6W and Dublin 16, whereas the postal districts of Dublin 24 and Dublin 12 have multiple ASD units. That led to the ratio of children with special needs in some of the schools in Dublin 24 and Dublin 12 being out of proportion with the ratio of children with special needs in schools in Dublin 6 and Dublin 6W, which is simply not right. I and other colleagues raised it when we were in the Opposition. Small moves are being made on it, but it must be addressed. It is an area that must be resourced significantly.

I also commend the Government on the recent announcement of the agreement with caretakers and school secretaries. It was long-running issue, and the Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, will be familiar with it. That has been warmly welcomed by people in the sector.

My constituency covers the areas of Greenhills, Templeogue, Rathfarnham, Tallaght, Ballycullen and Citywest. It has two major Garda stations in Tallaght and Rathfarnham. Obviously, Tallaght would be considered the mother ship. I am delighted with the additional Garda resources, including Garda cars and personnel, that will be allocated. The Garda has had significant drugs finds. It beggars belief that drug suppliers can get the drugs through even during a pandemic. They have used all sorts of creative methods to get their drugs to recipients, ranging from An Post to Parcel Motel. In fact, drug seizures were up approximately 5% on the same period in 2019, which is remarkable given how the country has been locked down for so long.

The waiving of commercial rates and the VAT reduction for businesses are to be welcomed, but a VAT reduction for a business that cannot trade is quite useless.

I urge the Minister and my Government colleagues to support businesses. I spoke informally to the Taoiseach about it recently. We must have some sense now of the pattern of the virus. There have been a few challenges in Dublin but we had begun to succeed with level 3, plus the ban on household visits. It was certainly stabilising the virus and the level 5 measures will be important for driving it down. The Minister knows that some businesses will simply not reopen. We must have the data now on the infection rate in non-essential businesses and in all the large multiples and retailers. I refer to the staff rather than the customers. I know as a fact from talking to supermarket owners locally that the rate has been virtually zero. What are the figures the National Public Health Emergency Team, NPHET, has in that regard?

Likewise, we must have figures on the efficacy of mask wearing. I get it that NPHET wants to cut down on mobility but it does not make sense to many citizens to close businesses when juvenile teams of 15 can engage in non-contact training, but the same children cannot play on the local tennis courts or the people who are training them cannot play on the local golf course. We need to reflect on that to ensure we fall back to some degree on people's sense of self-responsibility and to treat people like adults.

Businesses need to be encouraged and a number of things could be done in the hospitality area. I see some innovation in the city in terms of outdoor furniture. Irish people have shown that they will do what is necessary to keep themselves warm. We could provide grants for the provision of canopies and give planning exemptions for the erection of canopies within a certain square footage, as applies on the Continent, so that outdoor space is more protected if we do open up a little, given that people feel more comfortable outdoors because the virus has less chance of spreading. However, we need to incentivise businesses to do that. I was talking to a local publican this morning who is very keen to provide street furniture but given that he has had no income since March, he is concerned about the outlay. If a business owner wants to erect a fairly solid canopy outside his or her premises, he or she must apply for full planning permission and that would take three months and could take longer if there were objections.

We must be really creative about how we deal with this. We need to look at the possibility, when we get back to level 3 in the future, that non-essential stores or services would be allowed to open. Experts could look at the issue. Google must have significant data on people's movement and mobility in the past eight or nine months. All stores do not have to open at the same time. It would be great if we staggered the opening of stores and in doing that there was evidence to show that people are not congregating in great numbers for that reason. It would allow non-essential services to open. For example, hairdressers could open from 5 p.m. until 10 p.m., which would means they were not caught up in the rush of people shopping and it would be a quieter time for people to move around. The same could happen with a range of other non-essential services that could open at different hours. We could encourage employers to stagger lunch hours in order that people are not queuing at the same time for a sandwich, coffee or whatever else, thereby increasing the chance of contracting the virus. We can never come back to level 5. It is clear the country could not bear it economically but I really do not think people could bear it psychologically either.

I am like a broken record, in that in every contribution I make I keep harping back to the only precedent in Ireland for something similar, which was the Spanish flu. It had a surge in October and November and another surge in March and April, so we ought to anticipate a third surge and prepare accordingly for it.

We need to be more agile in our policies and much more flexible. We must consider measures such as the ones being introduced on the Continent now, for example, curfews. It is a very easy thing to police. If there is a curfew from 10 p.m. until 6 a.m. then businesses are shut, people should not be out, there are no house parties and no house visits. It does not have to be every night of the week but it is a really easy thing to police and it is certainly a good way of stopping people's mobility as a short, sharp, shock measure. The Minister should not bring us back to level 5.

Again, there must be data on an issue I mentioned at the Joint Committee on Health this morning. There are four local electoral areas in my constituency and, as we know, the figures for Covid are available for local electoral areas. Three of the four are under the national percentage for positive cases but one area is above it and it has been above it consistently. One does not need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out. It relates to housing conditions, perhaps working conditions and a number of other factors as well, yet we do not seem to be targeting those areas to help them drive the figures down. It is in economically deprived areas that the numbers are most significant. That is the case throughout Dublin, yet we do not seem to be adopting or coming up with any measures that attempt to deal specifically with that.

I know I have strayed off the Bill but these are all economically related issues. As the Minister is aware, I am a big fan of micromobility. I think it is something the Government needs to get its teeth into. I know the Minister extended the bike-to-work scheme to e-bikes but a good electric bike costs a lot of money. One has to shell out €1,500, €2,000 or €2,500 for a really good bike before one gets the tax back. There is a system in Belgium, for example, whereby if employers provide any facilities in the workplace such as shower facilities, equipment such as bicycle parking stations or bicycle lockers or if they buy the bikes themselves, it is tax relievable to 125%. There is huge take-up on that in Belgium. In fact, some employers pay their employees a very modest rate as a further incentive. A Belgian man gave a keynote speech in this convention centre a year ago at the cycling international conference, Velo-city. Belgium is the leader in this area. The man earned €70 a month from his employer for using an e-bike to go to work because he had not taken his car.

Dublin Chamber will forward a paper on micromobility in terms of e-scooters. The British Government did not introduce laws, it just introduced a trial of e-scooters for a period of up to a year. A number of constabularies in the UK have requested e-scooters. We have brought no regulations in here yet, although we have halved the capacity on buses, so people have got back into their cars, as they do not have any alternatives. Part of the reason the Government has not done it is because most Ministers have never been on an e-scooter or used an e-bike. It is not until one has that experience that one sees not just how much fun they are but how practical they are, particularly in a city or town. They are the last mile people talk about, and unlike a bus or a taxi they are incredibly convenient.

I signed up to the dublinbikes scheme this year because there is a bike station outside the convention centre and there is also a bike station outside Leinster House. One can imagine if we had an e-scooter station. We would not need our cars. That would be a sight for journalists. I am sure Miriam Lord would have a field day if she saw us but I am talking about the practicality of it. Other countries are way ahead of us on this. All it requires is a little change in the law. I would like to see a little bit more innovation. Some of my colleagues organised trials, which had to be done off the public road as e-scooters are illegal at present. Again, it is only when one has the experience of an e-scooter that they become more robust and practical. Young people would love them. We have cut back significantly on public transport, in particular in the early days of Covid. We probably cut 75% of the seats that were available and then we were up to 50% capacity and now the capacity is being cut again so people are being forced back into driving their cars.

This evening, RTÉ news reported that the High Court has approved a settlement in the case of a 15-year-old boy who developed an incurable sleep disorder and a debilitating autoimmune condition after receiving a swine flu vaccine ten years ago. By pure coincidence, I had a call with a constituent this morning who is the mother of a young girl who was administered the same vaccine, along with her mother, but who had side effects as a result. It was just a fluke. As her mother said, they were not anti-vaxxers and her husband has just had the normal flu vaccine. What she pleaded for, and what the High Court provided for today, is a certain amount of facilities.

The decision by the High Court is a ground-breaking settlement that paves the way for a further eight people. The agreement means that any financial compensation received as part of these settlements would be disregarded when assessing a person's means for eligibility for State supports such as medical cards, exam fees and student accommodation costs. When some of the parents involved appealed decisions to reject a medical card on behalf of their children, the Department of Health stated that it could not deal with them because the matter was subject to court proceedings. The reason that these issues were subject to court proceedings was that the people in question were looking for the tiniest break. They were not looking for compensation or anything like that.

The woman with whom I had a conversation this morning told me that there needs to be some identifying mark on the Department of Social Protection and HSE system that automatically provides discretion when someone like her daughter applies for either a medical card or some kind of assistance. This woman's daughter has to take a nap at school at 1 p.m. and a nap after school from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. She said that her energy levels are a bit like when one recharges a battery. She only ever gets to 30% or 40% recharge as a result of the damage the vaccine did. Our conversation was not dominated by the vaccine, it was dominated by how bloody difficult it is for her to access even the most basic of assistance and help for her daughter in terms of State support. The mother's big concern is that, while her daughter is 15 or 16 now and she is 52 or 53, in the future her daughter will require assistance. She is, otherwise, a healthy human being with the same dreams and ambitions as any other young kid. However, she will need some kind of care for the rest of her life and everything has to be fought for.

What happens is that the High Court rules in favour. It always seems to end with a High Court decision. I am hopeful because colleagues like the Ministers of State, Deputies Butler and Rabbitte, have incredibly compassionate streaks. However, the court case today really illustrated the point I am making. I was not aware that the decision on the narcolepsy issue was going to be handed down today. Will the Minister use his influence in the Government to ensure that this issue is addressed?

Survivors of the mother and baby homes were looking for this as well. I remember meeting them with the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, last year. They were looking for little things like discretionary medical cards because they might not qualify for regular cards on the basis of their normal income. They had suffered so much, whether it was psychologically, mentally or emotionally. If we could create in the system a little red tick that would indicate the position when such a person applies for additional help or for modest additional resources or would alert the State to the need to treat his or her application with discretion, it would mean that matters would be dealt with in a different way.

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