Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also wish to refer to Deputy Ó Cuív's speech, which I found interesting and impressive. I hope that all of these references to his speech by members of the Opposition do not land him in trouble within his party. Somewhat unusually for a politician, he demonstrated an ability to learn from the past, including mistakes, when this country relied on an orthodoxy and a group mentality. The Minister of State will recall that voices questioned the orthodoxy at the time. Indeed, very few of us who were involved in politics at the time will forget it. Those voices were drowned out and told that there would be a soft landing. People who questioned whether putting all our eggs in the property basket was wise were advised by the then Taoiseach that perhaps they should go and kill themselves. Others were described, not by the then Taoiseach, but by his Minister for Finance, as pinko liberals. Unfortunately, the pinko liberals came to dominate, but they were not Irish ones. They were sent in by the troika when we lost our financial independence. Like me, the Acting Chairman will clearly recall having to implement budgets on the advice of the IMF. Based on that experience, I view advice from the IMF with a little more caution than perhaps Deputy Harkin would. They were savage budgets because no one would lend to us, owing to us being broke. That is where we are heading now with our current borrowing.

Like other Deputies, I accept that businesses have been affected considerably by Covid-19. Covid-19 is a virus, so I do not buy into the wartime phraseology. It is a virus, no more, no less, but it is a serious virus and one that is affecting our economy. Our reaction as a State and as an economy to Covid-19 is doing even more damage, though. Not only are we borrowing money to seek to stimulate the economy to pull out of this, but almost uniquely in Europe we are actively closing sectors of our economy and borrowing money to compensate them for the fact that we have done so. I disagree with Deputy Harkin because I do not believe this is right. While I accept that there would be a significant downturn in many sectors of the economy without Government action, actively closing sectors of the economy and borrowing money to compensate them is economic suicide. The pandemic will cause a recession in every country in the West. Keynesian economics would suggest that the way to deal with a recession is to borrow money to generate growth again, but we are nowhere near that point. We are still at the stage of trying to deal with this situation. Borrowing money to compensate is not feasible. I share Deputy Ó Cuív's concern that, in the long term, there is a risk of hyperinflation. I look forward to the Minister of State addressing this issue.

We see the graphs and are told that Ireland is fine. We are in the middle of the borrowings table in the eurozone at 6% of GDP, which places us alongside countries that we want to be like, but we are not in the middle in the real picture. If one views our borrowings as a percentage of GNI, they represent 11%. One could say that we were comparing apples and oranges. Spain would be the next highest country, but its GDP and GNI are not very different. It is in the Netherlands, Ireland and Luxembourg where there is a massive disparity between GDP and GNI. No matter which way we look at the situation, our borrowings as a percentage of GNI are at the top of the list in Europe.

It is not as if our GDP will not come under pressure as time moves on either, given that multinationals will come under pressure. Where the sweetheart deals that we offer multinationals are concerned, one can only eat someone else's lunch for so long. My wife tells me a funny story. She is slightly older than her younger brother and kept eating his sweets. Her father talks of her shock when she pushed her brother but he said she could not eat his sweets anymore. That is what we in Ireland are doing. We have to get real about that. What we are doing is not popular. No more than toddlers eating one another's sweets, countries eating one another's lunches is not popular.

Brexit will bring major difficulties, but when it is out of the way, there will be a move on our corporate tax base, in particular the earnings of companies that operate digitally. Countries are going to want a share of the revenues that are generated in their territories, be it a large economy like France, Germany or Spain or a smaller economy. Everyone will want a fair share of the revenues, and we will have to give the other EU states their shares eventually. That debate has largely been had and lost. We are not seeing its effects yet, but we will.

I am concerned about where we are heading economically, but that is the macro picture. Let me revert to the micro picture. We are spending vast sums of money, some of it necessarily, large amounts of it unnecessarily, to deal with Covid-19 and its effects. The arrival of Covid-19 is not within our control and I will not pretend for a moment that it is, but how the State reacts to it is. There was a committee of 19 Deputies that I had the privilege of chairing. It made a number of recommendations on how to deal with this matter. It was generally accepted that Covid-19 had laid bare structural weaknesses in our State, one of which was the over-reliance on institutional and congregated care for our elderly. We are not unique in that over-reliance, given that many other countries have the same problem, but we need to move away from the only option being care in a nursing home or other congregated setting and towards care in the community. I welcome the allocation in the budget of 5 million additional hours.

Like all headline figures, it sounds absolutely fantastic. It is a major inroad but let us break it down. A full home care package is 21 hours per week. It is not unreasonable to take the 21 hours per week and multiply it by the number of weeks in the year, since most people have home care packages for 52 weeks per year. When we do that, we find that the package provides home care for 4,579 extra people. That is welcome - I welcome it. However, at the start of this year we had 8,000 people waiting for home care packages in the State. While the measure will have an effect, it will not deal with the necessity to provide home care packages to people.

The issue of the fair deal has not been properly dealt with in respect of farm families or businesses more generally. That is an omission from this budget. People correctly expected that something might be done by this Government given the noises made in the last Dáil. I do not mean that in a pejorative way, rather I am referring to the advances that were made in the last Dáil towards having a fair deal package. Of course there is no fair deal package for people in respect of home care. There is an incentive to put people into an institution or a congregated setting rather than dealing with them in their communities. That was certainly something those in Fianna Fáil, when they were in opposition, made considerable noise about. I have heard far less about it, unfortunately, since they came to the Government. Anyway, it remains a priority for this State, one that needs to be dealt with.

I wish to move to an issue that I highlighted during the budget. A total of €38 million was allocated for additional mental health services during the budget. Again, I welcome that, as I welcomed the additional 5 million home care hours. However, like the home care hours, it is not quite what it seems, because €38 million was allocated for additional mental health services but only €12 million was allocated for the existing level of services. Everyone knows that the existing level of services costs far more than €12 million to provide. In fact, the €38 million is not for additional services. Some of it will be used to provide for existing services, but not all of it, so there is an additional spend on mental health. I wish to be clear that I welcome this. I look forward to hearing the Minister of State deal with the macro points I have raised.

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