Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As the week goes on and I listen to myself talking, I could say, "Is there any point?" I read the summer economic statement and I thank the Minister for setting out the parameters for what is possible within a budget. I was inspired to talk today having also read that HSE officials had attended the launch of a 60-bed private hospital in Benidorm. I did not realise the HSE has a commercial unit. The head of the HSE commercial unit called this an "exciting" development with "lucrative" possibilities for private developers in the hospital. This is in Benidorm. In the past we associated Benidorm with holidays, if we could afford it. This private hospital is part of a new major healthcare agreement. The HSE will pay up to the cost of what it would cost in Ireland but the procedures will be done in Benidorm. The general manager of the commercial unit of the HSE said this was a very "exciting" opportunity and that "It is a lucrative and very valid market for private providers".

I am aware the Minister is a very honest and hard-working Minister but can he seriously stand over that "lucrative" and "very valid" assessment? This is from the head of the commercial unit of the HSE, while I come from a city, and I am not exaggerating, where someone has been on a trolley for seven days. People have been waiting for two years to get a triage assessment. That could be done in the private hospital in Kilkenny or whatever hospital they use in Sligo. That is a two-year wait for a triage assessment and then a further two-year wait for the surgery, if the person is lucky. This is a city that saw two of its operating theatres go out of action in 2017. It took until this year to get them back in action. It seems to me the Health Service Executive is functioning to fund the private market. In my time, land was rezoned - although I did not and I refused to do it - for a further second private hospital in Galway. My memory might be a bit hazy so I will take the lower figures, but this was done on the basis that 20% of the beds at that private hospital would be kept as public beds. That was the mantra from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil at the time to justify the rezoning of land for a private hospital. Not one single bed for the public materialised in that hospital.

Now we have the latest figures. I look at this statement and I am overwhelmed with the figures. If the truth be known, I am out of my depth with the figures they are so big. I tried again and I read the statement a second time. My colleague beside me thinks I am not 100% that I would read the document a second time to try to get it. This is what I did, however, to try to understand it and to be fair to the Minister. Then I see the story about the private hospital in Benidorm and I say, mother of Jesus, what is going on here? What have we learned, if anything? We seem to have learned nothing.

Let me be positive, first, in relation to it. Yes, the Minister and the Government did the right thing in supporting businesses and households during the Covid pandemic. I understand that more than €37 billion was provided. It is interesting it says most of it went on that. I do not know where the other funds went. In any event, I welcome that and it was positive. It was the right thing to do. It kept up the connection with the employers and with employment. I absolutely welcome that.

I then look at this document and see that it clearly sets out the challenges we are facing, including high debt, the cost of borrowing, which is related, and the other challenges. I do not like the term "ageing population", perhaps because I am going there myself. It is very negative. An ageing population is in there as a challenge. The rolling out of Sláintecare is there. There would be no need of Sláintecare at all if we get more hospitals like in Benidorm and elsewhere. We would not need Sláintecare because we could function without hospitals and export all of our patients abroad. People would have the added advantage of getting vitamin D.

Challenge 4 is exposure to corporation tax, which I will return to, and challenge 5 is the need to avoid adding to inflation. One euro in eight of tax comes from ten firms and one euro in four of tax receipts comes from foreign direct investment. I realise more than anyone, coming from Galway city, the importance of foreign companies but they must always be balanced. It seems to me this Government and the previous Government utterly ignored the risks of putting all our eggs in one basket. Suddenly, we are beginning to look at this because the Central Bank and other reputable organisations have told us it is not possible to keep going on like that. Now we need to think about what we will do with the extra and unexpected revenue we got this year. It was obvious even to me, and I am no expert in finance, that relying on this was unwise.

IDA Ireland and Enterprise Ireland brought in industry, which was very welcome but it was not done in an overall, integrated and sustainable way of doing business. I am thinking of Galway where all the industry - an outdated word - went into one industrial estate rather than being mixed across the city. It has created enormous problems with traffic and so on. It has one entrance and one exit. Councillors such as me at that time were left with egg on our faces although we had nothing to do with it, but we took the blame from the angry people on the ground who were stuck in traffic jams which were created by tunnel vision that anything from abroad was good and industry was good - and I am the first to say that - but it was not done in a greater context.

Have we learned anything? I do not think so. We talk about the rebound being better than we expected but Covid and the climate change emergency has told us we cannot rebound; we must change. We cannot go back to keeping going at the pace we were going but quite the opposite. I am extremely worried that we have learned nothing about sustainability and what that means in terms of climate change. The statement sets out no analysis whatever on the cost of the targets we have to meet. I am utterly on the Government's side about climate change measures but it must be done in a way that brings along people on the ground who are way ahead of us. Twenty years ago they were doing the right thing in Galway until everything was privatised. We can never do it on the basis of punishing the ordinary person who is doing their best and letting the polluters get away with it.

My head is like a jigsaw. I am thinking of all these figures and the legislation we are pushing through the Dáil this week which puts extra burdens on local authorities. We met the officials yesterday and some of the elected members. There is a shortfall of €20 million in Galway County Council and it has a shortage of staff. I have lost my note but I will be conservative by saying a shortage of 120 staff. Yesterday the Government was eloquently talking about preplanning meetings but there is no such thing because there are no staff to roll-out the climate change objectives. There are none. That is the reality on the ground.

Then there is housing. We are told by the experts that we must watch out for inflation. Listen to the Simon Communities. This thriving economy thinks it is okay for there to be collateral damage of 10,325 people homeless. Presumably that is just a little footnote to this economic and fiscal strategy. How can any economist or expert on finance say we are thriving if 10,325 people, and rising, are in homeless accommodation? How can any economist say we are thriving when not a single unit in Galway city or county comes in under the HAP or revised HAP scheme? I made this point briefly during the debate on the no confidence motion. We need a profoundly different way of doing things. We need free public transport. The Government has gone some way with free school transport but only for a year. We need free transport and we will save ourselves in the long term if we do that. We need public housing on public land and nothing else. That is the message that should be given and the order given to the Land Development Agency. We need public childcare. The statement has a picture of it and little pieces of a jigsaw where we are giving a little bit of money there. The population has risen to 5.2 million, which is great. Within that the number working is at a record high. An extra 100,000 women are working but we still have no public childcare.

I could go on but I am over my time and I keep to the rules.

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