Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies for their questions. On the wider piece about the use of well-being indicators, which I am very much in favour of, in fairness to this Government and all previous Governments, including ones I did not support, they have always taken into account more than economic growth, GDP and public finances. The nature of politics is that you take into account many different indicators in making your decisions, whether it is unemployment, inflation and the cost of living, homeownership, which is the ultimate form of housing security in my view, safety, crime rates or poverty rates. All those things have always been taken into account by governments in making their decisions, or at least in my experience.

We will publish the new national action plan on racism at 4 p.m. today. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth has done a huge amount of work on it and it is very positive. Deputies will have a chance to go through that during the course of the day.

Deputy Boyd Barrett asked whether we could pass a law prospectively, applying to new rental properties, whereby evictions could happen only on a no-fault basis, and my understanding is that could be done. I do not think it could be done retrospectively, applying to people who rented out properties on a different basis, but if we were to say to people that from now on, if they are renting out a property for the first time, they must accept they may never be able to gain possession of it provided the person pays their rent, we could potentially do that, but that is a very different model of a private rented sector. It is the kind of model that exists in some European countries, where almost all landlords are professional or institutional landlords and there are not the kinds of small or mom-and-pop landlords we have here, but there would be consequences. One thing we have done already is to make all new tenancies tenancies of indefinite duration. We have already made that change. If we were to say all future tenancies were going to be no-fault tenancies, that would bring about a major change in the private rental sector, but it would have other consequences. I think we would probably see an increase in vacancy rates, because the person who, for example, goes abroad for a year or two, which is pretty common, would, of course, never rent out their apartment or house if they would never be able to recover it unless the person did not pay their rent. We would probably see people who currently might buy a property for their kid to live in when they become a student in college buying it and leaving it vacant because that was the purpose of them buying it. We might even see people willing to pay the vacancy tax rather than not be able to move back into their own house after having to go away for six months or two years. We would have to think of all those kinds of knock-on consequences that would arise from a pretty fundamental change like that, but I am sure it could only be done prospectively. I do not think we could say to somebody who bought a house to live in ten or 15 years ago and is renting it out for a particular period that they could never regain possession of it unless the tenant did not pay their rent or was engaging in antisocial behaviour. I do not see how that would be either right or constitutional.

On the issue of mental health, absolutely, mental health is a huge part of well-being and we will have to see how we could integrate it into this framework. I saw a survey the other day which said that Ireland is the 14th happiest country in the world, which is not bad out of 200 countries. Obviously, I would like us to be in the top ten - as we are in almost everything in the world, believe it or not - or certainly in the top 20. Obviously, different surveys work in different ways and use different methodologies.

In respect of the documents Deputy Bacik raised, I will have to check up on that. I do not know where we are in terms of that but I will certainly do that.

Finally, I was asked about how the well-being framework works into the budget. We have committed to featuring the well-being framework at relevant points in the budget cycle. It was the theme of the national economic dialogue last year and the analysis also featured in the summer economic statement and in budget day documentation. It is intended this will be an annual contribution to the budget which will feed into a broader discussion of the impacts of budgetary decisions. For example, this approach provides evidence for the identification of potential priorities, highlighting progress, or a lack thereof, across a wide range of policy issues that are important for longer term quality of life and sustainability over the medium term. Work is also ongoing in the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform to further embed a well-being perspective into expenditure decisions.

The Department has published a working paper that locates wellbeing within the context of the budgetary timeline and, in particular, proposes an approach that provides a cross-governmental description of current and capital expenditure in terms of wellbeing dimensions. I look forward to the impact the framework will provide to the budget every year as we use it to look beyond economic indicators and assess how Government policies are best serving the people of Ireland.

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