John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The biggest challenge facing the country following the allocation of moneys through this budget is how that budget is managed. Like the previous speaker, I have serious doubts as to whether or not the State and all of its agents have the wherewithal and systems in place to give us value for money and efficient delivery. I give the example of the school bus system. The school bus system has been debated at length in this Chamber, every single year since I was elected, yet has never been put out to tender. We deal with the complaints in such a way that you put a Band-Aid here, another there and then some of the problems go away because people are busy with their own lives. However, they carry the can of a bad school transport system. The system from Mullinavat, County Kilkenny to Abbey Community College in Waterford is one such route that needs to be looked at. I have asked the Minister, and I know Bus Éireann has been contacted, but those children are still not being collected for school. Forty families are affected by that. Yet if my figure is correct, €8 million extra has been allocated in the budget to Bus Éireann. I am asking the Minister to undertake a root and branch overhaul of the school transport system to ensure that no child is left without transport to school - no child that deserves it. All children should be treated the same. I am asking him to undertake that the school route from Mullinavat to Waterford be approved now, rather than waiting for months and having umpteen different cross words with Ministers and so on in this House.

I asked for a simple thing last year and the year before. It was that we look at the marriage exemption limit for the elderly to ensure they were sufficiently outside of the tax bracket to keep what money they had, and ensure budget decisions would not negatively impact on them. That has not changed in this budget. I am disappointed about that. Attached to that issue is the fact that if a partner dies the remaining partner will pay more tax on less money the following year. I refer in particular to those who have State pensions and work pensions. The section 42 report concerns a lot of middle-ranking health officials, and it was through the Labour Court and elsewhere. The Government was told, I think ten years ago, to pay them the money that was owed. I recently asked a parliamentary question of the Department of Health, and it said it could not tell me if it had €42 million set aside to pay former and existing employees, who were dealt with under this report. However, under freedom of information, FOI, it was found out that there is €42 million, and the person holding up the payment is the most expensive Secretary General in any Department. Where is the fairness in that? I want to see them paid, and I want the issue dealt with.

We allocated a huge amount of money to the fuel scheme. I can tell the House that before the budget was announced, the coal merchants were telling us that in most cases in different counties, people were ordering their coal online from Northern Ireland. It was coming in packed in unmarked bags and being delivered under the noses of the Revenue and the officials from every county council. Those fuel merchants are asking for fair play. They are asking that Revenue and the officials already employed, for whom this is supposedly already part of their work, to put a stop to the illegal ordering of coal and delivery of coal products to the South from Northern Ireland. It is something that has to be dealt with.

I turn to health, and I agree with colleagues who have said that the health budget is a fiction. It needs to be looked at and debated in this House. It needs to be pulled apart because the first people to suffer, for example, will be cancer patients who rely on voluntary community groups to give them support. We are told that funding for all of their services, in particular Cois Nore in County Kilkenny, is now under threat. Where is all the money gone? Why is a group, which is literally doing the work of the HSE, not being funded to allow it activate itself to its full potential?

The Government talks about employing extra gardaí and extra members of the Defence Forces, which is all very welcome. However, I ask about the current employees of the State in An Garda Síochána and the Defence Forces. Why can we not put in place a salary and wage that is attractive enough to keep them in their places and give them proper pay and conditions? I suggest that in all of this it is the inefficiency of the State and the lack of understanding of what needs to be done.

The cost of living measures are to be welcomed. However, let us look at pensioners who are paying differential rent. Your social welfare benefit goes up, and then your rent goes up as well. We have to look at disregards - to disregard various incomes, in particular from social welfare, to give people a chance. We need to ensure they are not calculated in the context of differential rent. My last plea is for every county council to be immediately examined to see how much funding they require to deal with flooding issues in their counties.

I ask the Minister to ensure that money is allocated in Carlow-Kilkenny to deal with all the flood issues we have seen in recent days.

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