Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to be associated with the tribute to an Teachta Shortall. Thirty-two years is a long time. What is the song? Twenty-one years is long but 32 years is much longer for a female. Well done to the Deputy. I wish her the best of luck.

We have been around the Houses and the Minister has had his backbenchers in to praise his fiscal policy. If any ordinary business person operated that way, they would not be in business. I mean no disrespect to the Minister in saying that. The problem with the Government, as I see it, is that there is not one business person in the Cabinet or among the junior Ministers. As I said earlier, the Government has the same advisers, which are the big names that are wheeled out all the time. No matter what it is, whether it is investigating RTÉ or looking into reports, it is the same people, the same consultants on the same gravy train. They are the same people who advise the Minister, his predecessors and the Government. He is new in the role.

It is gimmickry, codology and mockery to give people payments. It is the same with the business scheme. Many people missed out last year and will now miss out again this year. I do not have the acronyms of the new schemes but the Minister knows what I am talking about. All business people, but especially those with small businesses, are hard pressed and very busy. Small businesses do not have staff to deal with the Government's schemes, meet deadlines and answer trick-and-a-loop questions where if they miss out by an hour, they are out.

The schemes are a failure. The Minister is giving payments to people. As I said, the Government promised to abolish the USC. I am not sure about Fianna Fáil but Fine Gael definitely promised to abolish it. How many ways are there to skin a cat? As I said, there is absolutely no difference now between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

They are trying to create a difference now for the electorate.

It is a punitive tax. I hate quoting the dead former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, God rest him, who said this tax was a temporary little arrangement. That was the expectation. People put their shoulders to the wheel, as unpalatable as it was, because the IMF was dictating policy here. It came in and people paid it. Our amendment wants to remove people earning up to €45,000 and have a report and critical analysis done as to the impacts and come back with the results of the painful amounts of money the people paid. Our request was to have an examination of the pressure it is putting on people and the lack of spending power they had in other areas because of this tax. If they had that in their pockets and were able to spend it, they might feel valued and that their work paid, that it pays to work and that it must be rewarding to go to work. They would spend that in the economy. Of course they would. This Government has thrown many small businesses to the wind and to the wolves and they are closing. I heard a report this morning on "Morning Ireland" that a shocking number of businesses have closed this year. Why can the Government not see it? They would be able to spend that money in those small businesses, whether they be cafes, restaurants, public houses, beauticians, hairdressers, barbers or you name it. They spend the money and it goes around, not into Government coffers, where it is wasted on the shocking gravy train of waste. I could go through a litany of them here with the children's hospital as the most disgraceful of all. There is the delay in the roll-out of broadband. There are the different metro schemes in Dublin. They have been talking about them for decades and the cost of anything the Government does is unbelievable. To think that Department of integration officials and the OPW could sit down in a room with me and tell me that modular cabins would cost €200,000 in a site provided by the HSE in Clonmel and would not cost any more. We now find out, four or five months later, that they will cost €446,000. I pointed out at the time that €200,000 was an outrageous amount of money. They are hardly worth €70,000. The waste goes on and on. The Taoiseach talks about €26 billion now in the HSE, up from whatever. Up and up it goes, and they have all these staff. How many of those staff are front-line doctors and nurses? What about the people waiting for orthodontic treatment and waiting for assessment for autism? What about Cara Darmody from Ardfinnan, County Tipperary, who is up here campaigning? I am sure that young girl will be here again tomorrow. What about all the different groups here daily begging and pleading, not for special treatment but for fairness? No, the special treatment is for the REITs and big businesses.

There is also the failure in housing. The backbenchers spoke about housing. Deputy English said there are more coming back into the country than going out. They are. Many of them are economic migrants, and people coming in here-----

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