Barry Ward (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

It is said that these things should always be done like sandwiches, so I have both criticism to make and praise to give. First, I acknowledge what Deputy Jim O'Callaghan has done as Minister for justice. I have long campaigned for the restoration of criminal legal aid rates. It has been a myopic approach by the Department and my Government not to restore them. Criminal barristers and solicitors appear to have been the last sector not to have rates restored after the FEMPI cuts that reduced payment for providing criminal legal aid to a very small amount, which has meant that people are not going into that area of law. Some will say they do not care about that, because the only people who care about criminal legal aid are criminals and lawyers. Not everyone makes a distinction between the two categories, but it is an important distinction. This is an area that allows criminal justice to function, so I welcome that there will be full restoration during the year. That is a positive step.

The next bit of the sandwich is inheritance tax. I am really disappointed that nothing has been done about that. I have raise this issue previously, particularly in relation to my constituency. In Dún Laoghaire and much of Dublin, because of the cost of houses, families are massively disadvantaged relative to their cousins in areas outside Dublin, where property prices are lower.

It is a very significant discrepancy between the two and I felt it was time to bring us back to where we had been pre-crash, at the €0.5 million threshold for inheritance directly by families because at the moment there is a situation in areas like Dún Laoghaire where families have to sell the family home because they cannot afford to pay that inheritance tax. I would have liked to have seen something done in that area. I also want to acknowledge the campaign to support people who do not have children. I note that nothing has been done in that area either. This is a double-decker sandwich.

The next thing I want to come to relates to the rainy day funds. One of the things we overlook very often in this polity is praise for future planning. It is one of the things this Government has been really good about. I want to particularly want to mention the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, who has consistently ensured that we are putting together a fund which will look after us in the future not just for economic shocks that are unforeseen but which we know are coming all the same, but specifically for the pension cliff that is coming. We know we are moving towards a situation with an ageing population where more people are going to be pensioners and fewer people will be working, drawing a wage and funding the expense that is the pension scheme. We need to make sure we are in a position to look after people who have retired and are just as entitled to have a good quality of living as the rest of us. Therefore I welcome the fact that more money has been put aside for those.

The next part of the sandwich is about the 9% VAT rate. I support the 9% rate. It is really important to support small indigenous industries that occupy space in every town, village and corner of this country. There are over 20,000 restaurants, hotels and pubs in this country which need the support of the reduction in the VAT rate. I support it but I do not support it for large companies or companies that do not need it. I know there have been a lot of great soundbites from the Opposition as to where that lies. That is good politics but it is not necessarily good budgeting. I have argued for a long time that we need a scheme that is actually targeted at those who need it. There is no point in giving a reduction to a 9% VAT rate to McDonald's, Burger King, Costa, Starbucks and the big coffee chains. They do not need it. I am not saying they should close down. What I am saying is we should be targeting it at those businesses which do need it. Every one of us in this room has small cafés, small restaurants and pubs in our constituencies which desperately need this support, and that is why I welcome the move, but I would much rather it to have been targeted at those businesses. I acknowledge that there cannot be differentiated tax rates for different businesses within the sector and there is no legitimate basis for doing that, but we could have put in place through this budget a scheme that would give a VAT rebate to companies or entities that exist in a particular space in the economy. One could pick a metric - I think turnover is probably the most reasonable - and decide that if a company's turnover is higher than a certain level, it will not get a rebate, but a rebate scheme would be put in place to give back to small businesses with turnover below that rate the VAT the company would have saved had the rate been reduced to 9%. In that way, we would keep the VAT rate at 13.5% but there would a rebate scheme for those businesses which need it. I am not saying the larger businesses should close down or that the large hotel groups which fund our tourism industry and support people coming to every corner of this country should be closed; I am just saying they do not need the 9% VAT rate to survive and we should have been targeting the 9% VAT campaign towards those businesses which genuinely do need it. I think of two restaurants in my own area in Blackrock. The first is Big Mike’s, which was a well-known restaurant in Blackrock shopping centre but closed its doors last month. It was very successful on the face of it but just could not survive in the economic climate. The second was a much smaller but really high-quality Italian restaurant in Deansgrange called Fellini’s. Emila and Paolo, who ran that family restaurant, employing local people and providing a fabulous service, have also closed their doors and that is regrettable. They would have benefited from the 9% VAT rate. It is exactly those types of businesses that we are trying to safeguard.

Going back to the rest of the sandwich, gabhaim buíochas leis an Rialtas as ucht an mhéid airgid atá curtha isteach aige sa Ghaeilge. Is fada an t-am atáimid ag labhairt le heagraíochtaí cosúil le Conradh na Gaeilge agus na daoine atá i bhfabhar na Gaeilge inár gceantair ar fud na tíre. Tá níos mó ná €41 milliún ar fáil acu anois agus tá sé sin thar a bheith tábhachtach. Caithfimid níos mó airgid a chur ar fáil don Ghaeloideachas. Tá díomá orm a rá nach bhfuil ach dhá Ghaelscoil i mo Dháilcheantar féin i nDún Laoghaire, cé go bhfuil a lán daoine a labhraíonn Gaeilge sa bhaile agus gach lá. Caithfimid níos mó roghanna a chur ar fáil do dhaoine gur mhaith leo a bpáistí a chur i nGaeloideachas, bíodh sin i nGaelscoileanna nó Gaelcholáistí. Tá súil agam go bhfuilimid chun roinnt oibre a dhéanamh ar an ábhar sin.

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