The towns in which the smoky coal ban is due to come into effect are home to 156,000 people. As the Minister is aware, they will not be added to the list until next September. Again, we are laggards in the implementation of essential health measures. The towns not covered by the smoky coal ban are home to 356,000 people. We need to reflect on this. When it comes to clean air and water, this Fine Gael Government is showing the back of its hand to 356,000 people in Dunboyne, Arranmore, Nenagh and other such places. Enniscorthy has a population of 11,381. That town will be subject to the smoky coal ban next September. What about Gorey, in which almost 9,822 people live? It is wonderful that we will start to clean up the air in Enniscorthy next September, nine months from now, but I do not understand the Minister's reasoning in the context of bypassing Gorey, particularly when the regulations are exactly the same. Leaving 356,000 people behind is really bad.
The Government has performed very poorly in the management and organisation of the health service. This is despite the fact that yesterday we voted for expenditure of €17 billion, the largest health budget in the history of the State. However the Government could cut ill-health figures and waiting lists at a stroke if it only had the courage to do so by introducing a ban on smoky coal and ensuring the presence of clean air and clean water in major towns and villages. As I said, it is really difficult to know why Enniscorthy is included under the smoky coal ban but Gorey, with just 1,000 fewer inhabitants, has been left out. That does not make any sense, particularly when we consider all those children suffering from asthma, the older people who have suffered from that condition all their lives and the many who will contract late-onset asthma in their 50s and 60s. Families all over the country are listening to their children wheezing and trying to catch their breath tonight because it is so wet and miserable out there. Families will be listening to their elderly people wheezing too, and the trolleys in hospitals will be full of those suffering from various cardiac and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD, problems because this Fine Gael Government refuses to act. What cowardice.
We are told that the Government has legal advice but it refuses to say in any detail what it is or from where it comes. Is this the legal opinion of a single individual barrister? I do not think it is the opinion of the Attorney General, because if it was the Government might have the courage to tell us a little bit more about it. As a former Minister, I know, as does anyone who has held ministerial office, that advice comes to Governments in all shapes and sizes. If a Government wants to, it can seek out the legal advice that best suits its desired outcome. This is what the Government seems to have done. If the legal advice was as substantial as it suggests, the Government would have told us a lot more about it.
We have evidence that the smoky coal used in Ireland is between 4% and 6% sulphur. Sulphur is the most dangerous component when it comes to air pollution and damage to people's health and lungs. There is a massive smuggling industry that takes smoky coal across the Border and sells it not just in the towns where it is legal and will remain so, like Dunboyne, but in housing estates all over the country. Those of us who campaigned in the recent by-election will know that in certain big estates one can literally taste the smoky coal in the air. Perhaps the Fine Gael people did not do those walkabouts in estates. I ask the Minister to have some courage and ban smoky coal throughout the country.
]]>Will the Taoiseach enlighten us as to how the appointment of Mr. Murphy, while he was a Deputy, came about? Did the EPP advise Fine Gael, perhaps through the party secretariat, that the appointment would be made? Why did nobody raise a query as to how somebody could have two full-time jobs, one in this House and the other with the EPP? the latter is not an honorary job such as being a vice president or president of a party group. It is a full-time, active job.
Will the Taoiseach state whether carbon credits are used to offset his travel on the Government jet?
]]>What is the Taoiseach doing to stop the massive cross-Border trade in smuggling smoky coal? On a cold night at the moment in various estates in Dublin and towns throughout the country, one can taste the sulphur in the coal. This is causing up to 1,500 avoidable deaths in Ireland a year and is a misery for the children affected by asthma. I encourage the Taoiseach to meet representatives of the Asthma Society of Ireland because they will tell him the individual stories of the children who, on bad nights, possibly like tonight, are not able to breathe. It is putting massive pressures on children's health services. Who is the Taoiseach in hock to that he will not bring in a ban-----
]]>Having spoken against the creation of the rainy day fund, I must explain that I opposed the Minister's decision to raid the strategic investment fund for €1.5 billion because this country has another crisis, in addition to Brexit, that relates to capital funding. I am referring to the housing crisis. If the Minister walks around Dublin city tonight, within ten minutes he will have seen five or six people sleeping rough and begging on all the streets leading to Grafton Street. It is really hurtful for many people to see this in the capital city of a country as rich as Ireland. The strategic investment fund has a clear purpose. It was established when the previous Government was in power. One of its potential uses is to put appropriate capital funding into certain areas. This would include putting appropriate funding into the housing market. We have a great deal of State land in this country at the moment, but we have no capacity to fund social housing on that land. The Minister has locked away €1.5 billion which was previously in a strategic investment fund. This is an example of playing around with money. It is an accounting trick that involves transferring money from one set of reserves to another set of reserves. The difference is that there are strict controls on what the rainy day fund reserves may be used for. As those reserves came from the strategic investment fund, they could have been used for a variety of significant purposes. They could have been used to make a key investment in the development of housing for those who need it so badly. Having set up, funded and seeded the rainy day fund as recently as October or November of this year, the Minister is now crying off from his original plans. In fairness to him, he announced on budget day that he would do this, but all I can say is that it makes a joke of Fine Gael's stewardship of the economy.
]]>In regard to the Minister of State's responsibility in respect of insurance, it is a pity that the Government has not seen fit to try to make some arrangements for all of the businesses, community organisations and childcare facilities now under serious threat in terms of their future functioning because the Irish insurance market, despite being extremely profitable, is in disarray again under the watch of this Government. The Minister of State's colleague, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, announced that she was astonished that in some cases insurance fees for crèches and such like had increased from €3,000 to €8,000 to €10,000 because of companies leaving the market.
A report was published yesterday by the Central Bank of Ireland in regard to how insurance companies are gouging ordinary people who are paying motor insurance and do not make false claims. The people who make the false claims should be dealt with, but they are a tiny minority among all of the people who properly pay their insurance and do not make false claims. It would have been possible to offer temporary insurance to many of the organisations to which I am referring, including crèches, using the facility of the Irish Public Bodies Insurance company, which is a State owned insurance company, to avoid the risk of valuable community and social enterprises and small businesses closing while the Government seeks to address the real problems caused by the difficulties in insurance. I am sure the Minister of State has met many of these business operators. The situation in regard to crèches coming into the new year is a disaster. The Government should consider the Labour Party proposal in regard to the Irish Public Bodies Insurance company. Such provision could have been easily made through the mechanism of these or other provisions and decisions of the Government.
The Labour Party will not be objecting to the passage of this legislation because it is necessary to make payments but it is a black mark against the Government that insurance is in chaos yet again and many valuable community services, particularly crèches, may be forced to close for lack of insurance.
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