Feargal Quinn (Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to speak and welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Finance, Deputy Parlon, to the House. I have a suspicious mind and regard a budget to be part of a wider story. Sometimes its effect, if not its actual purpose, is to divert attention from the wider story. In most years, including this one, I regard the Minister as being akin to a baker who bakes a cake and puts beautiful icing on top of it. Consequently, when one buys the cake, one's attention is distracted from its ingredients by one's concentration on the icing. Hence, for the 13 years in which I have been a Member of this House, I have looked with suspicion on every budget I have encountered, including this one.

Consequently, I have devised a sort of wish list which I consider, acting somewhat like a school headmaster, to ascertain how many marks I would award to its various aspects. The first item on the wish list concerns the long term. Recently, I spoke in the House in another debate on the danger of complacency, of beginning to believe that the Celtic tiger will continue and that we can take it easy. I am quite concerned about the long term and I have considered the budget to gauge whether there is a danger that the Minister is complacent. On the basis of this budget, my mind has been put at rest to a large extent, particularly, as Senator Brady noted a few minutes ago, with regard to climate change, the Montreal conference, the Kyoto Protocol and the steps the Minister has taken in respect of biofuels. He has taken a long-term view and is taking such matters into account.

The second point I considered in that regard was the question of tax reliefs. In contrast to Senator Bannon's remarks on tax reliefs, I am impressed by the Minister's plans in this respect. He will publish the performance of the various schemes in the Finance Bill to assess whether they work. I gather that he has had consultants conduct an examination of the schemes to establish which are worthwhile. I believe that on examination, a great number of them will be found to be working and to have worked well.

The danger is that because they have been used to enable some people to avoid paying a great deal of tax, particularly wealthy people, a degree of envy has led people to believe they should be stopped because they are unfair. While they may not be entirely fair from a taxation point of view, they have facilitated development in a large number of the intended areas. Hence, while the Minister has questioned whether tax relief on hotels, urban renewal and other areas is still required, he has provided time for such schemes to be completed. It seems to me, particularly in the case of student accommodation, that when it is examined, it may turn out to have been a good investment which should be continued on that basis.

My second wish list item concerns the minimum wage. I am concerned that a large number of people never progress from unemployment. To an extent, this is influenced by the minimum wage and some jobs do not exist at a certain rate. Hence, it seems to me that removing everyone on the minimum wage from the tax net is a great achievement, which I welcome. The National Economic and Social Forum recently produced a report on unemployment which referred to these people who are continually left at the bottom of the pile and never get a job. They are always left out.

My third concern is education. I must give the Minister full marks in this area, particularly with regard to third level and the new term "fourth level" which I had not heard before. He deserves full marks for the recognition of incentives for third level and the fourth PhD level, and the inclusion of the institutes of technology and other third level educational institutions.

However, he gets zero marks for educational disadvantage. There is no mention of it in the Budget Statement. This really concerns me because when I speak about the people who are left out of employment, who never got onto the first rung of the ladder, these are the people who fell behind at school. We must invest far more but we are not doing it. There is no mention of it in the statement. That is important for the long-term unemployed and those who never got into employment. That should be mentioned but the Minister has not done anything about that area of education.

Neither was there any mention of broadband even though Forfás recently published a report on broadband coverage in Ireland. We are at the bottom of the pile in Europe. I am not sure how the Minister will solve this but we have discussed it in the past. Ten and five years ago we discussed how Ireland had the opportunity to be to the forefront in this area. The governments of South Korea and Singapore determined that their priority would be to put their countries at the top of the information society and they did something about it. However, this Government has turned its back on the issue. It appears to have fallen over the horizon and the Government has not noticed. It is not mentioned in the budget. We are at the bottom of the pile and we can and must do something about it if we are to compete in the future.

My fifth concern was child care. My concern was that with so much noise being made about child care, the Minister might be in danger of taking steps that were against the interests of those who decide to stay at home to mind their children. The danger was that the Minister would get the balance wrong. There is a serious problem with child care. The Minister has got the balance right in this area. The ideal from society's point of view is that the parents of children are given options. In this case, the Minister appears to have got the balance right and to have given options. For those who wish to go out to work, there are clearly steps in the right direction. There are also steps in the right direction for those who wish to stay at home and mind their children.

My final concern is how well we spend our money. There was some reference to it in the budget but I am disappointed that we have not provided a good response to that issue. It has not been given priority in the budget. I believe that, by any standards, we get bad value for the money we spend on the health service, infrastructure and across the range of public spending. The Minister for Finance has a comforting mantra about this which we heard again this afternoon but there is little evidence that he is doing anything about it. In the past the former Deputy and Minister, Mr. McCreevy, put this high on his agenda. He spoke strongly about value for money. I might be wrong but I did not see it get any priority today. Until we have in place a system that guarantees to deliver better value for money from public spending, any budget exercise such as today's will largely be a waste of time.

Taking on the role of the headmaster in my school, I decided what marks to give the Minister. I will not give them in figures but when I was in school I received a report which stated: "Tries hard; could do better." That is the case with this budget. I measured it against my wish list of six main points, and each of those contained two or three minor points as well. It is comparatively easy for the Minister to do the right thing with the bountiful amount of money available to him. It is easy for him to be generous. It is also easy, however, to do the wrong thing, as I have seen happen in the past. In general, the Minister has got it right. He left out some areas on which I would like him to concentrate but it is not too late to do something about them in the Finance Bill.