Sean Barrett (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I second the amendment. I welcome the Minister, the debate and the success at this time. Few people have been more active in the field of start-ups up and down the country than the Minister and great credit is due to him and his agencies. I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee of Inquiry into the Banking Crisis. I hope that when that report is complete, it will make a contribution as well to the future economic development of the country because that was a major disaster that cost €64 billion. The Governor of the Central Bank estimates that the net cost might be €40 billion but it is €40 billion for which we could have found alternative uses. Mistakes were made in housing, banking, the construction sector and the auditing and regulation of those activities which imposed huge costs on the rest of us. When the report comes out, the reform agenda that came up in 2011 must focus on those sectors. In his optimistic vein, the Minister highlights many areas where we have been doing very well but it was a handful of sectors and a relatively small number of people who imposed such terrible costs on the wider economy from which we are now starting to recover, which is so welcome.

Approximately 60% of people now go on to third level education of some kind. This is a major asset in attracting industries here. It is an optimistic one because for the €3,000 fee the student pays and the €8,000, on average, added by the Government, one gets an international ranking in education for €10,000 or €11, 000 which would cost €40,000 to €50,000 were one to attempt to buy the same ranking in education in a place like California. The fact that all these extremely talented young people will be entering the labour force must be an advantage to the country. They will be a significant asset to the country.

There is one gap. The Minister's colleagues have been edging towards it in trying to develop policies. We have about a dozen apprenticeships in this country. There are hundreds of apprenticeships in Switzerland, Norway and Germany, which are very prosperous countries. In these countries, these apprenticeships are within firms and many of the people recruited to firms become chief executives and occupy senior positions. It is something we have been missing out on.

Every single policy must be compared with alternatives. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has a major role to play in this regard. We can never go back to throwing money at problems, particularly at election time. There are techniques of evaluation and cost-benefit analysis which should be used. I would like to see all the alternatives put before the people. We should put the studies up, possibly have a six-month period to discuss what the cost-benefit analysis is and then make the choice rather than rely on the haphazard way decisions on public expenditure were sometimes made in the past. When one makes mistakes like that, one is left with a bundle of debt and there is no asset and no income from it, so we cannot go down that road again. It is part of reforming ourselves.

In a country where 98% of post is delivered the next day, I am not sure we need the new post code system. I have not seen any cost-benefit analysis of it. I hear that we are the only country that does not have it. I speak as someone whose constituency includes voters in Northern Ireland where I can never remember the seven-digit code. From writing to constituents, I know that Clones is in County Monaghan and that there is a 98% chance that a letter will be delivered there the next day so is there a benefit from that particular project, about which another presentation was made yesterday? We cannot go back just because somebody thinks it is a good idea, that we should promote it and that it makes us the same as any other country. We made a lot of those mistakes in the past. Let us not do it again.

As the Minister is aware, I am opposed to the sale of Aer Lingus. Tourism, financial services and pharmaceuticals must be part of the development of this country. Routing people through Heathrow, as the Scots must do, does not seem to be the way we want those people to come here. I compliment Aer Lingus on having developed nine routes on the north Atlantic from a country of 4.6 million people. By contrast, there are no north Atlantic services from Scotland, which has 5.3 million people; none from Manchester, which has about 15 million people; and none from Birmingham, which has about ten million people.Aer Lingus has generated 11 million passengers from its home population of 4 million while British Airways, the takeover airline, generates 38 million from a home population of 64 million. In 1948 the former Taoiseach, Sean Lemass, hoped, with a fleet of five Constellations, to get on the north Atlantic route. The incoming Government sold the aeroplanes and we did not get back to that route for ten years. There is a 40% increase in income per passenger and a 23% increase in volume of passengers on the north Atlantic route. That kind of development should be taken into consideration rather than some stockbroker saying we can sell this for €300 million and give half to the Troika.

I hope this developmental impact will influence people again because we have come out of a very dark era. Let us promote the growing, dynamic sectors. Lemass was of the view, even in the 1940s, that aviation was a growth sector. We need something similar this time around to go forward with the Minister and everybody in this House towards the full employment target. Nobody could disagree with that. I wish the Minister continued success in achieving that goal. He will have the support of these benches.