Gerard Craughwell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The bottom line is that the increase is not great.

The threshold figure for the new income tax rebate on the home-to-buy scheme comes to €400,000. I believe, along with many others, that this scheme will overheat the housing market again. I have evidence myself of a builder who has completed houses, ready to go on the market but he is holding them back in the expectation of an increase in prices. In the period he has withheld these houses, they have already gone up by €100,000. Where does that leave our assistance to buy houses up to €400,000? As someone already said, one is not going to get a whole lot for €400,000 inside the M50 belt. I do not believe this will help.

The Christmas bonus is to be welcomed. It means a whole lot to pensioners. It gives them that extra few bob to put a bit of food on the table and, maybe, buy one or two presents for grandchildren. The bonus is worth it.

The funding of €15 million for the National Treatment Purchase Fund concerns me because, to a large degree, the same consultants will carry out the work in their private hospitals. We will pay them on the double for the work they will do. Some will agree and others will disagree with my point. However, that is the truth of the matter.

Last week, I dealt with the public service pay commission with the Taoiseach. I am delighted the Government is putting such a commission in place. However, it will not be until the middle of next year while the Government has a crisis on its hands today. Tomorrow, the House will debate the impending Garda industrial action. Gardaí and nurses are knocking the door while teachers are in crisis. Our public service deal, the Lansdowne Road agreement, needs to be brought back to the table. All the parties need to be brought back in and we need to re-slice the cake. The bottom line is that, again, expectations were overheated and we now find ourselves in a situation where there is industrial unrest all over the place. One cannot wait until next year unless one wants to see the country grind to a halt.

It is marvellous to see that the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport has got transport going north, south, east and west across Dublin city. What about the school bus system, which is not capable of dealing with kids who need to get to school? The bottom line is that, maybe, the funding put into transport should have been divided out in a more egalitarian way across the country.

The reduction of the DIRT rate is to be welcomed. However, if one considers the many pensioners who got their lump sums on retirement, put it into a bank and expected to have a return on their investment, they are getting absolutely zero return now. The other day, I spoke to a pensioner who had a couple of bob in the post office. After four years, he got €100 back. I know the Government can do very little about that but that is part of the situation in which we are living.

I welcome the increased spending on housing of €1.2 billion. The Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coveney, is doing the best he can with the resources available to him. He is to be applauded for the efforts he is making. I hope we are not making promises which cannot be fulfilled, however. Every time I hear the Minister speak, I am impressed by the plans he has. I sincerely hope we are not being sold a pup. If we are, then it will come back and bite us all.Regarding the increase for health of €497 million, perhaps I missed something but I cannot see a figure for the number of practitioners on the ground, particularly nurses, whereas I can see such a figure for teachers and gardaí. Maybe I missed something somewhere.

The additional 2,400 teachers is to be welcomed, with 900 of those going into resource teaching. However, my big concern is that traditionally when we hear announcements about 2,400 whole-time equivalent teachers, we find there are 5,000 or 6,000 teachers employed on part-time contracts. That is not the way to run an education system. I would be the first person, as a former teacher and practitioner, to say that we must go back to the universities and look at the way we are training teachers. The typical problem we have with teachers now is that when a teacher retires who may be carrying three or even four subjects, and we seek to replace him or her with a graduate from the teacher training colleges, we find that the graduate may only be carrying one or two subjects that are of value to the school. This means that the school must hire two teachers to replace one retiree and the hours have to be split. There is a bit of work to be done in that area. This is an issue which we will be raising directly with the Department and the Minister for Education and Skills in due course. I hope that what we are talking about here is whole-time equivalent teachers on full hours being employed in schools around the country. Senator Horkan is correct that the new teachers will not increase the overall numbers employed but will merely pick up the slack. We need to reduce the pupil teacher ratio across the board. I know that the INTO sought such a reduction at its recent briefing.

The €36.5 million for further and higher education is to be welcomed. I commend the Government for putting that money into the higher education system. If this country is to continue to have opportunities in the international market for foreign direct investment, it has to have a properly funded higher and further education system. One of the great disappointments is that we are funding people up to primary degree level but are not funding them for postgraduate studies. I would like to see some effort made to reintroduce the grants that were taken away from postgraduates.

The increase in garda numbers is to be welcomed but I hope we do not see them training in Templemore and then resigning immediately because they cannot afford to live on their salaries. The Prison Service is a joke. The revolving door in the prisons is so fast now that prisoners cannot get through it. We hear people on the radio saying that they are going up to Mountjoy Prison to get their dinner and then they will be sent home. The half paragraph in the Budget Statement on the Defence Forces is derisory. The Defence Forces are understaffed and in a state of crisis.

Overall, it is a budget with which we can live.