Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Those are all towns that I have been to in recent times that are doing well. However, I do acknowledge that the recovery is happening at different speeds and at different speeds in different places. Even within Dublin, there are communities where there has been very little recovery. I refer to communities with long-term economic and social problems, including some in my own constituency. That two-speed recovery is not just an east-west or rural-urban phenomenon. It happens within our cities. What we need to do now is to ensure we accelerate the recovery in areas where it has not been experienced to the same extent so that every household, every place and every part of the country can benefit from it. That will mean investment in infrastructure, building up our cities outside of Dublin more and making sure they grow faster than Dublin in the years ahead. The national development plan, NDP, and the national planning framework, NPF, are very much part of that.

Some of the debate about this has been the wrong way around. What would happen if we did not have a national planning framework and just had laissez-fairedevelopment letting things continue to trundle on as we do now? What will happen is that almost all of the development will happen around Dublin and the east coast and very little anywhere else. Limerick and Waterford, which should be growing a lot faster, will continue to underperform. Cork will probably still do okay as it has critical mass, and we will continue to see the drift out of the north west in particular. That is what will happen if we do not have a plan. What we cannot have, at the other end, is a totally unrealistic plan, one that tries to say that Dublin is not going to keep growing, or that nobody else will be living in Leinster. That is nonsense. We all know that Dublin is going to keep growing. It is attracting huge amounts of international investment that otherwise would not come to Ireland at all. It would be in Tel Aviv, Amsterdam or somewhere else. Children are being born all around Dublin. We cannot tell people where to live, where to set up their business or where to invest. A rubbish plan, which would not be credible, would be one saying that there will be no further development in Dublin or the east coast, and that the Government will somehow tell everyone where they are going to live and where they are going to put their business. That might sell well politically, but it would be rubbish. We are not going to produce a plan like that.

We are going to produce a plan that is realistic, one that means there is less development and less growth in Dublin and the east coast than there would be in the absence of a plan, and tries to rebalance that growth to the other big cities of Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Galway in a realistic way. Our plan will also look at other growth centres: such as Letterkenny-Derry; the M1 corridor, Drogheda, Dundalk, and that area; and places in the midlands. That is a plan that might actually work. We do not want to publish another national spatial strategy. It might sell well on local radio, but we all know it was not for real. We would do a disservice to our people if we went down that route again.

Rural Ireland was mentioned. The rural Ireland that I see is alive and well. While we should not dismiss the fact that there are real problems in all places, in all countries, in all cities, and in rural Ireland, there are a lot of good things happening too. I sometimes fear that we talk down rural Ireland a little too much. I do not say that as an attempt to deny that there are problems and issues, because there are. Part of my job as Taoiseach is to promote Ireland and all parts of Ireland. If one wants to promote a place as a good place to invest, set up a business and bring a family to live, one does not tell everyone that it is a terrible place and it is dying. If we actually care about the places we come from, that is not how we should be talking, in my view.

Of course, lots of things are going well. Tourism has never been better, and that is the case all over the country. Agriculture revenues and exports are at record levels, and employment in all areas is improving too. If we are to judge the success or failure of rural Ireland, we should not base our view on the number of post offices and Garda stations. The number of post offices is going down everywhere, including in the cities, because people now have bank cards and use the Internet. As such, the number of post offices will go down in rural and urban Ireland. The number of Garda stations will go down as well, because they were built before there were Garda cars. There will be fewer Garda stations in rural Ireland and in urban Ireland. If we judge the success of rural Ireland based on post offices and Garda stations, we are making an enormous mistake. The success of rural Ireland should be based on the population; the number of people who are staying there and moving there to live. It should be based on employment; the number of jobs that are being created across rural Ireland. It should be based on the number of new businesses being set up; people's willingness to set up their business in Skibbereen, Clonakilty and other places. That should be the measure of success, not what I hear so often.

The universal social charge, USC, was mentioned. As part of the confidence and supply agreement with Fianna Fáil, we will continue to reduce the USC for people earning less than €80,000. That is part of our agreement and we will do it. The vision that the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, and I have is not to abolish the USC outright. Rather, it is to combine the USC with pay-related social insurance, PRSI. We currently have three payroll taxes; income tax, USC and PRSI. We think there should be two; income tax and social insurance. That is particularly important because our Social Insurance Fund is now in surplus and we pay for most pensions and social welfare out of that. However, it will not always be in surplus. It will go back into deficit in the next couple of years. We should now use this opportunity of tax reform to strengthen the Social Insurance Fund and ensure that pensions and welfare are sustainable in the future. Where income tax reform is concerned, the focus will very much be on the marginal rate, and the fact that in Ireland, people on very modest incomes pay the highest marginal rate of income tax. That is not the norm in other countries. Certainly people in most European countries earning less than €50,000 a year do not pay the highest rate of income tax. To me, that seems profoundly unfair, and that is really where the focus will be within tax reform.

On the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the Cabinet decided this week that there would be resolutions in the Dáil and in the Seanad. Both resolutions are required for Ireland to ratify. Once that is done, the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Finian McGrath, who is the Minister responsible for this and is really driving it, will deposit the instrument of ratification in New York. We anticipate doing that in the first quarter of this year.

On broadband, Senators will all be aware of the announcement made by Eir this week, and I have heard people speak about it in the Chamber. It is important to acknowledge the progress that has been made. Just in the last two years, the proportion of premises with access to high-speed broadband has increased from 52% to 70%. That is quite a significant improvement in the last two years alone. Every day, 300 farms and rural houses are connected to high-speed broadband.

What we are trying to do is very ambitious. We want to be the first country other than Singapore, certainly the first non-city state, to connect every home, business and premises in the entire country to high-speed broadband. That is not something that other countries have done. It is something we decided to do, and do first. It is an enormous undertaking, to which we are absolutely committed. In working with the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Naughten, I am determined to make sure that the shovels are in the ground this year and that we conclude that contract and get the work under way in this calendar year, at long last. We need to make sure that those 500,000 premises without broadband, and the 1 million people who live in those 500,000 homes, have such access, which is essential to participating in the modern economy and modern society.

Members mentioned asylum seekers. I want to assure the House of my commitment to extending the right to work to asylum seekers who have been here for more than nine months. We are doing that in two phases. As a quite minor first step, we anticipate that by June to opt fully in to the European directive and extend more or less full access to our labour market to asylum seekers who have been here for more than nine months. It is the right thing to do. It is the right thing to do for our economy, which has enormous skills shortages. It is the right thing to do for those individuals to give them the dignity and the ability to work. These are people who want to get up early in the morning and we do not let them. At least they want to get up early in the morning to work. We currently do not let them and I think we should.

However, we do need to be balanced about it. We also need to be fair to the people who come to Ireland with work permits and work visas. They get those before they come to Ireland. As we speak, there are people in Internet cafes in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro and other places obeying the law and applying online for work permits or work visas with their documents, as they should. It would not be fair to them if we decided that people who had just arrived in the country, with no status at all, could suddenly be allowed to work. That is why I think it is important that we have that nine-month rule, to be fair to everyone.

On the Public Health (Alcohol) Bill 2015, I really want to thank the Seanad for passing it. I know that several Senators had real concerns about that Bill and the impact it might have on small shops in particular. The Minister made some amendments in that regard. However, I think he did a good job in the Seanad in getting that Bill passed. I certainly do not anticipate that the Dáil will revise it. This House has already done the revision so I do not anticipate that the Dáil will revise it. We are not contemplating any further amendments to it.

Senator Lawless mentioned our commitment to extending the franchise for Presidential elections to all Irish citizens around the world. That is something to which I am very committed, as is the Tánaiste. We did not want to have a referendum this October or November because there is the possibility of a Presidential election, and we should not change the way in which the President is elected on the same day that we elect a President. That could create issues. That is why we decided to have the referendum in 2019. That will give us plenty of time to have all the systems that we need in place before the subsequent Presidential election. I really like the idea of the Presidency as not just the Presidency of the Irish State, but also of the Irish nation. The only way to do that in a meaningful way is to extend the franchise to Irish citizens overseas. People talk about the idea of no taxation without representation, and that can be argued both ways. Citizenship was never dependent on taxation, so I do not accept that argument. Even if one does accept it, the President does not levy any taxes. The Seanad does not levy any taxes either, because money Bills do not have to be passed through this House. That argument really only applies to the Dáil in my view. It does not apply to the Presidency, and probably does not apply to the Seanad either.

I would like to thank Senators who spoke about the republic of opportunity.I actually forgot to do so in my speech, in case those Senators did not notice. I have not forgotten about it, though; it will continue to come up from time to time. However, I am glad that they spoke about it.

Often, I hear people talking about the many problems that our country faces and the many genuine difficulties individuals and families face. They ask me whether I think this country is the republic of opportunity I have spoken of. I think that question misunderstands what I have said. I have never said that Ireland is a republic of opportunity.