Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Senator Norris nearly always has good advice.

I will not delay the House as we will have Second Stage today and we will be back again next week for Committee Stage, with Report Stage the following week. People often say that once the budget is done on 9 October, that is it, but the reality is Report Stage of the Finance Bill in the Seanad will be on 8 December or 9 December. The budget will finally be implemented when this is finished, along with other measures, including appropriations and social welfare legislation. People sometimes say that once the budget is done we can have an election but that is not how it works. I welcome the fact that we are here discussing a money Bill, as the Acting Chairman noted. I thank the Minister of State for being in the House yet again. He is very welcome.

I do not want to repeat what was in the speech or the briefing notes we received this morning from the Department, which have been very helpful. I thank the Department for them. This is all about Brexit. Fianna Fáil and my party leader, Deputy Micheál Martin, last December stated we intended to extend the confidence and supply agreement to a further budget to give the country and all of us some level of stability while chaos may have been reigning in other parts of the world closer or not so close to home. At least the Government has been able to focus on Brexit.

It is fair to commend our negotiating team in Brussels, led by Mr. Michel Barnier, as well as the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Deputy Coveney, the Minister of State, Deputy Helen McEntee, and officials in the various Departments. It has been an all-of-Government approach to dealing with Brexit rather than just one involving the Taoiseach's Department or the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. It is fair to give credit where it is due. However, the deal has to get through the British Parliament, the European Parliament and so on. There is much work to be done before it gets through but I commend the people who were involved.

Fianna Fáil and all of us in this House acknowledge the major uncertainty surrounding Brexit. My party facilitated the passing of this budget and, subsequently, the Finance Bill because we need a stable Government in this country. We must all continue to do everything we can as a Seanad and Dáil, involving Members of all parties and none, to ensure we protect this country from the worst outcomes of Brexit. Regardless of how good the outcome of Brexit might be, we all acknowledge it will not be as good an arrangement as we have now. My party wanted assurances in the likes of the agrifood sector, tourism and small businesses, as these are affected most by Brexit.Unfortunately, the regions that can probably least afford to be affected by Brexit are the areas that will be most affected. Equally, areas like Dublin that might benefit somewhat from a spillover from relocated jobs are probably the areas that least need that boost and would be stuck for housing, infrastructure, schools and so on.

I have a couple of other points. We are still heavily reliant on corporation tax. It is wonderful and fantastic and the more of it we have, the better. I have made an argument before that the more of it we have the less reliant we are on any one company but we know Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, changes are being put forward with the base erosion and profit shifting, BEPS, process and so on. Some 45% of our tax receipts in 2018 came from ten companies. If any of them has a problem worldwide we will notice and feel that and the fiscal space of €700 million or €300 million is an awful lot smaller than the biggest tax relief to many individual companies. We should be cognisant of that. It is important we have FDI and the more of it we have the better but, equally, we need to try to reflect as much as we can on the fact the indigenous sector needs a hand, particularly as it is growing and going international.

The VAT on food supplements is also important and the Minister of State referred to same. This is a retrograde step and it is unhelpful. We are trying to keep people healthy and make sure they look after themselves. People are looking after themselves and now we are going to add 13.5% to the cost of many food supplements that were previously at 0% VAT. The last thing we need is for somebody to not take these supplements and end up spending a couple of days in the accident and emergency department or on a trolley with lots of other people, putting further pressures on the health system. They are not all snake oil as the Taoiseach referred to but equally they are not all perfect.

I welcome the changes made in the IREFs and real estate investment trusts, REITs. The treatment of a large landlord is different from the treatment of a small landlord. It is important that when people are making legitimate profits, albeit on high rents in some cases, they should be paying their fair share of tax and this goes somewhere closer to fairness than where it was before.

There are many other issues I have with the Government's performance generally but we need stability at this point in time. I do not want to repeat myself but Brexit is still uncertain. The British polls say one thing but we all need to be careful about how we deal with polls in terms of Trump, Brexit and so on. What people thought would happen did not happen. I still hope the British people might decide that after all they have heard they would like to stay in the European Union. That is not likely but I can live in hope. We know this was a Brexit budget. Hopefully some of the measures will not be required. Hopefully we will be dealing with something that is less than the worst case scenario but again, we do not know yet.

I mention carbon tax. It has become ever more topical as we go into the winter and people are ordering home heating oil, briquettes, coal and other fuels and there is talk about how we will deal with transport and so on. Carbon tax is something that needs to be dealt with but it also needs to be managed in such a way that we give people alternatives where we can. We need to invest in the retrofitting of homes; we need to ensure that houses that are being built now and into the future are as near to zero emissions as is possible. We need to make sure we try to use electric vehicles and other forms of public transport that are not costly to the environment in carbon. Equally, we need to look at how we deal with our public buildings. This building is noticeably warmer than it was before as it was finally insulated after a couple of hundred years. We need to look at our public buildings and we need to reduce the carbon footprint in everything we do in terms of efficiency.

Separate from the revenue budget, it is fair to point out there have been problems. I raised this earlier on the Order of Business and the famous printer we are talking about is only a small microcosm of it but as a State, how we have managed to spend far more money on the children's hospital, broadband and other things is not a particularly new phenomenon. When we were in government, other people would have been rightly attacking us if overspends happened. It is fair that we can point this out and ask why we will have the most expensive national children's hospital in the world and why broadband will cost so much more here than in other countries. It does not inspire confidence for capital budgeting going forward when we still see these kinds of inefficiencies happening.

On this budget, I am happy for myself and my party to facilitate the passing of Second Stage of the Bill today and ultimately for it to go through to Report Stage and beyond in two weeks time. I thank the Minister of State for being here and for his comprehensive opening statement. I have to go to another appointment shortly so if I am not here for the Minister of State's response I will check it afterwards.