The Fine Gael Party have precipitated this motion that could well bring about the end of the 23rd Dáil. We do so in the full knowledge that this will be the third election in 17 months. The implications that has for the Irish democracy and politicians on a financial and personal basis is immense but our lack of confidence stretches to the point that we want an election where normally politicians fear one. I do not intend to dwell, as the Minister for Trade, Commerce and Tourism did for the greater proportion of his contribution, on the politics of this motion. The epitome of why we oppose this Government can be found in the content of that speech, because we no longer see Ministers appointed on the basis of calibre, on the basis of ability, but on the basis of personal loyalty to a Taoiseach.
We all know that this Dáil since 9 March has been paralysed through inaction. What have the Government been working on since that date? Have they been working on unemployment, fighting inflation or rescuing our currency? No. They have been watching what the gentlemen who sit near the corridors opposite will do and they do whatever is necessary through backstreet deals and midnight meetings to ensure they cling on whatever way they can. It is because of this political paralysis that Fine Gael made up their minds that enough is enough. We have seen the opinion polls, we have heard the verdict of the people and we have said that we will do whatever is necessary to ensure that the lifetime of this Government and this Dáil is terminated at the earliest possible date.
I do not wish to dwell on the character assassination of any member of the Government or their party nor on their internal troubles because the main issue in this debate and at this election time is the economic plan, The Way Forward, as set out by the Government. There was great heralding of this plan. Before the election earlier this year Fianna Fáil said they would have the plan within three months of coming into office. Because the introduction was so belated the buildup to it was all the greater. Fine Gael were very interested in having a proper document in which we could clearly see the Government's financial, economic and fiscal thinking. We would welcome such a document. I did not come into politics to fight three general elections in 17 months, to go to Dunmore, County Galway, Miltown Malbay in County Clare or to go to Clondalkin and Lucan in Dublin West and spend all my energies canvassing, cajoling and getting votes in whatever way I could in election campaigns. It is a degradation of this House and the Members of it that all our time should be devoted in such a manner.
I welcome a document such as the one produced by Fianna Fáil which clearly sets out in the Government's view and what they stand for in terms of economic and social policy because we will get the type of constructive debate in the House which is worthy of an Irish Parliament and worthy of our time and attention, unlike what happens when we are plunged into one election after the other. I welcome the general philosophy in relation to planning. It is no secret that the Taoiseach showed his commitment to planning by the abolition of the Minister for Economic Planning and Development on assuming the office of Taoiseach. That shows his commitment and one can easily differentiate between his need for an election document and any real commitment to long-term planning.
The recommendation in the plan to set up an institute that will continually monitor, assess and develop a planning institute for the Irish economy and advise the Government is essential. That is not to say that the Department of Finance and the Department of the Taoiseach do not already have planning sections. I believe there is a need for a non-political independent State-sponsored planning institute. At the moment we have the ESRI and NESC. It would be no harm, with all the talk of rationalisation and cutting down, to have one solid institute for planning and to amalgamate those two. It would add to their weight and would combine voluntary representations, from the farmers, the unions, the FUE, the CII and so on.
I believe there is a tendency among economists to go off at a tangent one week, develop a thought and then to set up a chain-reaction among State and private economists in universities and so on. They tend to be in almost an academic paradise of their own, removed from reality, whereby their good offices are not being utilised to their fullest. While I welcome this plan I certainly could not accept it as the way forward. As the House knows, Fine Gael set forward, without the resources of the Government by working through the summer, a jobs for the eighties programme. That was not in any way a Fine Gael policy document to cover the areas of Dáil reform, civil service reform, employment creation, of economic and fiscal policy. In the time available to us and in the context of available resources we could not do that but we did set out then, as we are setting out now, a broad view of where Fine Gael stand in relation to economic policy. As the conclusions are more detailed in our document we could hardly accept the Government's plan as being the only way forward. That plan is totally unacceptable.
In page after page of the document there are vague innuendoes of what the Government's intentions are. We have such phrases as, "We will put emphasis on the concern for X; we will be considering the possibility of Y". We have waited so long for this plan that we expected at least some decisions. Some of the plan, especially the analysis section at the beginning, is written excellently. At best the plan can be described as being against sin and for virtue. Much of it is no more and no less than that. We are told that our national income depends on our ability to produce and sell goods and services at competitive prices and which are competitive also in terms of quality. That has been Fine Gael policy for a long time. We are not now saying that we disagree with such a concept simply because it appears in the Fianna Fáil document. We are saying that the analysis is correct but that the targets and the decisions that arise from that analysis are totally false, over-optimistic and purely political. It is an attempt to try to con the people into thinking that Fianna Fáil alone can provide the way out of our difficulties.
With the crises of redundancies and receiverships in so many constituencies there are people who will say that no plan at this time can solve our underlying problems but we are at a cross-roads and we must make decisions. Other spokesmen from this side of the House have dealt with the targets as set out in the plan and how they are wrong in terms of our activities vis-à-vis other countries in terms of inflation, export projections and so on.
This plan is not a good programme so far as economic recovery is concerned. It is a good discussion document and that is the light in which it should have been presented to the House instead of having been sold politically by way of propaganda on the part of the Taoiseach as something that would solve our economic ills. It will not do so because the Government are not facing up to the realities.
Regarding economic policy, we have for the first time in black and white since January 27 when our budget collapsed and we were put out of office, an admission that our economic and fiscal policies were correct. There is little mention in the document about latitude, about slippage, about the need for borrowing for growth, about the potential of our young population and the need to borrow in order to exploit that potential. We are back to the doom and gloom situation, a situation in which we must balance our books and where deficits must be considered and must be paid for instead of being put on an endless list of tick. If anything the plan vindicates the Coalition stand of the last 18 months.
As spokesman in the area of employment creation I wish to deal specifically with the question of employment. This, I believe, will be the greatest single issue in any forthcoming election. Unemployment is the greatest economic, social and political problem facing us not only because of the recession or because of future technological changes but more specifically because the demographic considerations and population trends are such that the levels of job creation we will require are something that has not been attempted before in the history of the State. Therefore, the whole emphasis of any economic thinking should be devoted almost totally to the ways and means by which we would set about creating employment during the eighties. There is nothing in the plan about employment. There is no indication of any commitment on the part of the Government towards singling out this problem as the greatest one facing us.
We will be seeking the confidence of the people in our proposals in relation to the massive problems of unemployment. Before outlining our position in that regard there is one interesting area that I will mention. During the last election campaign we heard much from Fianna Fáil about their intention to establish a national enterprise agency and to discontinue the National Development Corporation. The new agency was to be the forerunner in the area of job creation and of employment-creation thinking. I consider myself to be reasonably attentive in terms of following in the media what is happening but it was only through departmental press releases that I have been able to get details of where the agency are and what they are doing. There are excellent people on the board of that agency. These include Mr. Liam Connellan, Mr. Tom Hardiman and, on the trade union side, Mr. Harold O'Sullivan. I have ascertained that at the inaugural meeting of the agency the Minister referred to them as a venture capital and development body. At this point I have nothing but cynicism in terms of any approach to this agency on the part of the Government since they allocated to the agency only a pittance in terms of finance. They have no real commitment to that agency. Like the famous think-tank set up some time ago by Fianna Fáil it will not be long before the agency are disbanded. In saying that I do not reflect in any way on the personnel involved. I should like to see the agency being successful but there are not inherent in it the structures that will enable that to happen.
If we are serious about the creation of employment there are various aspects of the matter that we must consider in a new light. The first area I would instance is that of indigenous development. In our programme we set out in detail what we would like to see happening in this area. We have said that on our return to Government we will establish a national development corporation. We have spelled out the way in which the agency will work and who will work it. We will endeavour to utilise existing IDA personnel. We will have a new equity structure whereby the Government instead of giving a cash handout, something that has been fine in job improvement terms but most disappointing in terms of job creation and maintenance, will provide for an equity to be used on a minority share-holding basis and to be injected as a catalyst between various groups to establish industry. If we take the areas of our indigenous development such as forestry, fisheries and agriculture, particularly food and vegetables, as well as the area of mineral resources, we can appreciate the potential there.
We all know of the situation in relation to potatoes. One season there is a glut and the next season there is a scarcity and they have to be imported. There is a need to organise primary producers. I saw fishermen at the port of Duncannon in my constituency dumping boxes of herring back into the sea. They had made no attempt themselves to try to sell their fish. Apples are dumped in the same way. We are giving our timber away, through the port of Waterford, at a deplorably low price. The potential in this area is enormous. The IDA's strategy for the development of the agricultural processing industry is excellent. It clearly outlines the areas of secondary processing. Instead of just slaughtering a beast and exporting it whole, and there are too many being exported live, we should utilise fully the vacpac potential of boneless beef and salami products. The same applies to poultry products, the sugar industry, confectionery and so on. Thousands of jobs can be created in the canning, cooking, pickling, jarring, freezing, pulping and smoking processes that will all add value to our natural resources. Food imports are in the region of £800 million. Forestry and timber product imports are in the region of £300 million. We can, therefore, see where Irish resources are going. They are going to create jobs in other countries. They are not creating the viable base on which jobs will be created.
There is no escape from the economic reality in the plan and in Fine Gael's thinking over the last number of years that unless there is the economic environment in which people can set up businesses with cheap interest rates, with controlled labour costs, reasonable electricity costs, reasonable telecommunications costs, they will not be viable. At present due to Government policies we have the highest ESB costs and almost the highest telecommunications costs, especially if you take currency variations into consideration. This is what is crippling Irish industry and Irish job creation. When we get into Government, which is not so far away I hope, we will direct all our efforts to ensuring that the environment, which is such an essential prerequisite to job creation, will be established first.
I was astonished last night, watching "Today Tonight", to hear the Minister for Education, Deputy Brady, taking credit for the reduction in inflation and interest rates. He said it was as a result of successful Government policies and I almost fell off the chair laughing. Inflation has fallen because imported inflation has fallen. Interest rates have fallen because world interest rates have fallen and if we kept our levels too high the currency situation would be imbalanced. It is ludicrous for the Government to take any credit. Our domestic inflation rate is still amiss and our basic costs of essential services are wrong and that must be the primary goal.
To get back to the National Development Corporation, what we will try to do is to combine the multi-nationals and the primary producers to have a streamlined flow of production, capitalised with the equity, so that these people will give absolute, solid, legal commitments to produce the goods and not sell them at the highest price to another bidder. That continuous supply of quality goods will ensure that the jobs can be created, the factories can be set up and we will then no longer import the goods but will produce our own indigenous development where we have climatic and other advantages. It also has the advantage that the 26 Departments, State agencies and bodies that are involved in the ancillary assistance to industry will be utilised to the full. Bodies such as CTT and the IIRS have valuable information much of which is only gathering dust in files in Dublin offices. We need to disseminate this information and through the equity, through the State involvement, on a viable commercial basis, not on a political patronage basis, utilise it to create jobs, to cut down on the balance of payments and to ensure growth. That is the major aim of Fine Gael's economic development policy.
There are other specific measures which should be projected and discussed in this House such as the fact that no matter how good our economic environment is, no matter what potential there lies in various sectors, there will be very little job creation unless we have the spirit of enterprise, the entrepreneurial commitment. Only last Saturday I had somebody with me who wanted to set up a business using pigs' heads, boning them and producing food products. Such a person can be sent to the county development officer, the local officers of the IDA, CTT, the IIRS, the IPC in relation to productivity studies and so on, but there is no place where that spirit of enterprise can be fostered and developed. Incubator-type factories, mentioned only briefly in the plan, are an excellent idea and I would suggest to the Government that they consider the possibility of establishing such a business centre, run by the IMI or somebody else. This could be a residential State-run business where the markets could be studied, where grants and loans mechanisms could be got together and where one could be encouraged after, say, a two months' course, to go ahead with one's business. The IDA already have many ambitious and good schemes. All these things could be condensed into the one unit. The proliferation of State bodies, agencies and Departments is so great that we have got to the stage where there is an industry of these. There is a multiplicity of them and they are not cohesive or co-ordinated. I suggest that the bottom line should be looked at. To set up another Ministry to co-ordinate these things would, unfortunately, the way civil service and political structures work, mean that there would be yet another body making a contribution in this area. We should expand the front line of job creation. They are the county development officers. They consist of one man and, if he is lucky, one secretary. That is the front line of job creation in County Wexford. They have a regional office in Waterford which is being pulled asunder by politicians from five-and-a-half counties. The whole resources of the State in this area should be channelled through expanded county development teams. They could co-ordinate on the ground all the marketing expertise of CTT and all the research and technical developments that are taking place. There was a suggestion some time ago by the former Minister for Industry and Energy, Deputy O'Malley, that these would be used through field offices of the IDA. A better way to do it would be to redeploy people from centrally-heated city offices down the country where they are needed and can do effective work.
Another idea for job creation lies in the fact that there is no doubt as to the success in certain areas of SFADCo. In other strategic points in the country there is the same potential for development and I would cite in my own constituency the potential of Rosslare Harbour, a major tourist area, third largest and fastest growing port in the country. It has its problems at present. There is not a single industry within ten miles of Rosslare put there because of the port potential. I am talking not of service but of manufacturing industries. There is not even a suitable terminal or disembarkation ramp. There is a multiplicity of State agencies and bodies which could investigate the possibilities. The fact remains that there is no single co-ordinating body. You go to CIE one week or Bord Fáilte another week and you end up by meeting a Minister who says it is not for his Department to talk about coast erosion. There is potential for job creation at certain strategic points whether in tourism, manufacturing industry or industrial development by the establishment SFADCo. Possibly a reasonable way to go about it would be to encourage detailed applications from different areas which would be considered strictly on a viability basis and then pushed forward.
The Youth Employment Agency was established by us when in Government. It was given a budget of 1 per cent of all those at work whether through health contributions or PRSI, a type of budget and the type of commitment by a Government in terms of financial resources suitable to tackle the massive problem of young people experiencing unemployment. At present, both on and off the live register, I believe we are talking in terms of 70,000 people. I believe that what you do not spend today in encouraging them to become constructively involved in employment and recreational facilities tomorrow you will spend through the Department of Justice on malicious damage claims. What the Government should be doing and has singularly failed to do is telling the agency what to do and how to do it and then leaving the executive function to the agency and its staff. We have heard nothing from the Government in this regard, only bland platitudes and wait-and-see attitudes. Unequivocally, this House should say what the agency should be doing. We committed this money to the agency. We asked people to sacrifice some of their income in order to provide for the agency and we should therefore have our role in saying what the agency should do. It is not enough for the agency in any policy review to say that it will look for a more enlightened approach in the leaving certificate curriculum so that people will be more adjusted to work when they get out. That is the job of the Department of Education who should have that attitude anyway and should not need to be told by another State agency what to do. They should be thinking in practical, viable terms. Nor is it enough to say that we are doing a great job by having young people who are unemployed registered so as to identify the problem. That is essential but it is the job of the National Manpower Service. They should have this information and should have had it even before the agency came into being. We must look at new ways by which the agency will develop and really set about tackling the needs of our young people.
First, I think they should set out a guarantee scheme for all school leavers unable to find employment within six months of leaving school, so that they would have a job development scheme for one year whereby they would combine with AnCO to provide practical technical information to improve their viability. The Manpower Service through the work experience programme which has 80 per cent job attainment could be used to put people in touch with employers, paid by the State, which would give them the chance to get the training and the employers the chance to know them so that they will be kept on. We could also utilise our regional training colleges and technical schools which are empty and useless in summer and which are not using our capital allocations, which cost so much, in the summer. They could combine an eight or 12 months' course with these three integral parts which would ensure that at the end of it at least the young people would have been usefully occupied, would be more employable. The scheme should be so devised as to concentrate on future job potential and not on office jobs which do not exist and which will be replaced by technology. This could be done in such a way as to have links between industry and education and would give people the opportunity to find employment.
I come to a point that is touched on in The Way Forward, the greatly deprived areas of inner city Waterford, Cork, Limerick and Dublin where people left school before the intermediate or group certificate and do not give a damn. They are against society, against the system and so on and are not clued in to it. Such people exist. We must work towards them and see that community training workshops are established to cater specifically for them to improve their employability by giving them basic educational and training facilities on a six months' course in their area. They would be told about practical social welfare and so on, clocking in and out, education in reading and writing and whatever they need and be given some chance of finding employment later.
It is a basic principle of the country that so often we look to the State to do what we should have the initiative and drive to do ourselves. We should encourage young people to set up their own businesses by combining the agency and the Irish Goods Council which in conjunction with the research library of the IDA has a full list of items, albeit small, that can be produced but are presently imported. For instance, these might include bottle tops for Irish liqueurs or Christmas cards which we will all buy now or something similar. These are small items that can be produced and which the Goods Council have recognised as being imported when we need not import them. Small businesses, employing five, 10 or 20 people could be set up specifically to produce these goods and service this market and so improve our balance of payments and create jobs. The goods council have a small staff of 22 but are very committed and well organised and should be combined with the resources of the agency to set up such self-financing enterprises, co-operatives on an employee-shareholder basis under management, advice and loans provided by the agency to help them get off the ground and encourage self-help and job creation.
This agency is new and powerful within itself, even within the Department of Labour budget. I am sure the people in AnCO and the NMS are fighting to get their share of that budget. The agency that has sole responsibility for these young despairing people who have not or cannot get jobs could indicate to the Government the pilot schemes that would possibly lead to new job creation. At present we have quite generous grants for sanitary services, insulation and so on. Possibly we could do away with these grants or the agency could say we can review this policy and instead of pouring money out through cash grants we can get young people in the most deserving cases, for instance the pensioners who need toilets, and these young people would do the work. It seems this would fulfil a dual role. The same applies to insulation of public buildings. We are all converted to the need to conserve energy. We need a practical commitment perhaps through an employment scheme to insulate public buildings and conserve energy or provide insulation in homes of elderly people and so on. These are just two vague examples. It is not my job to detail the specifics of such a policy. It is the agency's job. They should be the champion of new proposals for new areas of job creation and new schemes to benefit our young people. As far as Fine Gael are concerned, with the commitment we made to them in setting them up and with their resources we shall not be slow to criticise their performance if they do not deliver the goods, and especially to criticise the Government if they do not ensure that they utilise the opportunity that we established and lead it to fruition.
I mentioned indigenous development, the National Development Corporation, the Youth Employment Agency, county development teams and so on. There is precious little in this great document which is our economic saviour on how to create jobs. In Opposition we have difficulties about the detail we go into because we do not have access to costings. In relation to employment creation the document is very disappointing and this is one of the many reasons why we put down an amendment to reject its conclusions.
The incentive to work is dealt with reasonably succinctly in the document. Prior to Fianna Fáil's belated conversion to this we said that the five-day operation per week of social welfare and the taxing of short term social welfare benefits was a step in the right direction. In my constituency I know of one factory which went on a three-day week. The employees were upset by this until they found out that they were better off working a three-day week. Even those employees benefitting from it are able to tell me it is wrong. We should not shilly shally about saying it is wrong. People should not be better off working a three-day week. We must be positive in our thinking on this.
Taxation is the best way forward. It is fair and takes account of family circumstances and so on. One point which was not mentioned in our document or in The Way Forward is that we can have a situation where tax rebates are paid on a four-weekly basis. People can be very well off with this cream of the cake which ensures they are better off not going back to work. Instead of paying PAYE they get a juicy rebate. All rebates should be paid at the end of the year. No amount of incentive to work will solve our problems such are their dimension and size.
We spend £400 million on unemployment assistance, unemployment benefit and pay-related benefit. This has nothing to do with children's allowances, widow's pensions and so on but it is merely unemployment compensation. We should look at the possibility of re-allocating this money not in terms of giving people bread and butter and a roof over their heads but in terms of giving them something to do. I do not know why we do not say to people that if they get £64 per week in unemployment assistance or benefit they should do £64 worth of work. We have lots of work to be done. We have the environmental scheme, community development projects and so on. People who want to get off work — for example, to pursue courses — could do so. If that system was adopted we could pay people at the rate of benefit for the work they did. This would be a way to look at the social cost of unemployment. It would also give some idea of the loss to the Exchequer. It has never been estimated but we could be losing £600 million by paying people to do nothing. The Government did not look at this.
There is a major area I should like to address myself to and that is a positive policy of privatisation. The average cost per week of a hospital bed for a geriatric patient is £380 in a State hospital. In a private nursing home it is £100 per week. Surely it would be logical for the State to give them the subvention and save £200 a week instead of building more hospitals. We cannot build the number of houses we would like to. In County Wexford alone there are 1,600 people looking for houses. We will not build 100 this year. We know there are flats and vacant houses so why not subsidise the rent? Why not say we will pay people to live in these because we cannot afford to build houses? This policy of privatisation has not been looked at because we do not have the resources.
The McKinsey Report is dealt with in The Way Forward. It is stated in that document that transport should be divided into rural buses, expressway buses, rural trains and Dublin trains. Why is the operation of rural buses not given to private enterprise? Instead of the Government pumping £4 million into it there are people who could run the service and make a profit out of it. Why should the State have a monopoly? There should have been an attempt made to look at the policy of privatisation and do a cost-benefit analysis. The Way Forward has not touched on that and I was disappointed with it in that regard.
There is nothing in the document in relation to Dáil reform or Oireachtas Committees. As the youngest Member in the House I feel the Dáil is not geared to deal with, for example, a crisis in a constituency. The Dáil is more like a District Court or county council than a Parliament. Britain can bring people in and cross-heckle them. We should be able to do that whether it is Mr. White of the IDA or Dr. Kennedy of the ESRI and so have a more enlightened debate unlike Deputy Flynn's contribution, which was purely political and nonsense.
I do not want an election. I do not want to run around in Wexford asking 60,000 people for a vote. The other choice I have is to go to Miltown-Malbay. Not much of a choice. We have no confidence in the Government. Members of the Fianna Fáil Party have voiced no confidence in the Government. The people have no confidence in the Government. We all know it cannot last. There are people in the corridors of the House betting on when it will fall, whether it is tonight, tomorrow night or next week. One thing is certain: it will go. The people know where the parties stand. The issues will decide themselves. This document failed the youth in terms of unemployment. In that regard we have no choice but to seriously consider this plan. The writing in the plan is good. If the Government's credibility had not been so low it would have got a better hearing. We have had enough. The people have had enough and it is time the people had their say.