I move:
That a sum not exceeding £4,047,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1983, for the salaries and expenses of the Department of the Taoiseach and for payment of certain grants-in-aid.
In so moving, I should like to review the problems which face the country and the policies of the Government to deal with them.
Our strategy on coming into Government was clear and was directly related to a series of problems which were apparent to all.
1. Our capacity to stop the growth in unemployment was impaired and had to be restored.
2. A disastrous financial drift, with the public finances out of control and getting worse by the day, had to be halted.
3. The ramifications of this disaster, which meant that already, even if all further borrowing were stopped overnight, for the rest of the decade we must transfer over £1 billion a year out of the country, or about the equivalent of the total yield of VAT, in interest and capital repayments on debts to foreign lenders, had become a major drag on our economy and had to be dealt with.
4. We needed to lay the groundwork for future development in our economy with new policies for industrial development.
5. Deteriorating relations with Britain had to be improved and the problems of Northern Ireland tackled.
6. Rampant crime rates and a growing drugs problem had to be reversed quickly.
7. A crisis in the probity of public affairs had to be faced head on, and new structures developed to ensure proper administration in the future.
8. A diminution of respect both for the primacy of Parliament and for the public representative had to be challenged by reform.
9. Other neglected areas needing considered reform, for example, aspects of social welfare and family law, had to be addressed.
Already in less than seven months we have made progress in each of these areas and while the balance of our strategy inevitably leans heavily towards the economic aspects — under each heading we can now see the way ahead. We have stabilised a runaway economy and started to control our indebtedness. We are creating an improved environment for industrial development. We have begun to halt the decline in competitiveness. We have the beginnings of strategies for regeneration and growth. A new Criminal Justice Bill is well advanced, which, together with extra gardaí and more prison accommodation will tip the balance against the criminal. We are focusing on the drugs problem, in respect of which we already have the report of a ministerial task force.
The injustices of our present system of transfers between different groups in the community are being systematically identified with a view to a radical reform of the social welfare and income tax systems.
We are well on the way to normalising relations with Britain and, with the co-operation of the main Opposition Party here, and the SDLP in the North, we have the New Ireland Forum under way.
We are engaged in a major diplomatic campaign within the European Community to ensure that the Common Agricultural Policy is not undermined in negotiations now in progress and that the Community's own resources are expanded to finance new policies and enlargement.
At home we have dealt with the telephone interception scandal. We have set about sealing off police administration and planning appeals from political interference and we have begun a reform process in the Dáil, through committee structures designed to restore the role which Parliament can play.
These energetic seven months have been rewarding. They have enabled us to clarify the enormity of our economic challenge and to rally public opinion to the necessary measures to meet it.
The most fundamental problem we face is employment — providing work opportunities for our people. Even under the most favourable conditions the resolution of this problem would be extremely difficult. Even if, for example, the early 1980s had been a period of continuing growth in the world economy — rather than a period of almost universal stagnation and decline; even if we had succeeded in maintaining our competitiveness in the domestic and external markets — which we have notably failed to do; and even if our public finances had remained in balance, giving us the leeway to pursue policies designed to create growth in employment — which notably did not happen; even if all these conditions had been fulfilled, it would have been difficult for us to secure jobs for all seeking work.
The reason for this is simple and we should recognise it. More than any other country in the developed world, we have experienced during the past two decades a rapid expansion of our population, and, above all, of our young population. This has been on such a scale, indeed, that there are now nine young people in their twenties for every five in that age bracket two decades ago.
Because of this revolution in the structure of our population we would have required during the present decade a sustained growth rate well in excess of that achieved over any period of years, in any other European country since the last war, in order to provide all of this new generation with jobs in their own country.
Of course one of the preconditions I have mentioned — sustained economic growth in the countries with which we trade — is something whose achievement was beyond our control. Unemployment in the EEC has risen in virtually unbroken sequence every year now since 1972 — quadrupling from a level of about 2.7 per cent to about 10.5 per cent at a recent date. Nothing we could have done as a tiny country responsible for a fraction of 1 per cent of world output could have made any difference here.
But the other two preconditions were within our control — and we notably failed to do what was necessary to create the conditions in which employment would be available during this decade to those who wanted to work in their own country.
By increasing our money incomes at a rate far beyond that obtaining in other countries with which we compete, we have steadily reduced our competitiveness in price terms, both in our own market and in others, to the point where the survival of much of established Irish industry has been threatened. Increasing incomes without matching productivity increases put the price of our goods and services up to a point where these products increasingly become unsaleable in free market conditions; and people lost their jobs. Moreover, this reduction in cost competitiveness has not been offset by any significant move by established domestic industry to attain much higher levels of quality, of design, of effectiveness in marketing — such as would also have been necessary to provide employment for those seeking it.
The other precondition which we have failed to meet is the good management of our own public finances. Our failure here has inhibited to a very large degree the capacity of any Government of this State at this point to offset other disadvantages by providing through its policies compensating incentives to stimulate growth and employment.
The simple fact is that at the very time when we faced unique difficulties which, more than at any other period in the history of the State, required the pursuit of prudent policies in respect of our public finances, we have experienced a disastrous loss of control in this area.
In the end, last year, this loss of control came to threaten the very financial viability of the State. For during the previous four years, when we ought to have been keeping public current spending within the limits imposed by the amount of current revenue available, we actually planned to overspend to the tune of almost £2 billion; then, year after year, we so miscalculated that we actually overspent to the tune of a further £1 billion.
Despite our efforts — and in this case the first person plural refers to this side of the House more than the more general "we" of the previous paragraph — when in power in 1981-82 to restore some order to the public finances, the situation that this Government inherited at the end of last year, was daunting, and the danger threatening this State if these problems were not tackled promptly and decisively, was one that could have shaken our society to its foundations. For, taking the Exchequer and State enterprises together, we had become dangerously dependent on borrowing from outside this State, to the tune of over £7 billion in total by the end of last year.
This now involves an interest and capital repayment commitment averaging over £1 billion a year right to the end of the present decade. No wonder that by the end of 1982 there had begun to emerge amongst those to whom we have recourse for this borrowing, doubts as to whether we had the capacity, or the will, so to organise our own affairs as to be capable of sustaining repayments of this ever-mounting burden of eternal debt.
The commitments already entered into, and the need to borrow abroad, even on a reduced rate in order to sustain a smaller current deficit and a capital programme, was such that in the present year the Exchequer and our State enterprises needed to borrow abroad a further £1.5 billion, including sums required to re-finance part of earlier borrowings. Had confidence in our ability to manage our own financial affairs not been restored by decisive action within eight weeks of the change of Government last December, it must be doubted if borrowing on anything like this scale would have been open to us in the current year. In that event, the curtailment of resources available to the public authorities to finance the continued running of this State would have been of a character difficult for any of us to appreciate in its full implications.
We have been saved from that fate by the narrowest of margins. Our credit-worthiness has been restored and now stands once again at a high level, because those outside this State to whom we have to have recourse, and to whom we will continue to have recourse for several years to come, know that there now exists a Government with a majority in Dáil Éireann, and with the necessary determination to bring the chaos of our public finances under control. There now exists a Government who have the determination also to eliminate over a planned period of years, the need for external borrowing, by bringing current revenue and current expenditure into line with each other. This would have the effect that our capital needs for genuine and worthwhile public investment, would then in the normal way be capable of being met from the domestic capital market.
I know that, faced with the scale of the present unemployment problem, some people tend to react against this kind of stress I have just been placing on the problem of our public finances. While claiming to recognise that we face grave financial problems, and that tough measures need to be taken to deal with them, there are those who nevertheless prefer to brush aside these realities, by claiming for example, that the Government seem to be trying to do too much too quickly in the financial area. A tendency to complacency, a preference for the soft option, an impatience with reality, is being reinforced by political voices which, freed from the responsibilities of office — responsibilities which, in the closing months of last year, brought a belated realisation that severe steps had to be taken if we were to save anything from the wreckage — now feel free in Opposition to promote less responsible views.
But let anyone on the opposite benches who feels inclined, from the security of opposition, to echo the "too far, too fast" theme, remember that when, just a year ago, panic struck the Government then in office with the realisation of just how disastrous a situation they had created, they committed themselves to a regime of eliminating the current deficit in four years, with an initial reduction to £750 million in 1983.
This Government, coming to office last December, and using their wide international contacts to supplement domestic advice on just how severe were the measures that needed to be taken, were able to establish that what Fianna Fáil were proposing to do did indeed involve going too far, too fast. We established that it would be possible — as we have done — to restore confidence in our capacity to run our own affairs by spreading the process of eliminating the current deficit over five years instead of four, and by easing the initial measures, to allow a current deficit of £900 million in 1983, rather than the £750 million targeted by Fianna Fáil.
If anyone is still inclined to think that we have gone too far too fast, let them dwell even for a moment on what would have happened had the country remained under the grip of a panic-stricken Fianna Fáil Government, lacking either the information or the judgment upon which to make a mature assessment of what steps needed to be taken. That Government may also have felt that the manner in which they had themselves lost the confidence of those to whom we were beholden outside this State for continued access to external capital, made it necessary for them to try to impress those concerned by going further and faster than it was, in fact, necessary for a new Government to do. This new Government — the actions of which during their previous brief period of office had already won them the trust of responsible people both abroad and at home have been able to proceed about this task in a considered, orderly, and less disruptive manner than the Government which they replaced.
May I add that any illusion that might exist that we have been trying to do too much too fast cannot reasonably survive the recent evidence that the Budget deficit which now appears to be emerging is in danger of exceeding the £900 million target which was set last February — and I noticed that a comment from an independent source suggesting the opposite was immediately withdrawn after it had been made in the light of the June Exchequer figures. In this context, the Government have to review the evolution of current revenue and expenditure, and capital spending, so as to identify adjustments that may be required in order to keep close to our budget targets. The Government will in fact be examining these issues closely in the next few weeks, and will take whatever steps are deemed necessary.
The suggestion that in what we have been doing to get the public finances under control we are narrowly concerned about matters of book-keeping, will not stand a moment's scrutiny. The simple stark fact is that our capacity to tackle the problem of unemployment has been gravely eroded by the disorder in our public finances. If we are to be free to take the kind of action that will help to create sustainable employment, we will have to remove this obstacle to our freedom and independence of action in this crucial area of policy.
Before turning to the initiatives which the Government are taking, or are preparing, in the area of employment policy, I want to say something about the problem of low national morale: a problem arising very largely, I believe, from our economic and financial difficulties. There has been a loss of faith in our capacity to manage our own affairs; there exists amongst many a sense of hopelessness about the future. There are fears about the job prospects for the new generation. It also has to be said, there has been a loss of confidence in politics and politicians from which no party is entirely exempt.
But these doubts, these uncertainties, these fears can be allayed if we in this House, in Government and in Opposition, now take our responsibilities, show determination and leadership and, by our actions, once again demonstrate that we are entitled to the confidence of those who elected us, by giving them back faith in themselves, and faith in their country.
That faith cannot be restored overnight because the problems created by this combination of our demographic situation, the depression of the world economy, and the mismanagement of our own financial affairs, can be resolved only slowly and painfully. There are no short-cuts, there are no miracle solutions — though people still want short-cuts, they still hanker after miracles.
It is our job from these benches, indeed also the benches opposite — the job of all of us in this House — to build up confidence steadily, not by promising what cannot be performed — a path that could lead only to an eventual collapse of confidence in our whole political system — but by showing how, painstakingly, and painfully, we can work our way back from the brink of the precipice to the kind of position which we held a decade ago.
Let us remember that, at that time ten years ago our economic performance drew to our shores journalists from every corner of the world, concerned to discover how a small country like ours had achieved, from the stagnation and despair of the 1950s, growth and recovery. This growth and this recovery had by the late sixties converted a haemorrhage of emigration into a heartening flow of net immigration, by Irish workers, bringing back to their own country skills they had acquired abroad, and bringing with them spouses they had married and children they had begotten while in temporary exile.
We should not forget what we achieved in those years, nor should we diminish our capacity today, even in the most difficult conditions, and against great obstacles, to achieve again great progress in many areas where we have sought after and attained excellence, such as the high technology industries.
Moreover, we should not ignore the fact that the skills of our people, combined with the capital and know-how that we have imported from abroad, have yielded a continuing growth of the volume of manufactured exports at an annual rate of almost 10 per cent, even during these recent years of external depression and of spiralling domestic costs. That is some achievement.
The time has come for us to take stock not only of our failures, and they have been gross, but also of our successes, and of our capacity both to identify the problems we face and, with leadership, to overcome them.
We can look with pride to the achievements of companies, in both the public and private sector, working in Third World countries, bringing to them skills acquired in the development of our own economy and competing successfully there with enterprises from far larger and more powerful states with much greater resources behind them.
We can also look with pride at our exports in the computer technology area and at the extraordinary reputation which our young people in their twenties and thirties working in this sector have won for themselves and for our country through their skills, their enthusiasm and the imagination they have applied in this most exacting of industrial sectors.
At another level we can look also with some satisfaction to such achievements as the reduction in our inflation rate, aided as it has been, of course, by favourable external factors. Two years ago inflation was running at over 20 per cent; a year ago at 17 per cent; and in the last 12 months at 9 per cent, including the extra burdens imposed as a result of the tax increases rendered necessary in the last budget by the imperative requirement to reduce our budget deficit and borrowing. Over the last six months the underlying rate of inflation, leaving aside these tax impositions, has been less than 4 per cent, and while one cannot, perhaps, expect to sustain such a very low rate over a full 12-month period, it is now clear that we can look forward to a further decline in inflation into lower single figures during the 12 months ahead.
At the same time, despite the upward drag of high interest rates in the United States which affects every other country in the world and from which we cannot be exempt as long as it lasts, and despite the temporary hike in our own interest rates around the time of the realignment of currencies in the EMS last March, we have now seen a return of interest rates to the lower level that had been attained towards the end of last year and in the early months of this year. We must hope that they fall further, recognising, however, that this is a function, first, of external factors outside our control, some of which are currently pointing in the opposite direction, but also, to a significant degree, of the success of all our domestic adjustment policies.
We can also look with some satisfaction to the start we have made with the restoration of confidence in the equity of our tax system. This had been undermined by evidence of widespread tax evasion and by the inadequacy of legislative measures designed to tackle this evil. This year's Finance Act, together with the provisions contained in Deputy John Bruton's January 1982 budget, most, if not all, of which were later incorporated in that year's Finance Act, constitute together a major onslaught on the unfortunate weakening of confidence in the equity of our tax system and that had accompanied the raising of taxation to new and burdensome levels, something felt most acutely by those whose taxes are deducted through the PAYE system, which leaves little room for evasion.
In passing I should remark that while some have seen fit to visualise these measures against tax evasion as reflecting in some way hostility to enterprise, they are in fact nothing of the sort. They are a protection for all those engaged in enterprise, whether private or public, whose ability to do so competitively has been weakened by the heavier burden of taxation on honest entrepreneurs that has been rendered necessary because of the evasion of their responsibilities on the part of a small minority who lack any sense of public morality.
I absolutely reject any attempt to equate entrepreneurs with tax evaders. The vast majority of those employers, and of employees, engaged in productive work, providing goods and services capable of being sold competitively at home or abroad, have no hand, act or part in tax evasion and they have every reason to welcome measures taken to tackle those who seek to batten on them through tax evasion measures.
While we have been making progress in these areas we have also been preparing to tackle the employment problem in a planned way.
In order to produce a medium-term plan that will be solidly based on reality rather than on unrealistic aspirations, we have appointed a small, effective National Planning Board. In the early part of next year the board will produce their proposals for a medium-term plan upon which the recovery of our economy will be based. In the meantime this National Planning Board have been working actively in the three months since their appointment on proposals for a budgetary and financial strategy in the short-run, to be undertaken within the framework of their preliminary ideas about the medium-term.
We are grateful to the National Planning Board for the speed with which they have tackled this initial task and for the skills they have deployed in producing proposals which will help to ensure that budgetary strategy is coherent within itself and is consistent with a longer-term view of where we should be going.
At the same time the Task Force of Minister concerned with employment is examining ways in which our existing employment policies can be improved to make them more effective. At one level this process requires a review of some of the systems of incentives that at present exist to encourage enterprise in the industrial and other fields. At another level it involves seeking to alleviate in the short-term the problems of unemployment that are posed, especially for the younger generation, but also for those wage-earners and bread-winners who have suffered a loss of earning power and of personal dignity as they have become unemployed, many of them after years or even decades of productive work.
Our policies in the youth employment area have proved relatively effective and the scale of activity in our country in relation to youth unemployment is as great as or greater than that in neighbouring states. The opportunities for training and work experience for young people have increased two-and-a-half fold in the last two years, as a result of the establishment by our previous administration of the youth employment levy and the Youth Employment Agency. This year 45,000 young people will benefit from these activities for an average period of about five months each, the equivalent of 20,000 man years — a high figure in relation to the total number of young people leaving the educational system each year, something under 60,000. In fact, a significant proportion of them are, even under present conditions, getting employment. As a result of this progress we are perhaps nearer than any other member state of the Community to being able to adhere to the European Community's proposed social guarantee for young people.
However, the Government are not satisfied that the work of the various agencies engaged in this area, despite its encouraging scale, is as effectively organised and co-ordinated as it might be. If this be the case the fault perhaps lies with the rapidity with which this Government, both in our previous term of office and more recently, have sought to expand these programmes rather than with the agencies themselves, all of which are tackling their tasks with energy and enthusiasm. In the near future decisions will be taken to improve co-ordination in this area so that we will get the best possible value from the very large sums — £120 million in the current year — being ploughed into training and work experience programmes for young people who are experiencing difficulty in securing employment.
In speaking on this aspect of our problems I would not, however, wish to encourage any illusion that the problem of unemployment, either for the young or for those who have given long service and now find themselves without jobs, will be readily or easily resolved. We must not fool ourselves on this subject, and we have no right to fool those who find themselves today without employment. The simple fact is that on the basis of the kind of policies that we as a country have pursued over several decades and that are being pursued in neighbouring countries the resolution of the employment problem would require a rate of growth and economic activity which is far beyond anything likely to be achieved in developed countries in the years immediately ahead.
This means that unless we are to abandon the hope of resolving this problem we shall have to adopt some combination of two strategies open to us. The first of these is a radical improvement in the competitiveness of the goods and services we produce, a radical improvement that would yield for us a share of our own and external markets far greater than we possess today. This, the most constructive and positive course of action, will require a degree of self-restraint in respect of incomes far greater than any that we have yet been willing to show. We have yet to face the fact that in every wage round in which we seek and secure increases in pay in excess of the increases in output which we are achieving, we are pushing more workers out of their jobs and are depriving more young people of any possibility of getting employment. We must never forget the fact that one man's pay rise may often be another man's job loss.
I know that it is difficult to quantify precisely the damage that has been done in recent years by the excess of income increases over increases in output. It is certainly safe to say that some tens of thousands of people are now unemployed who would have remained in employment, or would have secured employment, if we had been willing as a people to accept the kind of self-discipline in this area that has been accepted by people in other countries with whose goods and services we have to compete.
Satisfactory though the drop in the rate of inflation has been over the past year, it is still running at three or four times the rate of such countries as the Netherlands, Germany, United States and Japan, and their inflation rates are a reflection in a large measure of the rate of growth of money incomes in these countries.
In the draft public service pay agreement which is now for consideration by the public service committee of Congress, a planned approach to the payment of special pay increases over the next three years has been incorporated, as has a provision for dealing in an orderly way with the vexed question of special claims.
A general pay increase covering a 15-month period has been proposed providing for phased increases of 4.75 per cent and 3.25 per cent following a six-month pause. These figures, while presenting a considerable demand on the Exchequer, a higher level than might have been desirable, nonetheless represent significant progress in reducing the rate of growth of the Exchequer pay bill and compare favourably with the level of settlements in this sector in recent years.
These pay proposals also set a pattern which may help to ensure what is badly needed: a more realistic approach in the private sector than we have seen within the past ten days. When the pay round in the private sector has worked itself out we shall have to review its likely impact on employment and will have to consider where we must go in future if we are to secure a recovery in competitiveness on a scale that could get back to work the tens of thousands of people who would today be at work if we had maintained our ability to compete.
In our development strategy for a more productive economy providing permanent jobs we will be giving more effective and more co-ordinated incentives to domestic enterprise. We will back that enterprise to the full and one of the primary concerns of the Minister for Industry and Energy, working with his task force colleagues, will be to reshape our industrial policy in a practical and effective way for that purpose.
As part of our practical overhaul of industrial policy to make it more responsive to today's needs and opportunities we have accelerated the work of the Tri-partite Sectoral Development Committee. We will have recommendations from this committee this year, reflecting the combined and concerted views of employers, employees and Government agencies, for the planned development of industrial sectors which cover well over 60 per cent of those employed in manufacturing industry.
The Government Task Force of Ministers will steadily convert these and the other proposals that they are and will be examining into practical Government action which will improve our capacity to protect existing jobs and to generate new ones.
To the extent that we succeed with our efforts to tackle the problem of unemployment by reversing the deterioration in competitiveness, which up to the present is still continuing, we shall minimise the need for a more radical approach to the employment problem. But given the scale of this problem, we cannot assume that even with a major change in attitudes to pay levels in the years immediately ahead — of which there is, as yet, no sign — unemployment can be reduced to anything like an acceptable level. A much more radical approach may therefore be necessary if we are to ensure that those who have lost their jobs get employment again and that young people get a chance to work.
A way will have to be found to secure a fairer sharing of work among the labour force so that we do not continue to have a situation in which one worker in six is unemployed while the other five have jobs at continually rising nominal pay rates. There must be ways of securing a better balance in the employment market. We must have the courage to seek them out, whether that involves control of overtime, shortening of working hours at unchanged hourly rates of pay or the splitting of jobs so that we avoid perpetuating the situation where, as between two young people, one finds himself or herself completely without work while the other gets a full-time job. In this context those lucky enough to be in employment must realise that every excessive demand conceded to them is depriving the next generation of job opportunities.
While our main concentration during the years immediately ahead has to be on our overwhelming economic problems, there are other issues too which we shall tackle. The problem of equity and fairness in our society goes far beyond the limits of the taxation system. Our public finances provide a veritable rabbit warren of transfer systems, taking money from people through a complicated proliferation of tax measures and giving it back to them again in all kinds of transfers and subsidies, many of which reduce the cost of goods or services arbitrarily to all and sundry rather than being directed towards helping those most in need.
We must put some order into this confused system so that the process by which the Government raise money in taxation and redistribute much of it back again to the general public is made efficient and operates in the interests of equity rather than in a higgledy-piggledy manner as at present. A Social Welfare Commission to be appointed by the Government and the Commission on Taxation, from which a further report is due, will together help us to find a way of clearing up many of the anomalies which leave people with a sense of injustice, and which in many cases do involve actual injustices. It is my purpose that by the time this Government return to face the electorate major progress will have been made with this complex problem.
We must also face realistically our growing crime problem, which has led to a large part of our population living in permanent fear. Already we have enacted the Criminal Justice Community Service Bill. Allied to the recent provision of new prison accommodation in three locations this will help to expand the capacity of our system to cope with convictions. Of particular importance will be a new Criminal Justice Bill designed to change the present balance between the criminal and the law.
I recently set up a ministerial task force on the drugs problem and am pleased that they have already completed their report for Government. This will lead to positive action in the near future in this tragic area of social disorder.
The substantial deployment of newly-recruited gardaí is already improving a bad situation in many areas. Allied to the other measures I have outlined, the expansion of Garda activity should lead to a marked improvement in the crime situation.
We have also begun to tackle a series of other social reforms. The Minister of State, Deputy Fennell, is working towards a comprehensive legislative package for the next four years. The inter-departmental committee working in this field, under her leadership, are already laying the groundwork for both legislative and other reforms in this area.
Already we have proposals to bring about joint ownership of family homes and we are working on improving the rights of children and human rights generally — the latter being an area in which we have neglected our international responsibilities by failing to take the measures necessary to enable us to ratify a number of international conventions. The new Oireachtas Committees on Marriage and Women's Affairs will have a major contribution to make in the area of family law reform.
We are also taking a major initiative as regards youth policy. A National Youth Policy Committee are being established in fulfilment of a Government commitment, to bring forward a national youth policy to meet the needs of the rising youth population. The task of incorporating youth as a social partner is being tackled in accordance with our commitment to this sector of our population.
The welfare of the less-well-off has been safeguarded by our budget provisions for social welfare. By increasing benefit by 12 per cent at a time when inflation is running at 9 per cent we have ensured that the elderly, the unemployed and the underprivileged are protected while the rest of the community are finding themselves faced with a squeeze in their living standards.
The more effective and more widespread development of the arts and culture is a high priority of our Government reflected in the appointment of Deputy Nealon as Minister of State with responsibility for this area. We intend progressively to bring better co-ordination and direction into public provision for the arts and culture, to solve outstanding problems in the conservation of our national artistic and cultural heritage where we have been neglectful and where great damage is still being done and, in particular, to strengthen artistic and cultural activities and facilities in the regions.
In a speech in an Adjournment Debate which inevitably must contain controversial matter, not all of which will commend itself to the Opposition, I am reluctant to say much about the problem of Northern Ireland where a great deal now depends upon the parties which are taking part in the New Ireland Forum developing and maintaining solidarity in their approach to the task of suggesting ways in which peace and stability can be established in this island.
Deliberately on this occasion, therefore, I will confine myself to recording that the Forum provides an opportunity for the three main parties here together with the SDLP — parties representing well over 90 per cent of nationalist opinion in this island — to put forward in a constructive, open and generous way a number of alternative approaches to the problem of restoring peace and stability in Ireland.
I shall not dwell either on the area of foreign policy save to make some comments in respect of one specific area where in the months ahead we shall be facing major problems and where also perhaps we may find major opportunities. This is in respect of the negotiations now due to take place concerning the finances of the European Community.
In the negotiations now under way in the European Community, we shall find ourselves under pressure on aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy. This is of immense importance to all of us on this island, whether we earn our living on a farm or in other walks of life where we benefit from the prosperity of the farming community.
We are at present actively preparing for this difficult negotiation in which we shall seek to secure the support of likeminded countries in respect of aspects of the Common Agricultural Policy which we and they believe to be of great value. We shall also ensure that the special interests of this country in the preservation of this policy, especially in so far as it affects products of such enormous importance to us as milk, will be protected.
I spoke recently at some length on the economic and social importance of a prosperous agriculture. I took care then to point out the difficulties the farming community have experience in recent years, which are often misrepresented in such a way as to divide town and country. The extent of the real income drop of farmers in recent years has had severe impact not only on farm families but on the many other families whose incomes depend directly or indirectly on a prosperous agricultural sector.
At the same time we shall be seeking to ensure that by the end of the year in Athens the obstacle to the further development of the Community posed by the present 1 per cent limitation on VAT payments by member states will have been removed. No one should be in any doubt about the importance of these negotiations for the vital national interests of this country. Preparations for them, and diplomatic activity in connection with them, will absorb much of the time and energy of our Government in the months immediately ahead, and rightly so.
The tasks that I have outlined and the challenges that we have to face, are on a more demanding scale than anything that any Government has faced in the history of this State since its earliest years. To tackle them successfully demands of any Government a combination of ability, energy and political skill beyond the ordinary. I believe that the Government which I have the honour to lead have these characteristics in abundance, and that in their balance of personalities, of skills and aptitudes, will serve this country well during the four years ahead. Backed as we are by two political parties in this House which are dedicated to the public interest, to economic growth and to progressive social policies, and which have the courage and fortitude to sustain a Government in the face of many and grave difficulties, we are, I believe, assured of success in this most difficult of periods, and in facing so many major problems.
Our two parties are determined to restore confidence in our political system. This confidence has been undermined by events such as the abuse of the telephone interception system and the politicisation of the Planning Appeals Board, to name but two examples in respect of which, as I mentioned earlier, we have already taken effective action. We shall continue during our term of office to make any changes that may be necessary in order to ensure that the more sensitive areas of our administrative system are not open to abuse for political purposes.
May I conclude by saying that the couple of months immediately ahead, during which this Parliament will not be sitting in plenary session, will not be a period of political inactivity as some commentators — not those closest to the political process — would have our public opinion believe. While most politicians will certainly seek a few well-deserved weeks of repose at some stage during the three months ahead, throughout much of the greater part of this period, members of this House, whether in Government, or supporting the Government in the back benches, or in Opposition, will continue to be fully engaged in the task of serving the people of this State.
The work of Government will proceed apace, with more time available for the discussion of policy and the preparation of legislative measures than is possible when the Dáil is in session.
Many of the Committees now established by agreement by this House and the Seanad, which will be operating on a scale without precedent in our parliamentary history, will together with the New Ireland Forum, be actively engaged during this period of parliamentary recess in pursuing the tasks alloted to them, carrying out these tasks very largely on a non-partisan, constructive basis, to which I hope the media will, during these months, and subsequently, direct the attention of public opinion.
When we adjourn tomorrow night the political process will not, therefore, come to a halt. In fact, in certain areas of activity it will be accelerated. And when this House resumes in three months time it will have before it an intensive programme of legislation and will also have the task for the first time in the history of the State, of examining before the Christmas recess, in advance of the process of spending the money in question, the Estimates of expenditure.
There is an immense job to be done by Government and politicians on behalf of the Irish people. In the months and years immediately ahead, all of us in this House will be playing our part in undertaking this task on behalf of those who have done us the honour of selecting us to represent them here.
