I understand I have five minutes left.
Programme for Economic and Social Progress: Motion (Resumed).
The following motion was moved by the Taoiseach on Tuesday, 19 February 1991:
That Dáil Éireann approves theProgramme for Economic and Social Progress.
Debate resumed on amendment No. 1:
To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and insert the following:
"Notes that the Government have concluded an agreement with the social partners on theProgramme for Economic and Social Progress.
Notes the Fine Gael proposal of January 1989 for a national forum for 1992 involving all the Oireachtas political parties together with the social partners in long term economic and social planning.
Affirms its support for the concept of social partnership as a means of promoting long term economic and social development.
Congratulates the social partners on reaching agreement on pay levels over the next three years.
Regrets that the current programme was drafted without any involvement of Oireachtas Éireann or of elected representatives generally, apart from some members of the Cabinet, and that many interests in society, notably young people, dependent spouses, the homeless, the unemployed and the non-agricultural self-employed, were not represented in direct discussions on the programme.
Regrets that the provisions in the programme in regard to the health service will have the effect of increasing the pressure on hospital beds and of lengthening queues for services.
Regrets the fact that the Government's 1991 budget is not consistent with the achievement of the fiscal targets set in the programme, and that the programme omits essential information as to how the spending and tax commitments contained in it are to be reconciled with the target of broad balance on the current budget.
Stresses its alarm that the economic projections in the programme, and the policies of the Government as expressed in the programme, will not lead to any reduction in the level of unemployment or emigration, and may well increase both, and that the industrial policies in the programme are not the ones best suited to establishing research-intensive autonomous industry in Ireland.
Regrets that the particular income tax proposals in the programme make no provision at all to widen the tax bands and thereby to reduce the excessively high marginal tax rates facing low and middle income workers.
Regrets that the programme contains no commitment to long term structural reform, with a view to creating employment, in areas such as tax policy, food and agricultural policy, the public service, education and social welfare,
and in view of the foregoing, directs the Government to establish an Economic and Social Committee of Oireachtas Éireann, involving members of all recognised groups, which would:
1. review the content of the programme;
2. put forward remedies for its deficiencies;
3. nominate representatives of Oireachtas Éireann to sit on the National Economic and Social Council;
4. discuss how the programme ought to be adjusted in the event of the assumptions for growth and tax revenue underlying it not being reached;
5. participate, on behalf of Oireachtas Éireann, in the consultations leading to the drafting of any future programmes for economic and social progress."
—(Deputy J. Bruton.)
That is correct.
Before the debate was adjourned yesterday, I described this programme as a unique development and I want to pay tribute to the many people who put so much work into it. The House, and people generally, should note that programmes like that do not just happen; they take a tremendous amount of work and much flexibility not just on the part of the Government——
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister, but I must insist that the Minister be heard without interruption of any kind, especially from the lobby.
It is important in this debate that the House take careful note of and salute the flexibility and courage of all those involved in putting this programme together.
We only have to cast our minds back a decade to recall the strikes, man days lost, the 25 per cent rate of inflation, the scrambling to ensure that pay increases matched the rate of inflation and the general lack of order in managing what is a very small economy. It is very important that this House notes that this is the second programme under which we have managed to get together a consensus on the way we should move our economy in the years ahead.
The most important thing about this programme is not so much what is in it, although that is obviously critical, but that it exists at all and that it succeeds a programme that made a mark in a few short years. The progress of the last programme has been recited many times in this debate, and this one, I trust, will make similar progress. The unique nature of both programmes in the whole context of how we manage our affairs is really what is exciting about them.
I mentioned yesterday on the tourism side that I saw 1991 as a difficult year, a year when we expect that the American market in terms of visitors will be substantially down for reasons to do with the Gulf and the recession in the USA. However I expect that we can more than hold our own in the UK and continental marketplaces. As I said yesterday, we have allocated an extra £1 million to Bord Fáilte to conduct this year a very targeted and special campaign in the UK market and on the Continent, to try to make up for the difficulties which we expect in the American market. I know from Bord Fáilte that they have already commenced that exercise.
I have told the House on many occasions that I am actively engaged in trying to attract to Ireland as many airlines as will listen to me. I have pointed out in reply to many parliamentary questions that it is a very difficult time in the aviation business and that I do not expect the airlines to respond to my invitations as quickly as they might have done in the past. I am anxious to get onto their lists so that when the situation improves internationally they will be able to put Ireland higher on their agenda. This is an island nation and without airlines of international quality and standards agreeing to service this nation we will be cut off from a tourist point of view. I want to reiterate that I have visited and talked with a substantial number of these airlines. They have undertaken to consider my invitation to assess the economics of putting routes in place to Ireland and have undertaken to come back to me on that matter in a very short period.
This programme is unique. It outlines an important role for tourism. Tourism has been growing at about 15 per cent per annum for the past couple of years, but regretfully I do not expect we will reach that target this year. I would like to be able to report that we would — we have not given up yet — but it will be very difficult in the current climate. I have told the House on many occasions of my policy to try to keep airline fares down for our business travellers and our tourists because of the central importance of tourism, but I have to find a balance between the solvency of our airlines and the tourism dimension.
Deputy Yates asked me about this matter in a parliamentary question this week and I responded that I did not think it would be wise at this stage to deregulate air fares. Philosophically that would be my wish but in practical terms, given the small number of airlines servicing Ireland and given the temptation for them to retreat to the old high fare regime, I pointed out to the Deputy that that might not be a very wise move. I will of course keep an eye on the position, but in the ideal competitive marketplace there would be a lot of airlines freely competing and one would rely on that for a reduction in air fares. I have to try something different, which is to manage the competition sensibly and at the same time hold fares at a reasonable level. Regretfully, in the past ten months I have had to sanction increases in fares in the order of 15 to 16 per cent, even more in some cases. That is substantially above the inflation rate but the option was to push the airlines into further financial difficulties or to increase the fares. That in itself will unfortunately damage our tourism prospects but I hope we can as soon as possible return to reducing those air fares.
I am astonished that the Minister has the effrontery to come into the House and make the speech that he made last night and this morning. I have read it carefully and it is full of all the right jargon and buzz words. There is not a single idea in it, there is no meat in it. The Minister tells us that he is in charge of the greater part of our semi-State sector, and yet he has nothing at all to say about An Post, a matter that is at the top of everybody's mind these days.
In the Seanad tonight.
In a 15 minute contribution here the Minister said nothing at all about An Post. This is a typically Fianna Fáil speech, and I will give a couple of examples.
I have a lot of the Deputy's speeches on it.
Let us look at a selection of phrases, the magic buttons that the whizz kids in Fianna Fáil touch every so often. "We are now in a position to consolidate and build." How about that? "The Government record their commitment to the maintenance of a viable and profitable commercial semi-State sector." What does that mean? What does it mean for An Post, CIE, Bus Éireann or Iarnród Éireann? The Minister said nothing about that; "Irish tourism has come of age"— that is a wonderful phrase which conjures up magnificient visions —"and has adopted a more sophisticated market-led approach", whatever that means. The Minister tells us we will not have as many tourists this year as we had last year but it does not matter, "we have come of age and we have a sophisticated market-led approach". The Government are also going "to market our tourism products skilfully, vigorously and selectively"— not just skilfully, but also vigorously and selectively.
Stirring stuff.
The Minister still tells us we are going to have fewer tourists this year than last year and, not only that, but——
We are going to market them.
——we are going to match specific products to particular market segments. This Minister talks like a textbook. He talks like a blurb for a management consultancy firm. He does not talk like a Minister, and he certainly is not a Minister who is telling us anything about what he is doing——
Stick around.
——with this big segment of the semi-State sector that has the misfortune to be under his control.
It is the last post.
The Minister comes along and tells us very wisely about the kind of competition he would like to see in the airline business but he unfortunately, the "craythur", has to do it a different way because he has to manage this competition sensibly. For goodness sake, has the Minister any idea what he is talking about at all or what a market is about? It is an insult to this House to come in here with those kinds of clichés and buzz words and expect to get away with it.
I will turn to the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, an agreement between the social partners. The real phoneyness of the agreement comes into full focus when we look at the job targets. Does anyone really believe it is possible to create even the minimum target of 20,000 jobs a year?
No.
Make believe predictions may be comforting to those who wrote this document but the employment aspects are pure fantasy and self-deception.
That is a cliché.
Séamus in wonderland.
Those may be familiar words to the Minister. They are not original words of mine. I am not the one who invented them. They are words which were used on 10 October 1987 by a member of the present Government to describe this programme's predecessor, the Programme for National Recovery. The person who used those words is Deputy Desmond O'Malley, the leader of the Progressive Democrats and now the Minister for Industry and Commerce. Let me give him due credit and say that, like others among us, he was right in October 1987. The Programme for National Recovery failed to live up to the grandiose predictions made by the Government at the time; employment creation fell far short of the targets set out at the time and yet the Minister for Industry and Commerce is now prepared to put his name to another set of phoney targets and to ask this House to accept — and support — very much the same kind of mishmash which he so eloquently criticised just over three years ago.
The Taoiseach, who was so strongly criticised by the Progressive Democrats in October 1987 is now, of course, their boss and their parliamentary denunciations of him are now limited — when we hear them at all — to rather polite admonitions at the end of speeches of support in this House. God alone knows how complacent and compliant they are in Government. Their real denunciations, apparently, are the sole preserve of their chairman in exile who rages away outside this House without seeming to be able to influence the actions of their members in here.
There is another aspect to that whole sham. Members of this House know that, around the country, you will find a handful of tame Progressive Democrats Deputies, bought Progressive Democrats Senators and apostate councillors who go to public meetings of different kinds. They run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. They try to pretend they are not really a part of the Government and that they have no hand, act or part in anything the Government might do of which people might disapprove. They imply that they will be in there rooting for the people. I wonder if it was to set up that kind of neo-sleeveenism they broke all the famous moulds in 1985 or were they always like that, neither fish, flesh nor good red herring?
This programme does not represent a social consensus despite the claims the Government make for it; it did not emerge from a process that could, in any way, be described as a true consultation, even among those who are designated rather arbitrarily as social partners. At heart this document is a series of special deals on separate — and largely unlinked — issues hammered out between the Government and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. My words do not imply a criticism of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the Congress negotiators carried out their job skilfully and, to the best of their ability, they did it as they saw it. There are, to my knowledge, a number of questions as to whether the Congress negotiators actually stuck to the brief given to them by their members, or whether they stuck to the brief which their members thought they had given them. However, this House is not the place to pursue those questions. The truth is that the other social partners, the representatives of industry, employers and the farming community, were induced, with the active connivance of the Government, to accept a whole series of unrelated proposals with most of which they disagreed, in return for getting agreement on a pay deal.
There is no grand design behind this programme; there is no economic design nor is there any design for a consensus among the social partners. In that connection, it is interesting to note that the Taoiseach admitted while speaking to the House about this year's budget that "the fact that we can agree is more important than the precise details of what we agree about". A similar sentiment came from the Minister for Tourism, Transport and Communications this morning. In other words, the Government were prepared to pay almost any price; to get an agreement on pay. In that way they clearly abdicated their responsibility and have given up even the slightest pretence of making conscious and direct decisions for the benefit of our people.
We may ask how much members of the Government knew about this process and negotiation. How many of them had any real involvement in what was going on and in deciding on the extent of the Government's capitulation? I suspect that the answer is very few. Thus, a Government which are supposed to act on the basis of collective responsibility simply acquiesced in things which they had not decided but which were worked out in a series of side deals in the talks between Government representatives and the Irish Congress of Trade Unions. These side deals were subsequently put to the other social partners as position papers and, while the social partners were being given their regulatory hour to read the position papers, they were being approached by representatives from the Government side telling them that they knew they did not like it but not to rock the boat because the Government thought they were getting the unions in line in regard to a pay deal. That is where all the other provisions in this programme come from about housing, education and all the nonsense about the promise the Government made in regard to expenditure of all kinds. They all came out of those side deals from a Government which, as I said, stated very clearly that they were prepared to pay almost any price to get a pay deal. That is no way to plan public expenditure, a health service, education or anything else.
Since the programme was agreed a succession of Ministers have come before the House — but more often somewhere else — claiming credit for something in which they had simply acquiesced and which they did not decide; nor has there been any input to this programme by the elected representatives. Opposition Deputies were not involved, the Government cannot even pretend that the sham debate which took place here to take note of the 1991 Estimates could have had any effect on the Government's approach to this programme since most of the negotiation had already taken place before the debate was conducted in this House. Yet, Sir, this House has the duty of voting to allocate expenditure across the whole range of public policy.
This programme has clearly been drawn up in a way that cuts across the duties and the prerogatives of this House. Substantial parts of budget decisions and expenditure decisions for this year are affected and even determined in some cases by this programme. As I pointed out earlier this month in the budget debate, even the explanatory memorandum in regard to the current budget issued to us on Budget Day by the Minister for Finance has a specific heading entitled "PESP Related Expenditure". In this connection I am not impressed by the amendment to the Government motion put forward by the Labour Party. It is idle — and indeed disingenuous — to describe the provisions of this programme as "specific, legislative and administrative commitments given by the Government on behalf of the Oireachtas".
The Oireachtas was not involved in any way in specifying these legislative and administrative commitments. I am disappointed that the Labour Party should seek — for reasons which I cannot understand — to give the Government a retrospective figleaf for a sham programme. Neither am I impressed with The Workers' Party amendment which starts by supporting a very wide concept of central bargaining — I see shades of the old Stalinist position there — and handing over the responsibilities of the Legislature to "the principal economic and social interest in the country". However, the amendment concludes in total contradiction to its beginning by calling for a review mechanism in this House. There is neither sense nor logic in that amendment.
Curiously, the two parties of the Left seem to take very different views about the content of the programme. The Labour Party, apparently, regard the programme as containing specific legislative and administrative commitments. The Workers' Party, on the other hand, believe that "many of the commitments given by the Government are vague, conditional, imprecise and, in some instances, merely aspirational". Can the Left not agree on a view of this programme or is it simply the case that the two parties are getting different instructions from different unions?
The Taoiseach has claimed that the programme "envisages a continuation of the process already begun of harmonisation of indirect taxation with our Community partners". I wish that it were so but it is not. When I read the section of the programme dealing with this issue I find a lot of words and elegant prose but no proposals. On budget night I pointed out to the House that a move to a single VAT rate of 17 per cent would cost the Exchequer £150 million in a full year and that is before taking account of any of the dynamic effects of such a move. The programme says nothing about that. On excise duties, the programme points out some of the difficulties but, again, makes no proposals. I see no evidence therefore that any process has been started to bring about harmonisation of indirect taxation. We know perfectly well — indeed many Members of this House know it in their constituencies to their pain — that unless and until we have that process of harmonisation we will continue to face major difficulties in our Border areas and in several important industrial sectors.
Some of the specific provisions in the programme are absolutely nonsensical and bear no relationship to the kind of priorities which we should set today for public expenditure in the light of obvious needs in our society. I do not believe, for example, that our health service is in a condition to say to me that, if I wish, I can have my hospital consultant's fees paid for by the taxpayer nor do I see any improvement in equity in our health service by telling me that I will now have paid for me by the taxpayer something that I can afford to pay for myself and by that very fact make somebody who cannot afford to pay wait even longer than they have to wait now. That is no way to improve equity in our health service.
I would like to make one brief point on the health service. The programme says nothing about the removal of the income limit for health contributions, but we got that news in a footnote to the budget. On its own that measure is going to mean that a great many people, for whom the unions negotiated pay increases over the next three years and minimal meagre tax changes, are going to find that all the benefits of those tax changes will be offset at one stroke by that simple abolition of the income limit for health contributions. I wonder what the social partners think about that and what Members of this House, who should see that clearly, are now doing in supporting the programme before us.
I would of course disagree with Deputy Dukes on the importance of the programme in the first instance. Having seen a number of programmes in the past I believe that this is the most detailed, professional and sophisticated programme ever put before the people at any time in our history. It also gives an indication of how skilled and professional the trade unions and the representatives of the employers and farmers have become in their negotiations and in their approach to the development of the country. This is a very good plan. Deputy Dukes was critical of the fact that the Taoiseach places so much importance on the need for people to agree. Yes, people did agree and were prepared to merge their interests in the overall national interest. I would remind the Deputy of the saying that if you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there but you could waste a lot of time, whereas if there is an agreed plan, even though adjustments may be necessary, that plan will achieve the objectives.
The social welfare commitments in the programme are far-reaching and comprehensive. They set out the agenda for the next decade and represent a realistic strategy for the reform of our social welfare system so as to make it more responsive to changing needs and better equipped to tackle the problems of poverty in our society today. With this programme, the elderly, the lone parent family, the unemployed, the sick and disabled can rest assured that they will share in, and benefit from, the prosperity which this programme is designed to create. In the short period since the Programme for Economic and Social Progress was launched we have already taken the first important steps to get the new programme under way.
The improvement in the public finances achieved under the Programme for National Recovery, which has just come to an end, made possible substantial income tax reductions and increases in social welfare payments. These increases were ahead of the rate of inflation each year. In addition, many special increases were granted. As a result those at work and those who depend on social welfare and their families gained in real terms during the last three years. This contrasted very sharply with the period prior to 1987 when most people lost out.
The new programme for progress will deliver jobs, keep prices down and protect and improve the position of the least well off in the decade ahead. This will be achieved through the consensus which the Government have developed with the employers, trade unions and farmers. The new programme will transform our society and raise our standards of living during the next ten years. Everyone will share in this prosperity.
I would now like to deal briefly with some of the social welfare commitments in the new programme. Over the term of the programme the Government are committed to improving the level of payments to the tune of £400 million in 1990 terms. The priority rates recommended by the Commission on Social Welfare will be achieved this year in the case of all the long term unemployed. The new minimum long term personal rate of £55 means that all long term rates of social welfare payments now reach or exceed the commission's priority rate of £54.60 in 1991 terms. We are committed to the achievement of the commission's priority rate for all by 1993. As I said, we have already taken a major step in the budget and shown our good faith that we can and will surpass the priority rates recommended by 1993. Thereafter, social welfare rates will be increased in accordance with the commission's recommendations as the resources of the economy grow. The extra cost of achieving the commission's main rates is £327 million in 1990 terms.
A number of people have said that this does not represent a commitment as it is related to growth and development achieved under the programme. It is a very important commitment for the Department of Social Welfare. In today's edition of the Irish Press a spokesperson for the National Campaign for Welfare Reform is quoted as saying: “While the Government pays lip service to implementing the Commission on Social Welfare's recommendations it does not commit itself to introducing them within the lifetime of the programme”. I want to make it very clear today that we have given a commitment in the programme to achieve the main rates recommended by the commission during the period of the programme. I hope that in respect of many of these rates we will manage to do this even before the end of the ten year period but accept fully, as would any reasonable person, that this can only happen as the country's resources grow and improve in the period of the programme. I believe those resources will grow and improve, but here we have for the first time a firm commitment to a share in that growth and to that share reaching the levels proposed by the commission, the main rates.
The 4 per cent general increase in weekly payments for those who depend on social welfare is above the rate of inflation, with increases of up to 11 per cent being given to those on supplementary welfare allowance and short term unemployment assistance, bringing their personal rates to £50 a week — a major step towards achieving the commission's priority rates for these groups by 1993. We are going to continue closing the gap for those who are below the rates and to continue to improve matters for those who are above the priority rate.
Let us see the effect of those increases during the past four years. In 1986 the personal rate of long term unemployment assistance was £36.70 per week. From next July it will be £55, an increase of £18.30 or just under 50 per cent. A married man with four children has received an increase of £38.85, or 40 per cent, in the same period. A couple on old age pension received £91.50 in 1986. Now they will get £110, an increase of £18.50 or just over 20 per cent. These are examples of the practical application of maintaining and improving the position of those dependent on social welfare. In regard to long term unemployment assistance, the single rate has gone up consistently each year and in 1991 it will pass the priority rate. The married rate has also gone consistently upwards and has now reached £87.40 which is ahead of the priority rate. For a married couple with five children there has been a consistent rise from 1987 to pass the priority rate in 1991 terms at £147.40 with the main rate, the main recommendation of the commission, at £157.30. In those charts real progress towards the main rates can be seen and that progress is going to continue.
This year's budget saw further improvements in child dependant allowances and in child benefit in line with the commitment to devote an extra £69 million in 1990 terms to child income support over the term of the programme. The new minimum rate of child dependant allowance from July next will be £12. The higher rate of child benefit will from October next be paid to the fourth child. Those on long term payments will receive child dependant allowances for school-going children up to 21 years. The number of rates is now down to three; four years ago we had 36 different rates, and they were all lower rates, for a child dependant. Therefore, these represent real, clear cut, practical improvements and standardisation that is improving all the time.
The new programme recognises the important role the family income supplement scheme plays in directing resources to lower paid workers with children while preserving the incentive to work. The £16.5 million improvement in the FIS and the new child-related tax exemptions announced in the budget mean families at work on low pay can now be substantially better off than if they were claiming social welfare payments. The new FIS eligibility limits mean families with eight children can qualify for FIS if their weekly income is less that £276. School-going children up to the age of 21 can now be included and the restriction on the amount of FIS payment based on the family size is gone. The combined effects of the Government's package involving the FIS and the child tax exemptions will ensure families are better off at work than claiming social welfare. A family with four children on £160 a week will now be 36 per cent better off working than if they were receiving unemployment benefit with pay-related benefit. The child-related tax measure will benefit some 98,000 workers with 154,000 children.
Last week I signed regulations bringing almost 21,000 part-time workers into the protection of the social welfare system from 6 April next in line with the commitment in the programme. A publicity campaign to advise employers of the new arrangements will be launched shortly. I will set out the details of entitlements for part-time workers in the forthcoming Social Welfare Bill. Benefits will be earnings-related to ensure that very low paid workers are better off at work than drawing social welfare.
The inclusion of the self-employed in social insurance in 1988 was a milestone in the development of our social welfare system. It has proved to be very successful. Bringing in part-time workers is a further major expansion and I am glad to be able to implement it at such an early stage in the new programme.
The mixed insurance problem where some people, such as CIE workers, lost out on social welfare pension because they had a mixture of full rate and modified rate contributions is a major anomaly in the social welfare insurance system. This long-standing difficulty is now being resolved. From November this year pro rata pensions will be paid to people with mixed insurance records. Details will be contained in the Social Welfare Bill which I will shortly bring before the House.
We have been setting the headlines in the past year by introducing the most comprehensive and up-to-date legislation on occupational pension schemes since the foundation of the State. One of my priorities is to ensure that people do not lose out on their pension entitlements when they reach retirement age. Tragically, some workers found that the funds were not there to pay their pensions when their employer's business collapsed. Others lost their pension rights when they transferred to another job. The new Pensons Act provides for the protection of pension rights for employees who change or lose their jobs, full disclosure of information to members of pension schemes, equal treatment for men and women and minimum funding standards for schemes. The Pensions Board I set up recently will oversee the new legislation and ensure that employees, trustees, and pension fund managers comply with it.
In delivering our social welfare services, we are committed to providing a personal, localised, caring service which will meet our clients' needs in both a caring and dignified way. We plan to achieve this by developing the one stop shop concept which will provide a broad range of services at local level, improving and modernising our buildings and offices around the country, giving greater autonomy to regional and local managements, improving liaison with FAS to ensure the best possible mix of training and employment opportunities for the long term unemployed, and improving local information services. We want a service of which all of us can be proud.
In Ireland we are unique in the extent of voluntary social service work carried out by people in their own communities. In Social Welfare we have become increasingly involved with the voluntary social services sector in the broader welfare area. The new charter for voluntary social services proposed in the programme will set out a clear framework for partnership between the State and voluntary activity. A White Paper outlining the Government's proposals will be prepared.
The proposed area-based strategy is an important commitment in the programme for the long term unemployed. Designed to implement a community response in particular areas to long term unemployment it will promote local communities as the prime movers in a new partnership with employers and State agencies to tackle unemployment. The strategy will ensure that the long term unemployed have the opportunity of training, work experience and second chance education leading to qualifications and, therefore, a greater chance of a job. The necessary arrangements will be put in place immediately on ratification of the programme. A sum of £0.5 million has been allocated in the budget for the managerial cost and the scheme will be monitored by the Central Review Committee.
Small farmers are facing particular difficulties at present. The new programme recognises this by identifying farming families on low incomes among those who require special attention. This problem will be addressed in consultation with the farming organisations and having regard to relevant developments at EC level. Last month's budget provided an allocation of £1 million to fund a scheme to help very low income farming families. That scheme will be subsumed in due course into the anticipated EC scheme. All aspects of means test arrangements will be reviewed to ensure that all sectors, including the farm sector, are treated equitably and consistently.
The Government are committed to the elimination of fraud and abuse in the social welfare system and to reducing the effect of the black economy. For example, £20 million will be saved in a major new crackdown on PRSI-related fraud. Unscrupulous employers and subcontractors who attempt to cheat taxpayers, competitors, employers and their families will face stiff penalties. Highly successful anti-fraud measures which I introduced in the past two years will now be extended to other sectors as a matter of priority.
From 6 April next my Department will take over from the Revenue Commissioners responsibility for the allocation of RSI numbers in respect of which all the preliminary work has now been completed leading to a more co-ordinated approach to the registration of the entitlements based on the RSI number.
At the outset I said that this new programme has set the agenda for social welfare during the nineties. It is an agenda which is comprehensive, balanced and designed to lead to real progress. It sets out to achieve a level of social welfare services which will meet the needs identified by the Commission on Social Welfare. The Programme for Economic and Social Progress provides the consensus and foundations on which those who depend on social welfare can rely for a fair share of the benefits of increased national prosperity. There is, in this programme, a social guarantee for those who depend on social welfare that they will achieve the full rates proposed by the Commission on Social Welfare as our economy grows over the period of the programme. This must be welcomed by all who genuinely care for the less well off.
Therefore, we can look forward to the nineties with renewed confidence.
Anybody who listened to the contribution of the Minister for Social Welfare to this debate would indeed be dismayed because the main emphasis of his remarks was placed on social welfare entitlements which are indeed welcome by their beneficiaries but gave very little hope to those people hoping to be back in gainful employment in the near future, something I very much regret.
I should like to refer briefly to some of the remarks directed at this side of the House by Deputy Dukes. I was somewhat surprised at that attack emanating from that quarter bearing in mind that, were it not for Deputy Dukes and the Tallaght strategists, we would not now find ourselves in circumstances in which there are many people unemployed in the health services which are in complete disarray, circumstances in which people have not been adequately housed or can hold out any hope of being housed in the near future.
Likewise I should have thought that the Minister for Tourism, Transport and Communications would have availed of the opportunity of this debate to allay the fears of people employed by An Post. We read in this morning's newspapers that there is now a plan to shelve the proposals the Minister floated in this House last week, that it now boils down to the 1,500 people likely to lose their jobs, full-time permanent staff of An Post. I welcome any decision which would postpone or abolish any proposal to close sub-post offices throughout the country; likewise the introduction of roadside boxes and the one postal delivery per day in Dublin.
The implications of the one delivery per day in the cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Waterford appear to have gone unnoticed. Let us examine those implications. If one should post a letter in this House on a Thursday evening after the last collection by An Post that letter will not be collected until the Friday morning and will not be delivered until the following Monday morning, leading to further job losses in An Post. To date over 100 jobs have been absorbed by An Post brought about by the growth of the national lottery which called for 65 extra jobs and, in addition, 48 jobs which had to be created in the GPO due to growth in business there. I regret very much that the Minister ignored this aspect in his contribution this morning because it is a major cause of concern to many people who have given loyal service to this State over the years.
While it is not yet on the agenda it has been suggested that there are likely to be similar job losses in Telecom Éireann. Yet no Minister or chief executive has stated publicly that there will be job losses in this area. How can we justify the shedding of a further 2,000 jobs in Telecom Éireann, a semi-State company destined to make a profit of approximately £100 million in the current year? I understand it is also the intention of Telecom Éireann to curtail the duration of local telephone calls to three minutes at a cost of 11.7p. This would be a retrograde step affecting many people nationwide, especially those living in isolated rural areas. Many people who are incapacitated in some way — whether living in a city or in a rural area — can establish contact with their families only by way of telephone communication. They are not in a position to go to their local post office and post a letter.
Despite the fact that there will be massive profits enjoyed by this semi-State company there are prospects of additional cutbacks for which there is no justification. After all, our people funded the establishment of Telecom Éireann, paid for the requisite very expensive technology, and should now reap the benefits by way of an efficient telephone service. I was watching television from Moscow last evening. While Russia are encountering huge economic problems at present, nonetheless in Moscow it is possible to make a free telephone call in any part of that city. While we are told in this latest programme that we have an economy that is booming and has been for the past two years, we are also informed that it is proposed to curtail the duration of local telephone calls. This proposal will have to be resisted.
I acknowledge that the Programme for National Recovery, by securing a national agreement for extremely moderate pay increases, made a major contribution to our economy over the period 1987 to 1990, but there were costs in terms of the health and social welfare services. I can say without hesitation that the price paid by the people dependent on these services was much too high and continues to be unacceptable.
While the Government point to the 40,000 net increase in employment we must be mindful of the fact that we do not yet know the extent to which this increase in jobs is accounted for by part-time or casual employment. But we do know that the 20,000 public service jobs shed were full-time jobs in the legitimate economy. Some of the jobs created have been of a part-time nature. I am glad that the Minister for Labour has finally had a Bill drafted which will be introduced this week for the protection of part-time employees. In the past this was an area wide open to exploitation when some people became extremely rich while others, young people and housewives in particular were exploited.
The aspirations outlined in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress— in section 1 under the heading Strategy for the Nineties; Key Objectives for the Strategy — fit easily the objectives the Labour Party want adopted. Where we differ from the Government parties is simply that we believe that the same urgency and single-mindedness applied to reducing the ratio of debt to gross national product should be applied to another ratio, that is essentially, the index of human misery, the ratio of those unemployed to those in gainful employment. Until a similar improvement has been wrought in this area we cannot contend that we are doing our job well. In the same way that the financial performance of Government is measured by reductions in the Exchequer borrowing requirement and the current budget deficit — with a target of reducing the debt GNP ratio towards 100 per cent of GNP by 1993 — surely we should have a minimum target for reducing unemployment, particularly long term unemployment, by the year 1993 also.
In addition we should have explicit targets for raising the real incomes of the bottom one-third of families in our society. I acknowledge that the programme at least commits an extra £65 million to move toward the achievement of priority level of social welfare rates as recommended by the Commission on Social Welfare.
While the text of the Labour Party motion acknowledges the potential for the social partnership to achieve the objectives outlined in the programme, what can we make of the commitment to a major assault on long term unemployment? The means by which to achieve this are outlined in section 7 of the programme. I would not be negative about any measure which can get the unemployed back to work and the Government can be assured that we will respond constructively to any policies which will assist the unemployed, particularly the long term unemployed, but have the Government any idea of the desperation felt by the unemployed when, after two years during which the economy has had a boom, the outcome after months of consultation is that the Government will establish two pilot schemes?
The programme mentions the EC resolution of 1990 under which these schemes will no doubt be assisted. Why did the Government not introduce a pilot scheme to cover every unemployment blackspot in every county? The section of the programme that will be of any interest to the long term unemployed is the section VII, subsection 7. F — Employment — which covers additional places for the long term unemployed with the benefit of employment incentives. Anyone who happened to be listening to the "Morning Ireland" programme this morning could not be in any doubt about the extent of the problem. People from Cork and Mayo who were interviewed spelt out the fear of the people that there would not be any movement on jobs in the foreseeable future. This is regrettable.
We made a proposal which would have increased the subsidy to employers from £60 to £125 per week if they took part in a negotiated programme between Government, employers and trade unions to reserve a quota of vacancies for the long term unemployed. I am glad that the programme acknowledges that this is the kind of radical approach which is necessary. Unfortunately I detect a reluctance by the Government to take on board major initiatives along these lines without the blessing of and funding from the European Social Fund. Our proposal envisaged an integrated approach combining training with job placement and this fits well with the latest thinking in the European Community.
Why do the Government believe that convergence between European and Irish rates of unemployment should depend solely on the speed with which Brussels is prepared to move? In their policy analysis on special employment measures which NESC recognise as being essential in tackling long term unemployment, they examined three policy measures — labour subsidies, direct job creation schemes and enterprise schemes. On pages 17 and 18 of the NESC report entitled "A Strategy for the Nineties" it stated:
What is needed now is policies which target labour demand on areas of high long term unemployment. Special employment measures — particularly subsidised job creation and temporary direct hiring — are the policies which have achieved this.
The report noted that the effectiveness of these measures will be enhanced if they are carried out as part of a comprehensive area based package of international and social intervention.
Will the Minister for Labour and his Department please tell the House what they have been up to since the publication of the NESC analysis and policy recommendations for dealing with long term unemployment? I regret that there has been a deafening silence from that quarter in recent times.
The Labour Party put forward proposals on an employment subsidy linked to job placement in our 1989 election campaign policy statement. We recognised that the unemployed need policies to assist them directly as distinct from general job creation policies.
If the social partnership is to mean anything, it will be measured at the end of this programme not by its progress on the debt-GNP ratio or even on taxation but by what it has achieved in relation to unemployment. If the programme does not reduce unemployment, particularly long term unemployment, the unemployed will feel that whatever the social partnership is about, it does not concern them. At best it will be seen as an additional crutch but it will not deliver the words which they wish to hear, that they have been accepted for a position and should report to work on the following Monday.
The Government and the other social partners should take our suggestion on board and begin the process of reintegrating the long term unemployed into the workforce. I know that employers will want to retain some control over selection. Let them choose from an interview panel drawn up by FÁS of candidates who have been out of work for 12 months or more.
Trade unions will have reservations, as I do, about any scheme to reintegrate the long term unemployed so that it should not be a form of cheap labour. To combat that we should insist on two things — that trade unions fight for similar pay and conditions for people taken from this pool and that there should be pressure for a legal national minimum hourly wage which will effectively eliminate the abuses now taking place.
I regret that the ICTU were unable to secure any firm commitment on a national minimum wage. I do not know what employers have to fear in this regard. It should be embraced as an essential part of any policy to deal with the black economy. A minimum adult wage of £3.50 per hour and a junior rate of £2.33 per hour would not cost jobs. It would simply put a stop to competition based on the exploitation of the uneducated, the under-skilled, the vulnerable.
The Labour Party urge the Government to stop looking at European integration, particularly convergence in the economic and social areas, as something that lies solely with Brussels or with the larger European economies. Are the Government seriously hoping to attract the sweatshops of South-East Asia and the Pacific rim to relocate to Ireland and avoid more socially advanced regions, by not having a minimum wage? Will the Minister for Labour say where the 40,000 job losses would occur if minimum wage proposals such as those I have outlined are currently in force?
The second policy instrument which NESC recommended was direct job creation schemes. The Minister for Finance gave us the standard line from the new right's recently discredited lexicon of ideas — the Government do not create jobs, they create the environment. So be it. The Minister for Finance says that jobs will not be created in the public sector. Will the Government spell this out for us? Will the Government at least give a guarantee that they will not foul up the enviroment for employment in the public sector? It would be welcome if the Minister could give an assurance on that.
A consistent and steadfast application of appropriate and disciplined economic and social policies is essential to the attainment of our long term objectives of sustained economic and employment growth with improved living standards for all. Let it be clear, the fundamental aim is to ensure more jobs and higher incomes in Ireland in the years ahead.
Discipline and reform are not sought for their own sake, but for the employment and other gains they make possible. The Programme for National Recovery put in place the pillars of these policies: a progressive reduction in the debt-GNP ratio; a commitment to the maintenance of the value of our currency within the EMS; a pay accord which improved our competitiveness and promoted industrial peace; tax reforms which contributed to improvements in work incentives and workers' living standards; and improvements in benefits to those on social welfare.
Policies over the last three years delivered on all the commitments of the Programme for National Recovery, and vastly exceeded some. More importantly, they set us on a virtuous path of sustainable growth, low inflation and a declining debt-GNP ratio. The new Programme for Economic and Social Progress is designed to keep us on that path and, indeed over the medium-term, to speed us along it. It is not an accident that we are sticking with the broad thrust of the policies which served us so well over the past few years.
The Government are committed in the new programme to the progressive further reduction of the national debt-GNP ratio with the medium-term aim of reducing it towards 100 per cent by 1993. All the social partners are in agreement with this goal. Our longer term aim is to bring the debt-GNP ratio more into line with that of our EC partners. This key statistic measures the extent to which the State needs to supplement its own revenues by raising money that must be repaid. As such, it is not to be dismissed as a dry bookkeeping figure which has little to do with the real world.
The accumulation of very high borrowings in the past — as recently as 1986 the EBR was £2,145 million or almost 13 per cent of GNP — led to an overhang of debt that costs the Exchequer almost £2,500 million in debt servicing costs each year. Were it not for this colossal burden, we would now enjoy an Exchequer surplus of some £2 billion each year.
In order to achieve these debt/GNP targets it will be necessary to accept the basebroadening which can facilitate tax reform, and to keep tight control on public expenditure. The need to keep a tight rein on expenditure has been endorsed by the NESC. There must also be acceptance all round that, in order to implement the specific priority undertakings in the programme, we must rely on reallocation of existing resources rather than additions to real expenditure.
The objectives of monetary policy remain unchanged. It will operate to maintain interest rates at the lowest level consistent with international developments and the stable exchange rate policy that will be maintained within the EMS. Our exchange rate policy has been and will continue to be the anchor of our low inflation rate and of the convergence of our interest rates towards the average levels of other low inflation EC economies. Just as our monetary and exchange rate policy is essential for low inflation and interest rate convergence, our fiscal stance is essential to the credibility of our monetary and exchange rate policy. Both fiscal and monetary policy are working together and in the same direction towards the achievement of our overall goals.
This consistency, coherence and continuity of our fiscal and monetary policies is giving the right signals to investors both at home and abroad. The resulting credibility of Government economic policies is, in turn, central to the maintenance of a climate of confidence in the economy. A climate that encourages and sustains investment is the engine of growth and employment creation. It is most gratifying to us that the high degree of credibility which was established during the Programme for National Recovery is being reinforced by the policy objectives and measures in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress.
Without the correct monetary and fiscal policies — and ours are the correct policies — no lasting progress can be made towards meeting our national objectives for sustained growth and improved living standards. While these policies are necessary, they may not be sufficient in themselves.
We also need an evolution of wages rates that is consistent with the competitiveness needs of the economy. Competitive labour costs are not an end in themselves, rather they are a means to an end. That end is sufficient new jobs to meet the needs of our rapidly growing labour force. Again, as in so many other areas, the Programme for National Recovery gave us the template. Its pay terms gave us the opportunity to gain a competitive edge over our trading partners, an opportunity which, to the credit of all concerned, was taken to the benefit of workers, employers, school leavers and the unemployed alike.
Pay policy is again central to the new Programme for Economic and Social Progress. To the credit of all who sweated it out over the negotiating table, we now have a draft pay agreement which strikes a realistic balance between the employment needs of the economy, workers' legitimate aspirations to improve living standards and the state of the public finances.
The pay terms of the new programme are more generous than in the Programme for National Recovery, but if we can continue to match the productivity growth of our competitors, and I am confident that we can, we should maintain our competitiveness.
Those on low pay are being catered for specially with floor increases of up to £15 per week over the three years of the programme. In addition, those on low pay with families will benefit from significant changes in the family income supplement together with the changes in tax exemption limits announced in the budget.
The programme has also made provision for local bargaining on pay, which will apply in exceptional cases and which will be capped at 3 per cent of basic pay cost over the period of the programme. This will lend a degree of flexibility to pay bargaining at firm or industry level within an overall discipline on pay costs to which those of both sides of the negotiating table in all sectors of the economy are fully committed.
Too often have we seen ill-informed comments in the past on the manner in which public service pay costs are escalating without adequate inquiry into the reasons therefor. Many commentators forget that the heavy incidence of pay costs arising this year are directly attributable to the past willingness of public servants to forego in the national interest immediate implementation of pay awards due to them.
The voluntary deferral of payment to future dates made a major contribution to the correction of the public finances during the period of the Programme for National Recovery. However, the reality is that meeting our side of the bargain means that the bill must be picked up at some stage. The resultant rise in public service pay costs is a matter of considerable concern. However, we must not lose sight of its origins and of the major contribution which that policy has made to the process of economic recovery.
I am particularly glad to see that arrangements under the new programme for local bargaining in the public service allow for some real negotiations aimed at improving efficiency and effectiveness in the public service, thus helping to contain pay costs or at least to ensure greater value for money.
In the context of the programme, and the tight situation in regard to the public finances over the next few years, it is essential that the public service, in common with other sectors of the economy, should avail of every opportunity to improve efficiency so that increases in money incomes are matched by greater productivity. This involves devising new and more efficient ways of delivering services and a willingness to change from existing — often out-moded — practices.
The new system of administrative budgets, to be implemented in all Civil Service departments next month, provides an example of changing a long-established regime so as to facilitate more flexible use of resources in the interest of delivering quality service to the public. The new system will give line managers significant discretion, within agreed budgets, to allocate resources in the light of what they, as managers, see as the priority needs of the services they are called on to deliver. I hope that arrangements on similar lines will be considered by other parts of the public service, thereby tapping the valuable reservoir of managerial talent which is there.
The traditional way of resolving differences over pay levels in the public service has been to rely — some would say unduly — on the results of independent adjudication. While this system has served us well over the years, it has provided limited opportunity for realistic linking of the process of pay determination with the imperatives of securing efficiency improvements which may be essential for the continued improvement of management of our public services.
On a point of order, is it possible to get a copy of the Minister's speech?
It should be. I am surprised it has not been distributed.
One of the principal criticisms levelled at the manner in which the system has tended to work in the past has been the tendency to leave to a third party the effective final say in one of the most important elements of our costs, namely the fixing of rates of pay and conditions.
I am glad to say that the new innovative arrangements proposed under the new programme will aim to reconcile requirements for the new dynamic approaches to public service management with the realistic aspirations of staff for more fulfilling work, career development and of course the fixing of fair levels of pay and other conditions. We would hope to achieve this by direct negotiation and mutual agreement with minimal resort to the adjudication processes.
We can now look forward with confidence to a new era when management and staff alike will see the benefits of utilising this new approach to the full in the best interests of both improving management of services to the public and of optimising motivation of the staff who provide them.
Of course, there will inevitably be areas of the public service where this new approach may not be feasible. In such cases, the programme will permit the processing of not more than one costincreasing claim in the traditional manner over the next three years.
I need hardly remind the House that negotiations of this type will be constrained by the cap of 3 per cent of weekly-monthly pay costs provided for in the programme. The cap will be of general application across the economy under the terms of the new programme and, in deference to the projected state of the public finances in 1991 and 1992, will not apply in the public service until its third year.
Workers in general will also benefit from reforms in taxation promised in the programme. Against a background of an annual inflation rate of about 3 per cent, the pay accord and other provisions of the programme gives workers a very fair deal which should give them real increases in take home pay for a further three years following on the real increases of the past three years.
While pay is a very important element of competitiveness, the industrial relations climate is also important. The terms of the new programme will continue the climate of industrial peace and harmony which served us so well over the past three years. Investors can be as sure as is possible in an uncertain world of the evolution of their pay costs and of inflation over the next three years. This is a major bonus to anybody contemplating investment in uncertain times. We are now better equipped than we have been for a long time, and certainly better equipped than some of our main competitors, to grasp investment and trading opportunities that will arise when world economies emerge from their current period of sluggish growth or recession. In these times of world uncertainty, it is vital to maintain discipline. This year's budget has done just that. It ensures that we can face into this difficult year with a great deal more confidence than could have been envisaged two or three years ago.
The improvement in the public finances has made important tax reforms possible. The relentless rise in the burden of taxation has been halted. Over the past few years, notwithstanding the constraints, we have made valuable progress in redirecting the tax system to underpin the improvement in employment and growth.
We have maintained this momentum in spite of the difficulties that faced us in our budgetary preparations this year. We are building on the progress made in previous budgets, which restructured company and capital taxation and improved collection efficiency in all sectors, while at the same time reducing the so-called "personal tax wedge".
Back in 1987, tax pressure on the ordinary worker had become very severe. The three tax rates of 35 per cent, 48 per cent and 58 per cent were applied to taxable income in very rapid progression — a single worker on the average industrial wage faced the top marginal income tax rate of 58 per cent and was also fully exposed to social insurance contributions totalling up to 7.75 per cent of his or her gross income. Thus every additional £1 of that employee's gross earnings, whether secured through pay increases or over-time, suffered statutory deductions of just under 66 per cent. The net benefit of that additional £1 was thus as little as 34p to the employee.
Since then, of course, we have reduced the standard rate of income tax from 35 per cent to 29 per cent and the top tax rate from 58 per cent to 52 per cent — a decrease of six percentage points in each case. In addition, we increased personal tax allowances and rate bands. As I mentioned earlier, we increased tax exemption limits too, and introduced a special child addition which, taken together with improvements in the family income supplement scheme, has made a real impact on the incentive to work for those on low incomes.
These measures, together with our low inflation rates, assisted in the negotiation of relatively low nominal wage increases in both the Programme for National Recovery and the new Programme for Economic and Social Progress setting the scene for improvements in the competitiveness of Irish industry.
The budget has also continued the process of adjusting indirect taxation to prepare for 1992. We have brought the standard rate from 25 per cent to 21 per cent in the last two budgets. However, I would make one point: approximation of taxes in preparation for 1992 is not an a la carte menu. One cannot take what one wants. Bringing the top rates to 21 per cent meant a reduction in 4,000 items of household and consumer goods and also a reduction in the cost of professional services. We must also increase the lower rates to bring up those we are sure will end up in the standard rate bracket. That is exactly what happened this year.
The ESB is nouvelle cuisine.
The ESB is 2.5p per £1, which can be recoverd by industrial costs and is more than adequately catered for in the social welfare increases in this year's budget.
The undertakings in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress commit the Government to continue the process of tax reform and improvement, and that, I can assure the House, the Government will continue to do.
(Limerick East): On a point of clarification——
It is not entirely in order but I will allow you to ask a brief question for clarification purposes.
(Limerick East): As the Minister knows, there is widespread expectation that he might make an announcement on the BES. Would the Minister at least make an announcement that he is not going to make an announcement — for clarification purposes.
Acting Chairman
It is not entirely in order but if the Minister wishes, he may reply.
I do not have to make an announcement when I am not making an announcement.
(Limerick East): So the Minister is not making an announcement.
There is no need for me to say that I am not making an announcement. The Deputy is saying I am supposed to make one.
(Limerick East): Will the Minister say on the record that he is not making an ananouncement?
There is no need.
The only good thing one can say about this Programme for Economic and Social Progress is that it is full of genuine aspirations. That is about as far as one could go in praise of it. The aspirations and platitudes are everywhere and the one good thing about them is that they are quite acceptable to everybody and offend nobody. There is everything in this that any group in the country would want to hear and nothing that anybody could disagree with.
It is stated that the long term strategies are "sustained economic growth and the generation of greater income to produce a narrowing of the gap in living standards between Ireland and the rest of the European Community based on increased enterprise, efficiency and competitiveness and maintaining a low inflation economy." I can only agree fully with that aspiration, but how achievable are the objectives when one considers carefully what else is set out in the document?
The one thing one should remember about the last programme is that a few short months after its agreement the cracks in the ice began to emerge and the various groups who helped to negotiate it found themselves disadvantaged in one way or another. We had an education crisis, a health crisis, a crisis in agriculture, all following very quickly on the signing of that agreement. This happened because the signatories to the agreement found themselves trapped by the small print, the implications of which had not recognised initially.
That was a serious situation and I feel there is a grave danger that it will happen again. The reason I think that is that no offence has been given to any single group in the country because the programme is full of pious platitudes and lovely aspirations. However it falls down in its ability to meet targets. I sincerely hope that we will not have various groups coming along later this summer and asking to be released from this agreement — and when I say "we" I mean us here on the Opposition benches — because that is what happened the last time such an agreement was signed. In all sincerity I ask the Government not to allow that to happen for the genuine reason that when various groups sign such an agreement the great danger is to have hidden within that agreement time bombs which are likely to explode on an ongoing basis during the course of the agreement which will, in turn, seriously undermine the confidence of those groups in collective bargaining. I have no objection to collective bargaining provided that all the cards are put on the table and that all the objectives are attainable as far as possible. I hope we have learned a lesson from the Programme for National Recovery.
There is a tendency to talk about social and economic recovery as beginning in 1987. I do not want to bore everybody in the House by going back over all the things that happened in the previous ten years and how our difficulties came about. I hope that by now every man, woman and child in this land knows the reason this country's economy almost went to the wall was that politicians were not prepared to take decisions which would hurt the electorate and in turn hurt them at the ballot boxes. If we have not learned that lesson at this stage, then our salvation will be postponed for a long time.
Let us quickly look at one or two of the areas dealt with in this programme. Health is one. I have read the programme carefully and there is nothing in it with which I disagree. As a member of a health board, I have to say that the objectives are aspirational and vague to say the least. There is no chance of achieving anything like the flowery objectives set out in that part of the programme unless there is a major review of the delivery of health services. I know that every year at this time a great deal of discussion is generated about access to services. Obviously it is more difficult to provide health services in winter. However, if we ever intend to deliver services reasonably quickly to all sectors of the community, the private and the public sectors will have to bear an equal part of the burden.
I see no reason why a patient should be on a waiting list to gain access to hospital services for two or three years if they happen to be on the public hospital waiting list when they could probably be accommodated very quickly within the private hospital service, and very often by the same consultant they are dealing with in the public sector. Until such time as public and private patients have equal access regardless of income levels we will never be able to deal with the kind of backlogs we have had, particularly in acute hospital treatment, over the last couple of years. Many people will say that cannot be done, but I would disagree. It can be done and it will have huge benefits in clearing the great backlogs we have. It is not unusual to find a public patient waiting two years for a hip replacement operation and I do not see why people should be condemned to that kind of suffering over a long period. My feeling, and I wish to state it is purely a personal view, is that something can be done if a decision is made and the structures built around it that people who require immediate treatment, or treatment within a reasonable period, can be treated in the private sector if there is not a bed available in the public sector. The cost is no greater one way or the other.
I would like to mention another point which has been totally forgotten about in the context of the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, that is, the huge negative impact of the GATT proposals, particularly the European attitude to GATT, and our Government's attitude to the European attitude to the GATT talks. If the Uruguay Round proceeds as already indicated, then any objectives, as set out in this programme, are likely to become null and void. They then become immediately unattainable and the knock on effect will be huge. If one wants proof of that one can gauge from the anything but measuring sounds emanating from the Minister for Agriculture and Food, week after week that payments are being made to farmers not to farm the land, not to produce anything. It is a most peculiar attitude in a country that is dependent on agriculture that we should arrive at the decision that we can diversify into farm tourism and other areas. We can to a certain extent, but not to the extent that will be required if we intend to generate downstream improvement in the economy as well. We have to consider also the areas that will be affected, negatively or positively, by what happens to agriculture. Towns and villages in rural Ireland will receive a sudden jolt if the present trend in the Uruguay Round continues, and if Europes attitude to the Uruguay Round continues. If we allow ourselves to be subsumed into the system, I am afraid that in a couple of years time, the electorate will have something very harsh to say about the way they were let down. I have said it before in this House — and I repeat it — that I believe we have been let down in Europe and we have done nothing about it, which is even more serious.
I mentioned earlier what was bland and acceptable in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress but what about all things that are not covered in the programme, for example, the proposed increase in ESB charges, the proposed changes in telephone charges, the proposed rent increases——
We got them in the budget plan.
We got the sweeteners in the budget which had to be balanced against items that will emerge as the year progresses. The joy of the householder will be somewhat tempered by what is likely to happen over the year. The plan says we will have a low rate of inflation. While I am on the subject of low inflation, let me say that people regularly tell politicians that while they know inflation is very low, and the figures indicate inflation is very low, which is a good thing, how come their shopping bill seems to rise every weekend and that their household expenses are increasing at a rate which is not reflected by the inflation rate? They ask also, and these are not my words "why do our wages or salaries not go as far as they did this time last year? Why are we not getting more for our money if inflation is almost nil?" I am at a loss to answer that question but I have become very suspicious as to how this figure is arrived at and a great many people are equally suspicious. I am sure Members of this House would agree that every household in the country finds it appreciably harder to meet their household budget than they did a year ago, despite the allegedly low inflation rate.
I do not have time to refer to the likely impact of the so called rationalisation of services by An Post on the rural economy and some of the larger villages and towns. It will have a huge negative impact which will consign the people of rural Ireland to the status of second class citizens. That impression will be reinforced as subpost offices are closed down and post boxes are erected at the end of the road or avenue in isolated places. Old people who live in rural areas will suddenly realise for the first time that this is what is called rationalisation, that this is what the Programme for Social and Economic Progress encompasses and that this is what progress is.
I am glad to have the opportunity to speak today on the Programme for Economic and Social Progress. As has been said many times by other speakers, this programme is about people. The purpose of the programme is to improve the quality of life for all our citizens. In the case of the provisions of the programme for education the focus on people is aptly captured in the simple statement of overall strategy: “to provide the opportunity for all to develop their educational potential to the full”.
The programme itself is a product of people coming together and working in a co-operative endeavour in the interests of all and not individual sectional interests. It is an impressive indication of the level of maturity we have reached in the way we conduct our business. Following the success of the partnership procedure first introduced in the preparation and monitoring of the Programme for National Recovery consultation and consensus and not confrontation is now firmly established as the way forward and the basis of development.
I want to register my view that the education system has contributed in no small way to this new maturity. The advances in education over the last three decades in particular have resulted in a more highly educated, articulate and discerning population who will not easily tolerate the dissipation of energies in futile and damaging confrontational approaches to the resolution of economic and social issues. Society's well being and affluence depends on our knowledge of the physical and social world which is expanding at an ever accelerating rate. To keep abreast of expansion, to run the economy and society, means that people have to know more than ever before and to be far more flexible, adaptable and resilient.
In this regard the challenge facing our education system is enormous. In a way schools could be perceived as traditionally facing backwards towards a passing economic and social system rather than forwards towards an emerging society. In the past the task of schools was to prepare a child or a young person with skills which were at risk of becoming outdated.
Schools, as we know them, largely took their shape in and from the industrial era. The technology of that era required workers to operate at endless repetitive tasks. The technology of today and tomorrow leaves to the workers functions involving judgment, interpersonal skills and imagination.
This change in the role of the worker is dramatically demonstrated by the change in attitude of management to workers in successful companies as described in management literature.
Pupils in schools can be seen as caught in a fixed organisation frame with little or no experience of other forms of organisation. Values transmitted by seating arrangements, the school hall, age-sex segregation, social class distinctions, the authority of the teacher, the fact that students are in school and not in the community all shape attitudes and outlooks that have more to do with the past than the future.
The education system needs to fix firmly on a future focus. If this is to be done effectively we have to be able to generate successive alternative images of the future kinds of jobs, family forms, human relationships and ethical and moral problems. We have to generate, define and deduce the nature of cognitive and effective skills the people of tomorrow will need.
It is sobering to think that a child entering primary school this year will probably not finish third level education until the year 2010. Look back 20 years to 1970 and contemplate the many changes in society driven by the engines of advancement. The rate of change over the next two decades will be accelerating every year. The education system has to prepare people to cope with the pressure and demands that such rapid change entails for individuals and society at large.
There is a parallel obligation on society to ensure that the experience of the education system is meaningful, stimulating and satisfying. However, the role of the school as a basic unit of the system is becoming increasingly challenging.
Society's expectations for schools have grown more extensive while, at the same time, there is criticism that schools have not delivered the goods in the past. As the influence of the family and churches declines for growing numbers of people further responsibilities are being placed on schools. The image of schools suffers because of their quite understandable failure to meet completely unrealistic expectations for them.
I do not subscribe to the pursuit of political power for power's sake alone. Since I became Minister I have had a major purpose and it is to bring about the fundamental reform of the educational system.
Some commentators have suggested that reforms of education currently taking place in many countries including Ireland are mainly motivated by utilitarian and functional thinking. It is indisputable that the need for greater accountability for public expenditure has required a rigorous examination and evaluation of all aspects of educational provision. Furthermore, it is clear that an imbalance in favour of a laissez faire approach to the management and planning of education needed to be corrected. However, education cannot and must not be ever subordinated to training, to indoctrination in both the perspectives and techniques of the immediately functional.
Education systems are notoriously large and complex. It is widely accepted that education systems are conservative and harbour inertia.
The path of reform, therefore, can be predicted to be rocky and precarious. Reform will not take place spontaneously. Neither is it anywhere near adequate to rely on the individual and unco-ordinated efforts of the more committed agents and institutions in the system.
Sustained attention is needed for a strategy for reform. Great gaps have occurred in the past between educational change on paper and its implementation. As a pre-requisite to reform, the people concerned, and in education they amount to a huge proportion of the population, need to be convinced that reform is necessary. Furthermore, for reform to be relevant the main agents and providers in the system need to have a meaningful say in the direction and the detail of such reforms. To hasten the reform process initiatives of short, medium and long term nature need to be planned and grafted on to the system where they will flourish.
The various reviews and initiatives I am pursuing have increased awareness of the issues that need to be faced and have prepared the ground for extensive and further fundamental reform.
As the Taoiseach said last December:
Education is the key to success in our modern world. It is ultimately more important than economic strength or military might. On it depends the future of our young people, and the quality of our society. I see the steady improvement in our whole system of education, including vocational and technological training, as a major preoccupation of this decade.
To achieve my objective I needed to win widespread acceptance and commitment to reform at all levels and with the support of Government and the social partners to win the necessary resources for reform. Education must be seen as an integral part of the wider political, social, economic and cultural framework of society's development. Planning for educational reform has now been firmly established as an inter-sectoral social strategy through the programme which we are now debating.
A particularly significant provision in the programme from the point of view of the reform of the education system is the Government's commitment to issue a Green Paper on education by summer 1991, a White Paper in early 1992 setting out the Government's policy on education to be followed by an education Act.
This provision is testimony to the sincerity of the Government's commitment to education and, indeed, to reform in education. The process planned affords the opportunity to delineate basic educational philosophy, goals, policies and strategies and their underlying democratic rationale. It will allow the rights of pupils, parents, community, teachers and managers to be clarified and will spell out the respective roles of the State, other authorities and institutions.
The Green Paper will be comprehensive in its coverage. It will relate to all aspects of education and will afford the opportunity to all parties to offer views before the Government's policy is set out in the White Paper.
It is heartening to note that the provisions for education in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress have attracted favourable comment. The only person whom I heard saying he did not agree with the proposals for education was Deputy Jim Higgins. One can have the opinion that they should be more far reaching and that they do not immediately ease burdens but he expressly said he did not agree with anything in the education section in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress. I suggest that is a very odd statement.
One would be forgiven for describing the Programme for Economic and Social Progress as the green bible of hope compared to the grey book of despondency and despair that was Building on Reality produced by a previous Government.
The provisions of the programme in relation to education have received widespread publicity and I do not intend to dwell further on that. However, I do want to draw the attention of the House to a very important consideration underlying the provisions. Socio-economic status both independently and in conjunction with other factors significantly influence an individual's opportunity to derive benefit from the education system. This fact in itself calls for a systematic approach to tackling the question of disadvantage.
The programme sets out in broad terms the policy and strategy of the education system for the future well being of the country.
The strong theme of the programme is catering for the disadvantaged. There is a two-pronged approach to this strategy. First, we must identify those pupils in the system who are disadvantaged or who are under achieving. Then we must invest resources so as to overcome those difficulties. In some ways this is a long term strategy, one that will ensure that, despite disadvantage, children will still, within what I might call the mainstream education system, be helped to achieve their full educational and social potential.
The second strand of my policy relates to those who have already left the school system without reaching their full potential and who, literally, must be given another chance. Thus the emphasis in the programme on what is termed second chance education. Within these two broad strands of education policy the programme sets out systematically to provide initiatives geared towards making the policy work.
At the level of class size and pupil-teacher ratio improvements will be brought about to increase the number of teachers in the system by improving the ratios and thus reducing class size. In the primary schools this process is stated to be aimed directly at reducing overly large classes and meeting the needs of the disadvantaged. At second-level, the same objective will be pursued.
In the area of identifying a problem and dealing with it, there is provision in the programme to increase the availability of guidance in second level schools. I envisage that guidance used properly would not simply be a matter of advising students on job opportunities but would also identify young people who need counselling. The guidance teacher is an integral part of the overall school staff.
The programme provides for the allocation of moneys above the level currently committed for the disadvantaged. There will also be an increase in the rates of free book grants for primary and second level students. For the first time this scheme will be extended to four to six year olds in the junior clases in primary schools. This extension has been long sought by many of the Deputies on the opposite side of the House. I am having a study carried out on the operation of the free books scheme and the pupils who should be able to avail of it. I hope to receive the results of this study very soon.
I am also developing the home-school liaison links to a greater extent. These links are a very important part of the programme for the disadvantaged. We are lucky in that Irish parents are for the most part, interested in education. They want to do their best for their children and support the schools in their localities. The development of the home-school liaison links will help children who for one reason or another may not benefit fully from the educational system.
I have not finished my script but there is nothing I can do about it in view of the time constraints. However, I should like to strongly recommend the adoption of the provisions in the programme, in particular, the education provisions, to all parties in the House.
I had hoped the Minister would be able to complete her speech as most of the provisions in the programme in regard to education are aspirational and do not deal with the specifics. With regard to the appointment of an additional 150 teachers in the primary and post-primary sector, it is not at all clear when these teachers will be appointed, what schools they will be appointed to, whether the children requiring remedial teaching will get priority, whether there will be guidance teachers, etc. I had hoped the Minister would avail of this opportunity to make a specific statement in the House about the appointment of these teachers and the areas to which they will go but, unfortunately she has not done so.
I feel compelled to refer to the health services. There are some wonderful aspirational statements in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress about the provision of resources and the intentions of the Government in this regard. Pargraph 36 of the programme states:
Support services for people with mental handicap and their carers in the community will also be strengthened. Special attention will be paid to the needs of young adults with mental handicap, and the adult mentally handicapped currently being cared for by ageing parents.
However, there is no evidence to suggest that these provisions will be put into effect by the Government. At present health boards are advising hospitals that they will have to cut back on services and facilities. This does not tally with the aspirational statements in the programme. For example, people are being offered public beds at the expense of the taxpayers. It is absolutely ridiculous that people who are in a position to pay for their medical treatment should be given that facility. It will put an extra strain on the demand for public beds and will put those people who cannot pay for their medical treatment on longer waiting lists.
No provision is made in the programme for an increase in the number of public beds. In fact, on the contrary, health boards are being put in the position where they will have to further restrict the level of service they give. Instead of a commitment to increase the total number of beds available, the programme states that there will be a gradual phasing-in of a system under which private patients availing of public hospitals for elective treatment will be accommodated only in private or semi-private beds. This will do nothing to reduce the number of public patients on the waiting lists in the short term and I have not met anyone in the health service who believes it will have any substantial effect in the longer term.
The Minister for Health has told us that this proposal will not have any effect on patients who have no option but to rely on public hospitals. He said he expects very few people to opt out of the VHI and join the new system which he is proposing. If he believes this will be the case, why does he need to introduce a new system? The Minister cannot have it both ways.
The programme makes a long statement on the patients rights as a consumer — the right of access to services in accordance with needs; the right to considerate and respectful care; the right to privacy; the right to information; the right to confidentiality of all medical records; the right to refuse to participate in research projects; the right to respect for religious and philosophical beliefs and the right to make a complaint. How does this statement tally with the case of an 84-year old man who was brought into Ennis General Hospital last Thursday night and who said to a nurse he was delighted he had made it to the hospital because he thought his heart would stop before he got there but who an hour later was dead and left on a stretcher in the casualty ward without so much as a curtain around him? Standing beside that man was a young mother with her 13-month old baby who had extensive burns across her chest. Was that a dignified way for that man to die? Yet, the Government have had the audacity to present a glossy piece of paper with a whole list of aspirations which bear no resemblance to the reality of what is happening throughout the country. The Government must be condemned for this hypocrisy, which, in effect, is all it is.
The Minister has said he will provide extra resources for every sector of the health service, and the programme lists a litany of aspirations but, at the same time, health boards are being asked to cut back on the services they provide. At present the hospitals in the Mid-Western Health Board are being asked not to take on additional staff for holiday duty. They have been told that this is to be compensated for by a reduction in elective and day care surgery. At present there is overcrowding in the hospitals in the Mid-Western Health Board area, particularly in Ennis General Hospital, and elective and day care surgery has had to be abandoned so that medical beds can be provided for people who need them. There are severe restrictions on the amount of surgery carried out in Ennis General Hospital. Yet the Minister and the health boards are suggesting that additional cutbacks in surgery should be made during the summer when staff are on holidays.
What is the relationship between the programmes which have been submitted to the health boards for approval and the aspirations set out in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress? I suggest they bear no relationship to each other and that it is an absolute fraud on the part of the Government to present such a programme to this House for approval. It is an insult to the people to tell them this is the greatest thing that has happened and that it guarantees economic peace for the next three years. Maybe it guarantees peace between the unions but as far as the deprived people of this country are concerned they have been further sold down the drain by this programme.
I have already dealt with the question of remedial teachers. It is unfortunate the Minister did not avail of the opportunity to inform the House exactly where she intends to direct the additional resources proposed.
There is a section on housing in the programme which contains a very interesting and indeed cunning statement. One of the objectives of the housing policy will be "maintaining the local authority housing programme at a level appropriate to the increasing need, having due regard to resources". This is quite hilarious. The Minister for the Environment has been constantly ducking the questions put to him on local authority housing. There has been a major cutback in local authority housing and there has been a lot of manipulation in this area. There are people who are badly in need of houses but under this Government they have no hope of acquiring them whether they be new houses or local authority houses that are put up for sale. What we have here is a very nice presentation with no substance. It contains no targets, estimates or aspirations about the numbers of people who are in need of houses. Nowhere in the programme is there reference to local authority housing lists, private house construction or the provision of housing for the homeless. It is a deceptively written document that does not relate to the problem on the ground.
There are many aspirations on agriculture in the programme but it relates in no way to the medium and small farmers whose incomes have dropped from 20 to 30 per cent in the past year and who are finding it increasingly difficult to survive. In the past six months farmers have come to me seeking smallholders' assistance. These are people of pride and independence who would never ask for assistance and who were always proud to be able to provide for themselves, but because of the present position they are forced to seek Government assistance. It is extremely unfortunate that, despite their best efforts good, decent people who are willing to work hard cannot make a living in agriculture. That is mostly due to the bad negotiations conducted by the Government, particularly in Europe and indeed to the appalling presentation by the Fianna Fáil Commissioner in Brussels, Mr. Ray MacSharry, in the GATT negotiations. While this document contains pious platitudes, the bottom line is that tens of thousands of men and women will leave the agricultural sector in the next ten years because of what has happened in the past six months under this Government.
There are many areas that one would like to deal with in relation to the programme but I would like to refer to one area in particular. No mention has been made of equality of recruitment in the Department of Defence, in fact there is no reference whatever to defence matters. The Minister for Foreign Affairs last week met the German Prime Minister and I believe he understood very clearly our position in relation to a Common Defence Policy. The Minister has not clearly outlined to this House the Government's position in relation to a common European security and defence policy. I would warn the Government that because of their lack of vision and decisiveness on this matter they could be in difficulty and may pay a very high economic price in the long term as a result of their attitude.
I welcome the opportunity to address the House on the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, which lays a sound foundation for the future economic and social development of the State. In the time available to me I intend to confine my remarks to those areas of the programme for which I, as Minister for Justice, have specific responsibility.
There can be no social or economic progress without civil order and without an effective police force to maintain that civil order. As Minister for Justice, I have the responsibility to ensure that the citizen is provided with the necessary protection and security to go about his or her daily business in peace. To this end, I am taking all necessary steps to maximise the number of gardaí on our streets and roads, to release gardaí as far as possible from indoor desk jobs by providing the force with much enhanced clerical backup and to ensure that adequate resources of equipment are available to the Garda Síochána to discharge the responsibilities society places on them.
I am glad to say that these measures have proven to be effective. Recorded crime figures have stabilised in recent years, and the incidence of serious crime continues to decrease significantly. Of course, there are still a number of problems which need to be addressed. In saying this, I am conscious of the recent increase in rural crime. Needless to say, we must continue to work tirelessly to reduce even further the level of crime in our society. The community can and should play their part in crime prevention and in this connection I must commend the very valuable work which is being done under schemes like neighbourhood watch, community alert and pharmacy watch. These schemes have been particularly successful by involving the community in crime prevention, and by enhancing relations between the Garda and the community they serve and by promoting a greater sense of security especially among the more vulnerable members of our society.
Looking at the various reports on crime that land on my desk and indeed seeing the results of crime in various areas of this city and other parts of Ireland, I cannot help but be struck by the extent to which young people can be caught up in crime, particularly petty crime. Aside from the obvious detriment to society, there is a greater tragedy in the waste of the talent and potential of the unfortunate young people themselves. I am also aware that crimes and acts of vandalism committed by young people can be minor when looked at individually, but in the aggregate can have a devastating effect on the quality of life especially in certain urban areas that suffer unduly in this regard.
This led me to look at what could be done to enhance the Garda juvenile liaison officer scheme, which is designed to divert young offenders from the criminal justice system and wean them away from crime, and to devise new strategies to deal with young offenders, or indeed to "intercept" young people before they ever become involved in crime or vandalism. In so far as the Garda juvenile liaison officer scheme is concerned, I have already announced the implementation of a number of reforms: first, a national juvenile liaison office is being established to oversee the operation of this service throughout the State; secondly the reporting and supervision arrangements for juvenile liaison officers are being improved; thirdly, the variable period of supervision by juvenile liaison officers of their young charges is being introduced; fourthly, weekend and evening working by juvenile liaison officers is being reintroduced; and finally, there is to be a new system of training of juvenile liaison officers. Members of the Garda who carry out this special work all receive a degree of preparation by way of training courses which cover the main elements of social work. A new draft training curriculum for these officers is being prepared for the commissioner's approval by the director of the Garda college. The aptitude of the members of the force who seek to fill juvenile liaison posts is very much taken into account when they are selected. The intention is to have the new course for juvenile liaison officers in place before the end of 1991.
In my law enforcement package, estimates, announcement for 1991, I also said that under the juvenile liaison officer scheme the caution rather than prosecution option will increasingly be pursued to the fullest extent possible from now on by the Garda Síochána.
Another initiative aimed at young people is the Garda schools project. This was set up in January 1990 in two schools in Tallaght and later extended to 12 schools in Coolock and two in Portmarnock. It has enormous potential to influence youngsters for good before they ever become involved in criminal activity. The purpose of the Garda involvement in the schools is to develop positive attitudes towards law enforcement and the gardaí.
Community gardaí based in the areas involved have been specially trained in a programme developed jointly by the Garda college, Templemore and St. Patrick's Teacher Training College, Drumcondra, to take part in school room meetings and discussions with ten to 12 year olds living in the area they serve. The schools involved have regular visits from the gardaí involved in the project.
Some of the work of the project takes place outside the classroom in school playgrounds and on trips organised by the gardaí. Two specially fitted minibuses from the Garda fleet have been made available for the project and for other Garda-community relation purposes. Plans are at an advanced stage to extend the schools project further and I will be making announcements in this regard before too long.
The probation and welfare service, with local Garda support, are actively involved in the implementation of community-based programmes designed to effectively direct youngsters away from reoffending. Already, two specialised remedial projects have commenced at Cherry Orchard, Dublin and Southill, Limerick, which aim to tackle head-on the delinquent lifestyle of the participants. The gardaí and local voluntary organisations are represented on the management committees and they have concentrated their efforts on helping target groups of persistent juvenile offenders.
A pilot project was also organised recently in the Coolock-Darndale area by two probation and welfare officers with the enthusiastic co-operation of local gardaí who work as juvenile liaison officers.
In December 1990, I announced my intention to introduce some further measures through the probation and welfare service which will materially assist in safeguarding private and public property, and in making urban areas in particular safer places in which to live and work, to play and to shop. First, where the incidence of crime is high, extra probation and welfare officers will be assigned to channel those most involved into the existing programmes, with the aim of reducing and, if possible, eliminating their offending. Secondly, where such anti-crime programmes do not exist, they will be established, utilising the resources of statutory and voluntary social agencies so that people's pride in their neighbourhood can be rekindled. Thirdly, in city centre areas with a high incidence of juvenile crime, a community-based programme of intensive supervision for young people caught up in an offender culture will be put into effect by assigning additional probation and welfare officers to the areas concerned, specifically for this purpose.
Turning to the problem of dealing with juvenile offenders, I made regulations last August which provide for the detention of certain 15 year old boys in the place of detention at Wheatfield instead of in Mountjoy, Cork or Limerick Prison. The regulations made it possible to transfer to Wheatfield boys who had been sentenced to prison by the courts. The reason for making the regulations was that I considered that Wheatfield provides a much more suitable environment than Mountjoy, or the other prisons, for boys under 16 years of age who have been sentenced to imprisonment.
The age structure of the population in Wheatfield means that the 15 year olds can be accommodated in close proximity to other youths in their mid and late teens. There is also the point that the regime in Wheatfield places greater emphasis on education and work training for young offenders than the regimes in prisons such as Mountjoy.
Apart from the specific developments that I have just mentioned I should also refer to ongoing talks between officials of my Department and officials of the Departments of Education and Health, all of whom deal with the various aspects of the juvenile justice system. The purpose of the meetings is to improve the interaction and ensure co-ordination between services provided for young persons by the three Departments concerned.
I now wish to address the important subject of penal reform. The Government are committed to an ongoing programme of reform in line with the recommendations made in the Whitaker Report on the Penal System.
In dealing with the Whitaker report I should say that there has been a fair amount of criticism in recent years about what is seen as the non-implementation of the recommendations in the report. It is a fair comment to say that many of those who criticise what they see as non-implementation of its recommendations do not appear to have read the report.
Many of the things recommended in the report are not the usual cut and dry type of recommendation in relation to a specific topic but expressions of broad principle. An example of a broad principle in the report is the following:
The fundamental human rights of a person in prison must be respected and not interfered with or encroached upon except to the extent inevitably associated with the loss of liberty.
The validity of principles of this kind have been recognised for decades and formed part of Irish penological policy long before the Whitaker committee came into being. Indeed, I should say that the Whitaker report never denied this. To the extent that these principles are recognised and implemented and act as a constant guide to emerging policy, it can be said that the Whitaker report is being implemented.
Apart from the general-principle type of recommendation that I have just referred to, there are, of course, more specific recommendations in the report. It is clear that the committee regarded these recommendations as being of great importance as the means of giving more effective expression to the recommendations related to general principles.
The position in relation to these specific recommendations is that many of them have been implemented. I will deal with a few of the more important ones. One of the key recommendations of the report was that greater use should be made of alternatives to custody. At the time the report was written there were, of course, many alternatives to custody already in use. Fines and probation orders are examples of the type of alternatives then in vogue. Another type of alternative was community service orders and the latter alternative has grown enormously in use in recent years.
The key group in the implementation of these types of alternatives to custody is the probation and welfare service. Their work is rapidly expanding and I intend to further expand the potential for alternatives to custody during this year. This will be achieved by the recruitment of 31 extra probation and welfare staff. An innovation in the supervision area will be the establishment of two "drop-in" centres for those under supervision. One of these will be located in Dublin and the other in Cork. Counselling and other services will be available in the centres for those on supervision. Across the board, from the appointment of a medical officer to a sentence review group, I assure the House that I am very conscious of the need for alternatives to prison and to the upgrading of the prison system.
I want to refer to the family mediation service which commenced in Dublin on a pilot basis in July 1986. Their purpose is to assist a husband and wife whose marriage has broken down to reach a voluntary agreement about arrangements in regard to children and property without the need for court intervention. The pilot scheme ended in 1989, at which stage I received a report from the steering committee on the workings of the scheme. Following examination of that report, I decided that it would be best to set up an independent committee to thoroughly review the mediation service and to make recommendations as to their future.
The Government approved my proposal and I am now in the process of establishing the review committee with wide terms of reference. I intend to set a time limit for the committee to complete their work so that final decisions may be made as to the future of the service without undue delay. As the programme suggests, the social partners have a decided interest in this question and I intend to make arrangements for them to be consulted in connection with the committee's study.
In the limited time available to me, I want to talk about the scheme of civil legal aid and advice. I have taken a very keen interest in this service, I have extended the funding available and, this year, it is at its highest level, at almost £2.5 million, which is a 60 per cent increase on the amount allocated at the beginning of 1989. We have taken on extra solicitors and there is provision for opening three new law centres this year, there will be a further announcement in this regard in the near future. I am also considering the extension of the service and I will be speaking about that at a later stage. Work is well in hand in the Department on the preparation of legislation to put the legal aid scheme on a statutory basis.
I have tried to outline the work done in my Department in relation to the improvement of the quality of life generally which fits into the Programme for Economic and Social Progress. I strongly recommend the programme to the House.
Acting Chairman
I wish to remind the Deputy and the House that, as Deputy Rabbitte is the chief spokesperson for The Workers' Party, he will have 30 minutes.
The House is debating the motion in the name of the Taoiseach: "That Dáil Éireann approves the Programme for Economic and Social Progress”. In speaking to that motion, I should like to refer to the amendment in the name of The Workers' Party Deputies which I should like to read into the record of the House:
To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:
(a) "supports the concept of central bargaining between the Government and the principal economic and social interests in the country, since it is only through collective bargaining at national level that the ‘social wage', including pay, tax and social welfare reform, health and education policies, etc., can be addressed,
(b) notes however that the recently published Programme for Economic and Social Progress is an inadequate document since many of the commitments given by the Government are vague, conditional, imprecise, and in some instances, merely aspirational,
(c) regrets the absence of specific commitments to real tax reform, a statutory minimum wage and the exclusion of employees of the commercial State-sponsored bodies from the ‘no compulsory retirement' provision in the public service generally,
(d) notes the necessity in particular for regular public review of progress concerning the job creation targets,
(e) believes that it is in the public interest that there is regular public scrutiny of the important political, social and economic commitments entered into in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress,
(f) instructs the Government, therefore, to establish a Dáil Review mechanism representative of each of the groups as defined in Standing Order 89 for the purpose of regular public scrutiny of progress concerning implementation of the political, economic and social objectives contained in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, including the provision of sufficient resources by the Government to implement these commitments especially in respect of the Health Services.”
I think I know better than most Deputies in this House that negotiations on a programme such as this are concerned very much with the art of the possible. I have listened to a number of eulogies about the merits of the programme which has been agreed which can only lead me to question whether some of the speakers understand the programme, or indeed in some instances, have read it.
Traditionally, The Workers' Party have supported the concept of central bargaining. However it is the actual content of the bargain that matters and when the contents of the Programme for Economic and Social Progress are subjected to close scrutiny they are clearly seen to be inadequate to met the challenges of the nineties. The document is characterised by extremely clever draftsmanship. Our traditional commitment to the concept of central bargaining should not blind any of us to the fact that, so clever is the draftsmanship of many sections of the programme that its principal author, Mr. Pádraig Ó hUiginn, deserves a nomination for the Booker Prize for fiction. Time and again throughout the 96 pages we discover that a particularly critical section of the programme is not what it seems. The pay terms are conditional on “economic and commercial circumstances”, and the floating 3 per cent will prove illusory for tens of thousands of workers.
The supposed bias in favour of the lower paid is almost negligible and it is precisely in employments where the lower paid are concentrated that the securing of this floating 3 per cent will prove most unattainable. There is no commitment to a statutory minimum wage but merely to a report "on the issues involved" by 1994. Despite international events, under way before the Programme for Economic and Social Progress was concluded, there is no escalation clause included, while the no compulsory redundancy pledge that was enshrined during the currency of the 1987 Programme for National Recovery has been withdrawn in respect of the commercial State-sponsored bodies; hence the threat to the employees of An Post and the B & I, and I am sure there will be more to come after the local elections. The Programme for Economic and Social Progress gives the green light to privatisation wherever “it is desirable on policy grounds”.
Given our experience during the period of the Programme for National Recovery, the proposals on tax reform do not even merit the description. The yardstick used is one of tax reductions and not tax reform. The Programme for National Recovery, using the same mistaken yardstick, promised “tax reductions to the cumulative value over the three years of the programme of £225 million”. However, because of spiralling profits and economic growth which, in the context of the economic conditions prevailing in 1986-87, the trade unions could not have reasonably anticipated, the Government were able to deliver “income tax reliefs worth more than £800 million”, leaving the trade union negotiators looking somewhat foolish. To fall again in 1991 for the Government's identical blandishments is carelessness.
The Government have consistently confused tax reductions with tax reform. I should say that it greatly saddens me to see the Progressive Democrats approach to tax reform, that is, a basic rate of 25 per cent, enshrined in the programme and that the trade unions negotiators have apparently given this their approval. Tax reform is not about whether someone is paying at the rate of 25 per cent or 28 per cent; it is about who is paying tax, how broad the base is, how quickly one gets into that 25 per cent tax band and for how long one stays in that band before one becomes subject to the next tax rate. These questions are not addressed in the programme.
Once again, we have accepted the yardstick of tax reductions — £400 million in a full year — when in fact the normal process will probably produce tax reductions of that order. We have the precedent of the Programme for National Recovery when the negotiators accepted tax reductions of the order of £225 million over the three years of the programme. However, because of buoyancy in profits and the rate of economic growth, a reduction of £800 million was realised. If I were at the negotiating table and had that precedent, I would think again about what the yardstick I would use in calculating meaningful tax reform. Establishing a rate of 25 per cent, with no significant specific commitment to broadening the tax base, does not constitute tax reform.
On the question of company taxation, for example, the Programme for Economic and Social Progress records “that the scope for a further widening of the base of taxation while preserving its developmental thrust will continue to be actively reviewed. That is one of the clever phrases which characterises the document, and it means absolutely nothing. What it means is that there are no new commitments to reform corporate or capital taxation. With regard to tax enforcement, the Programme for National Recovery, for example, acknowledged the need for adequate staffing with an implicit commitment to do something about it, but the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, apparently, believes that there is no staffing problem in the area of enforcement.
On job creation, the 1987 programme promised, and I quote Government spokespersons at the time, 20,000 extra — I emphasise extra — jobs per annum in manufacturing. This was quickly changed to 20,000 new — and I emphasise for the record new — jobs per annum in manufacturing. Initially we were told 20,000 extra jobs, quickly it became 20,000 new jobs in manufacturing, and when this target ran adrift and twice provoked the Minister for Labour, Deputy Ahern, to lambaste what he called leading private employers for not contributing sufficiently to job creation, the Central Review Committee were persuaded to allow international services to be included with manufacturing to make up the job targets. That is a historical fact. I know about it. He started off promising 20,000 extra jobs, we got 20,000 new jobs, not in manufacturing but in manufacturing and international services. Now the new programme, the Government side having learned lessons, gives a commitment to the creation of 20,000 new jobs per annum in "manufacturing and international services".
Gone are the specific targets enshrined in the Programme for National Recovery for the food industry and they are replaced by a three line paragraph typical of this agreement. I quote from page 47 of the programme:
The restructuring of Irish food companies will continue with a view to achieving the greater scale needed to sustain innovative product development and strong market positions in international distribution demands.
I do not know what that means but it does not mean any hope for the 241,000 people who are unemployed. It does not mean there will be any new jobs in the food sector. Remember, only a short few years ago this Government put all their eggs in the basket of one major company in the food industry, the Goodman operation, and promised we would have fantastic and significant job potential if that sector of the economy was developed. Now the entire commitment to the food sector is devoted to the paragraph I have read out. That is how the climate has changed. That is how much the Government negotiators have learned about the "cleverality" of the drafting required and that is how transparent the end product is to any of us who know a little about it.
In the crucial area of health, the abolition of category 3 is being bruited about as a major reform. However, given the underspending, the public are about to discover that access to free services is not the same as free access to services. Two issues are being confused here. The first is who pays the consultant when a patient is admitted — and this is addressed in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress. The second, and arguably more serious, question is how speedily one can gain access to hospital services. That is the real issue for the people in the queues. Linked to this is a consideration of social equity, that is, whether those who can afford private health care can gain access faster than those who cannot afford it. We know the answer to that. This is a much bigger issue and it is not resolved by the abolition of category 3.
The Minister for Health is quoted in the Irish Independent of 18 February 1991 as favouring private and public practice in the same hospital campus. The paper says this implies that public hospital facilities will continue to be available to consultants although perhaps on a more restricted and more costly basis. The plain fact is that if there is one private patient in a public bed it is one bed fewer for public patients, regardless of what the consultant is being charged for that bed. Only a combined waiting list for all patients can overcome this perpetuation of a two-tier system. The expectation that the abolition of category 3 will lead to a significant change is not borne out by a look at the existing level of those covered by the VHI. As the Commission on Health Funding noted, only 15 per cent of the population is not covered for consultant services, while twice this number and members of the VHI. Clearly their experience of free consultant services did not convince that extra 15 per cent of its attractions and they voted with their feet by taking action to jump the queue by buying private insurance.
While it is always possible for negotiators to deal with weaknesses and omissions in the programme by saying not every item could have been dealt with, it is they who bring this problem on themselves by embarking on such a project in the first place, where inconsistency dealt with or omitted indicates a lack of judgment about priorities, there is a more serious criticism of the negotiators. For example, while the teacher unions managed to get a commitment that all existing posts would be maintained in 1991 and 1992, no such commitment was forthcoming in the health services, despite all the brouhaha about the health services in this House. Indeed, before the ink was dry on the Programme for Economic and Social Progress health workers were learning that the bad old days of 1987 where set to return.
The Minister for Health assumes a level of economic illiteracy on the part of the electorate if he thinks additional expenditure which falls below the level needed to maintain services is an increase in expenditure in real terms. We have had cuts or shortfalls in the health boards in real terms rhymed off in this House over the last couple of weeks — a £4 million shortfall in the Southern Health Board, £6 million in the Eastern Health Board, £3.27 million in the Western Health Board, £2 million in the Mid-Western Health Board and £1.4 million in the Midland Health Board. Interestingly, the Midland Health Board have proposed dealing with the shortfall by shedding 100 jobs. If one were to extrapolate that figure nationally one could be looking at a threat to almost 2,000 jobs in the health services.
While much attention has been focused on consultants in recent days, it is far more likely to be the front line staff, such as nurses, who will be targeted, especially as other options for so-called economies were exhausted in the last major offensive on the health services by this Government or to be precise, this Governments predecessor in 1987 — that correction was in deference to the presence of the Minister for the Environment who does not like references to a Coalition Government. The proposed increase in current health spending of £90 million "by the final year of the seven year programme" which, incidentally, is confined to community services, must be seen in the context of the level of the cuts I have referred to being simultaneously implemented.
The section on education is interesting, and quite unique in as much as it indicates that parents and teachers have taught Fianna Fáil a lesson. The programme will have some effect on class size, the first positive change in class size since 1982. Physical conditions in schools should improve and the promise of an eventual six year cycle at second level is to be welcomed. However, even here all is not as it seems, and I am sorry the Minister for Education has left the House. At the end of the term of the programme the average class size as distinct from the pupil-teacher ratio which is a very misleading figure since it is arrived at by dividing the total number of pupils in the country by the total number of teachers — the latter figure including administrative principals, teachers of the handicapped and so on who have smaller classes — will still mean that there will be many classes of 38 pupils in national schools.
On the pupil-teacher ratio there are promised improvements for 1991 and 1992 — which I welcome — to bring the ratio to 25:1 in the case of primary and 19:1 in the case of post-primary but there are no proposals for improvement in 1993. We still have the highest ratio in the EC. The pupil-teacher ratio yardstick conceals the real position concerning class size. Our average class size is 31 pupils at primary level compared with an EC average of 20, and two-thrids of our children are in classes of over 30. Therefore, a ratio of 25:1 does not mean classes of 25.
On ex-quota vice principals and guidance teachers improvements are delayed until September 1992, at earliest, and there is no provision for ex-quota remedial posts at second-level. At present three in every four fee-charging schools have a sanctioned six-year cycle but only one in five of all "free scheme" schools have such a facility. The PESP proposals will become effective for new students from 1991 which means that all current students at second level will not benefit.
The extra capitation grants to employ secretaries and caretakers at both primary and second-level are welcome but will involve large scale extra funds to help maintain buildings which are for the most part in private ownership. School trustees should be required to repay an additional amount of public funds on sale of school buildings to recoup such costs. There is no additional grant for schools for heating, cleaning, painting and so on under the heading of "capitation". Consequently, the "roll tax" of parental fundraising will continue.
The extra grants for "disadvantage" show increases over three years which are very small indeed, for example, £1 million in 1991. Free books are part of many other free education systems. But this programme increase is in part only to provide for enhancement of the free books scheme for necessitous children. In fact, at today's prices, it would require £1.5 million to give a grant of half the usual book costs to just the most needy one-fifth of our students. There is no extra funding for adult education, all promises are vague and are to be fulfilled within available resources.
Under the section entitled Arts and Culture I contend that linking the arts and tourism will not assist development of the arts which should be funded on their merits. Linkage can only compromise the arts. The commitment to moving towards the Arts Council's funding target of £12 million to £13 million is heavily qualified by the phrase:
...our aim is to reach this reasonably rapidly and as circumstances permit.
That is the kind of phrase that is repeated time and again.
Negotiating a proposed agreement like the Programme for Economic and Social Progress is very much the art of the possible. However, the programme should not be made out to be something it is not. At the same time The Workers' Party do not believe that a reversion to fragmented local bargaining is in the best interests of the mass of trade unionists. If we are seriously concerned about addressing the question of the social wage we must seek national bargaining rights with those who can deliver on the elements making up that concept. However, the concept of the social wage is undermined by the refusal to address tax reform.
There are no new innovative proposals for job creation. Rather we are asked to settle for a target that accepts a standstill in the present horrific unemployment levels. The traditional union veto on the privatisation of our leading commercial State companies — which extracted an unequivocal commitment from the 1987 Fianna Fáil Government that no such companies would be privatised — is now effectively withdrawn. As recently as 1987 the Taoiseach gave an unequivocal commitment to Congress that Fianna Fáil would not lay a finger on our leading State commercial companies. That traditional veto is now effectively withdrawn. For short term cosmetic effect we are mortgaging the future of our children. Why is not some of the capital which the Irish Sugar Company undoubtedly badly needs for expansion and diversification not provided by the Government by diverting some of the hundreds of millions of £s doled out in grants to private industries? Always there is capital available for good investment. The Irish Sugar Company should be developed as a national food champion.
How can a Government seriously claim — as the Government have done — following the recent publication of the second triennial report on industrial performance that they have finally taken on board the lessons of Telesis ten years ago to encourage the development of a significant strong indigenous sector in this economy? How can they make that claim and at the same time be prepared to sell of one of our most successful indigenous companies which will mean that, in all probability control will pass outside of this country? Of course the Irish Sugar Company are not the only company lined up for privatisation.
This programme is more than a pay agreement. It is also a political proposal. In so far as the programme purports to deal with important political economic and social issues surely it is appropriate that this House should express its independent assessment of those issues?
As a trade unionist I have had the opportunity to express my view on the pay terms which generally may just about protect living standards but show little positive discrimination in favour of the lower paid. I can readily envisage the quagmire that faces trade union negotiators on clause 3 when they begin to negotiate the floating 3 per cent, a clause which begins extraordinarily with the word "exceptionally".
The performance of the public service group of unions in the pay context warrants admiration. Unfortunately, it is not similarly apparent that those looking after the interests of the lower paid were as committed, well informed or prepared. I do not blame the trade unions for not securing a national minimum wage. But I can blame the Government for not, at a minimum, including a more serious commitment to tackling poverty in our society by enshrining even a long term commitment to a statutory minimum wage. This is a political matter. The House should not endorse the Government's refusal to legislate against some of the more outrageous exploitation of low-paid workers, especially women. Neither should the House endorse the worsening of the early retirement/ redeployment proposals negotiated during the term of the 1987Programme for National Recovery. Serving postal workers are now in the front line. From a trade union viewpoint the proposals on early retirement/redeployment had a good deal of merit not least the prohibition on compulsory redundancy. That appears to have been withdrawn as far as State commercial companies are concerned.
This is a deceptive document, cleverly drafted, highly conditional, occasionally evasive, often vague and misleading. The House is asked to make an independent assessment of the merits of the political programme it sets out which my party cannot support for the reasons I have stated.
Debate adjourned.
Sitting suspended at 1.30 p.m. and resumed at 2.30 p.m.