Nowhere are the lies and deceit of the Government more evident than in the health sector. Before the election, a health strategy was launched with extraordinary pomp and ceremony. Once the Government's re-election was secure, the health strategy, like the reputation of the Minister, Deputy Martin, was shredded in favour of an onslaught of cuts and increases in health, VHI, and hospital and drugs charges. The only thing that has not gone up is the desperately low income level needed to qualify for a medical card. While a single person with an income of over €138 per week cannot get a medical card, retired judges, bankers and retired Taoisigh can simply fill out a form and get one. The Government could not even get its sums right in the disastrous handling of the over-70s issue.
Meanwhile, our accident and emergency departments are overloaded and our disability services are underfunded. I could not believe that the Minister came in here this evening and appealed to our republican ethos to demonstrate her commitment to the disabled. Given the protest that she must have seen outside the Mansion House yesterday it is incredible that she could come in here and make a commitment like that and about equality of educational opportunity. She should tell that to Jamie Sinnott and his mother.
That the Government parties have behaved dishonestly is now well known. Apart from the dishonesty of their economic policy, it is also unfair and unsound. The Government manages the economy not in the interests of the people but in the interests of its own political survival. It squeezed public expenditure in the aftermath of the 1997 election to build up an electoral slush fund, as Deputy Durkan has just said. Then it cut taxes for the rich and splurged on public expenditure in advance of the general election. No thought was given to either structural reform or value for money. In doing so, it pushed up inflation and dealt a severe blow to our competitiveness, with not a whisper of concern from the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment until after the election. We are now seeing the direct result of redundancies, which have doubled in the past two years, and inflation, which will certainly be over 5% this year. Working families pay the price for this mismanagement and suffer the consequences of the rising figures on the live register.
Now the stop-start cycle has begun all over again. The cuts impose hardship while the war chest is already being amassed for the next election. Again, working families pay the price in higher bills and poorer services. It need not have been like this. In 2002 the Government recorded a current budget surplus of €5.4 billion. A sum of €5,400 million more was taken in than paid out on the day-to-day running of the State. Because the Government is ideologically opposed to public services, it is squeezing the current budget to support capital spending. Its objection to borrowing for capital purposes makes no sense in good times and is even more foolhardy during a downturn. By abandoning the national development plan the Government is causing long-term damage to our economy. What foreign country wants to invest in a country that does not have decent infrastructure?
The Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, who delighted in running around the country announcing new jobs in times of boom, now have nothing to say to working families who are facing redundancy and short time work. If they do not have the confidence to invest in the economy, how can they expect others to have it?
Public services are being squeezed continuously. A current budget surplus of €5.4 billion existed, yet we learned this week that severely mentally and physically handicapped people in St. Mary's in Drumcar are living in conditions that are an affront in a civilised country. Working families bear the strain of this Government's failures and of its abuse of power. They bear it in the form of rising prices, higher charges and stealth taxes while dealing with crises in education, health, housing and child care. This Government has made promise after promise to address child care, but nothing of substance is ever done and nothing will be done.
The Government does not want to take responsibility for anything, but is happy to lay the blame for every problem at the door of a so-called international recession. It wants to go back to the days of the poor mouth when every problem was met with a shrug of the shoulders and the comment "Ah sure, we are a poor country". Ireland is not a poor country; it is, in fact, one of the richest in the world with the second highest GDP per capita in the EU. We are not, by any stretch of the imagination, at risk of returning to the dark days of the 1980s as the Taoiseach regularly attempts to suggest. We have the second lowest debt-GDP ratio of any EU country. We are not poor, but we are poorly governed. We suffer from a poverty of aspiration and a paucity of governmental competence. Blaming the international recession for every ill when we have a current budget surplus of €5.4 billion is simply another example of a dishonest Government which will not deal with issues affecting ordinary working families.
We commence a new parliamentary session with the world on the brink of a war which is to be launched by the United States of America against Iraq. There is nothing in the preliminary report of the United Nations arms inspectors that justifies the headlong dash to a war that could, according to the UN's own estimates, lead to over 500,000 direct or indirect casualties, the outbreak of disease and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians. In light of the reports of the UN's Dr. Blix, it is essential that the inspectors be given all the time necessary to fully discharge the mandate provided to them by the Security Council. It is not possible to develop or test weapons of mass destruction while the UN inspectors are in the country. Ireland should join with France and Germany, the latter of which is about to take up the presidency of the UN Security Council, in their efforts to secure a peaceful settlement of this dispute. Instead, the Government is dissembling and making things up as it goes along, hoping that something will turn up. It gives information only when it is unavoidable and changes that information depending on which Minister is speaking.
In two months of work, the inspectors have found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction and Dr. Blix has told the Security Council that, on the whole, Iraq has co-operated rather well in the process. While some of the criticisms of the Iraqi authorities made by Dr. Blix are significant and while pressure must continue to be exerted on Baghdad to co-operate, these do not constitute grounds for war. I draw the attention of the House to the statement by Dr. Blix in which he said that the 1991 to 1998 inspectorate achieved results. Dr. Blix stated that the disarmament achieved by his predecessors was greater than that achieved by allied bombing during the Gulf War. Given the manner in which the US and British military is proceeding, there are real concerns that it was always the intention to proceed to war regardless of the findings of the inspectors and irrespective of whether further military action is sanctioned by the Security Council. US disengagement from events in Palestine and its approach to the more unpredictable regime in North Korea is more than a hint that this war is about oil and the strategic interests of the United States. No democratic country has gone to war in recent times other than in direct response to an act of aggression. Launching a massive war over a possible threat from another country will create a very dangerous precedent indeed. Furthermore, as it is put in the current edition of the American journal Foreign Affairs, the United States of America risks alienating those it is most likely to need as its 21st century allies.
Even though ours is a small country, we must do all we can to ensure that a disaster is averted. The Government should cease to be silent in respect of the drift towards war and join with others in campaigning for a peaceful settlement. Instead, it is complicit in the warmongering. This is evident in the revelation this morning by the Minister for Transport, Deputy Brennan, that he has given US civilian aircraft permission to transport military equipment through Shannon Airport in direct contradiction of the legal and political position adopted by some of his colleagues. It is another aspect of the Government's desire to be closer to Boston than Berlin, as is the Taoiseach's action to have a vital Dáil debate on this issue postponed. The Government says there has been no change in policy and that all Governments have provided facilities at Shannon Airport for US troops in transit to and from the United States of America. This is true, of course, but the circumstances have changed. Facilities which can properly be made available to a friendly nation at a time of peace may not be appropriate when the nation appears to be embarked on a course of belligerent military action without the approval of the Security Council of the United Nations.
The Irish public is not being told the truth about the full use of Shannon Airport. Figures given out by the Department of Transport suggest that just seven civilian aircraft carrying weapons or munitions were given permission to land at Shannon Airport in the first three weeks of this month, but that a further 19 were given permission last week. This suggests that there has been either an astonishing increase in the number of such aircraft using the airport or that the law and the requirement to seek sanction was being widely ignored. It emphasises the need for some system of inspection and verification of these aircraft at Shannon.
I draw the attention of the House to the conflict within the Government with regard to the application of section 3(1)(vii) of the Defence Act, 1954, which explicitly states that no person shall, save with the consent in writing of the Minister, enter or land in the State while wearing a foreign military uniform. Deputy Michael D. Higgins tabled a question on this issue before Christmas and was told by the Minister for Defence that the provisions of section 3(1)(vii) of the Defence Act had not been exercised by him in the period in question. On the other hand, I received a letter from the Taoiseach yesterday which told me that the requirements of section 3(1)(vii) of the Defence Act regarding the wearing of uniforms are being complied with fully. The US authorities have been given express permission which allows their military personnel to wear their uniforms in the transit areas of Irish airports. Who is telling the truth, the Minister for Defence or the Taoiseach?
