Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 3 Oct 2017

Vol. 959 No. 6

Leaders' Questions

Deputy Micheál Martin

On my own behalf and that of my party, I wish to express our deepest sympathies for the families of all those who were murdered or injured in Las Vegas. It was an appalling atrocity with so many innocent people mowed down. At times like this, we are reminded of the extraordinary role of first responders in situations like this and we salute them and their courage in assisting. One hopes that common sense will ultimately prevail and that gun laws in the US are changed. It is extraordinary how so many deadly weapons can end up in the hands of one individual.

The hospice movement is one of the most cherished areas of care in our country. Uniquely among our health services, it enjoys almost universal approval. The ethos of care, empathy, dignity and space for families to be with their loved ones is quite remarkable to experience. Over the past number of decades, the advances in palliative care have been quite remarkable encompassing short-term respite, community-based care and end-of-life stage care. We all know that communities throughout the country have helped to sustain them and have fundraised for and supported them. Yet the Government is treating these organisations and others throughout the country in a hard-hearted and deeply cynical manner by, in the first instance, refusing to allocate sufficient funding to them but, worse, compounding that by refusing to allocate funding to cover pay restoration for staff working in these institutions as per the public service pay agreements.

During the FEMPI negotiations and the cuts to public service pay, these institutions were told that they had to cut their workers' pay in line with HSE employees. However, they have been given no funding whatsoever to cover pay restoration. These include highly respected centres such as Marymount hospice in Cork, Milford Care Centre in Limerick, St. Joseph's Hospital in Raheny and Galway hospice, which I visited recently.

It is not only hospices. There are hundreds of other organisations across the country in a similar situation which provide disability services, addiction counselling, services for carers, organisations such as Barnardos and Barretstown camp for young children with cancer, the Disability Federation of Ireland, the Diabetes Federation of Ireland and as many as 768 others. The Minister's reply to parliamentary questions on this subject is deeply cynical and dishonest. He says that they were not subject to the FEMPI legislation which imposed pay reductions, or the provisions of subsequent public service agreements which provided for pay restoration. Many of these organisations depend on the community.

The Taoiseach added insult to injury some months ago by telling me that they would not get pay restoration but that he would not allow them to cut services either. It is not tenable. I ask the Taoiseach if the Government will provide necessary funding to enable hospices, disability organisations, elderly care organisations and many more to pay their employees the same rate of restoration that is allowed for in the public service pay agreement.

The Taoiseach

Before I answer, I join with Deputy Martin in offering my condolences and those of the Government to the victims and families of those killed and wounded in the recent attack in Las Vegas. In the face of such horror and tragedy, the Irish Government and people stand in solidarity with our friends and families in the United States. I leith a leithéid d'uafáis agus de thragóid, seasann Rialtas na hÉireann agus muintir na hÉireann lenár gcairde sna Stáit Aontaithe. It was not just an attack on the people of the United States but also on citizens from all over the world. I sent a message to President Trump yesterday to express the condolences of the Irish people to the people of America.

To answer Deputy Martin's question, everyone in Government, myself included, is aware of the wonderful work that the hospice movement does, not just in hospices themselves but also in hospice home care. We have been very supportive of the hospice movement and the budget for hospices and palliative care has increased every year for the last number of years. For my own part, I was very involved in ensuring that funding was secured for St. Francis Hospice in Blanchardstown so that it could open fully and serve my constituents and others from the north Dublin and Meath region. Deputy Martin knows that his former colleague, former Deputy Brian Lenihan, was essential in ensuring that we got State land on which to build that hospice. I was, in many ways, carrying on his work. He ensured that the land was secured, the community raised the money and, as Minister, I provided funding to open it fully. Castlebar hospice is now under construction. While it is not under construction yet, I know plans for the new hospice in Wicklow are now very advanced, and there are also plans for hospice units in Waterford and Drogheda. There is a definite need for one in the midlands too.

That shows real commitment and progress towards providing the option of people ending their days in a hospice where they can die in a dignified way, which is what I think people would want for their friends and loved ones rather than for them to die in a busy hospital ward. Hospice home care is also important, because very few people die at home now and I think many people would wish to die at home if hospice home care was available. That needs to be increased in the years ahead.

The issue the Deputy referred to relates to the law around section 38 and section 39 bodies. Section 38 bodies are considered to be part of the public service and therefore people who work in it are public servants, are affected by FEMPI legislation when it goes up or down, and have public sector pensions.

Those who work under section 39 provisions, often hospices, charities and other bodies, are not public servants. They are not bound by the rules that apply to public servants and, therefore, they are not directly bound by FEMPI legislation. When salaries are being cut or when salaries are being increased, they are not bound by the rules around public sector pensions. The way those bodies are funded is through a block grant from Government and those bodies have a lot of autonomy to decide how that money is allocated.

Deputy Micheál Martin

That, in essence, is the dishonesty of the Government's response. Correspondence to me states that as a section 39 body, they were instructed by the HSE to stay in line with the HSE pay scales and apply the cuts as per the Haddington Road agreement. All hospices were so instructed. All of them have communicated to the Minister in this vein, and the other organisations as well. It is not true to say that they were not governed by FEMPI legislation and that they did not have to implement pay cuts under FEMPI agreements. They did. In Marymount hospice, for example, there was a €300,000 deficit in 2017, and it will be higher in 2018. This is on top of a fairly low base, as it stands. In that hospice, for example, the stark statement is made that in its current model, Marymount is not a sustainable entity. I visited a Galway hospital recently and it is the same story there.

Words are cheap, but I would have to put it to the Taoiseach that the existing current base is inadequate. The Government's actions, in cynically trotting out this mantra that such organisation are not subject to FEMPI legislation and their employees are not public servants, is dishonest. Is the Taoiseach seriously suggesting that nurses in a hospice should get less pay than nurses in other parts of the health services or care staff in a hospice should get less pay than those in any other service? The Government is cynically exploiting the volunteers who are keeping these organisations going, from hospice to disability rights, across the board.

I have been told that hospice beds will be cut next year if this issue is not addressed. It is time to stop hiding behind that mantra, which is fundamentally dishonest. I ask that the Minister meet the organisations face to face and get this issue resolved because the current position is not sustainable for them and is doing a great disservice to their ethos and to the fact that they are so rooted and so generally applauded in the community.

The Taoiseach

I am not sure from where that instruction that the Deputy referred to came. It certainly did not come from the Oireachtas.

Deputy Micheál Martin

The Taoiseach knows where it came from. It came from the HSE.

The Taoiseach

The FEMPI legislation - the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interests Acts - is a direction from the Oireachtas to reduce pay and, because the legislation is now being unwound, the new FEMPI Acts require by law that public bodies increase pay and restore pay, and that is exactly what is happening.

However, the Deputy rightly stated there are differences in pay. There are differences in pay between the public sector and the private sector. This, if you like, is part of a third sector, a voluntary sector, section 39, which is not part of the public service, and that is where the issue arises.

Deputy Micheál Martin

They were told to take the cuts. It is dishonest.

The Taoiseach

We are now in the middle of an Estimates process. I am aware of this issue. The Deputy can be assured that section 39 bodies operating in my constituency and elsewhere, such as hospices, have been in contact with us. We are aware of this issue. It is something that will be discussed, and hopefully resolved, as part of the Estimates process.

The Deputy should bear in mind, because they are not public bodies, what will be increased is their annual grant. Exactly how that annual grant is distributed between pay, pensions, services and other matters is not controlled directly by Government.

Deputy Micheál Martin

As I said, that is a cop-out.

The Taoiseach

That is the law, under the Health Act.

Deputy Gerry Adams

Before I begin, I want also to extend my condolences and those of Sinn Féin to the victims and the bereaved of the horrific mass shooting in Las Vegas on Sunday evening last. Our thoughts are with the victims and their families today. Ba mhaith liom mo chomhbhrón a dhéanamh leo go léir.

On Sunday, millions of Catalans voted in a referendum on independence. They did so in the face of violent repression on the part of the Spanish state. A Sinn Féin delegation of Senators, Deputies and MEPs were in Catalonia as international observers along with others. They witnessed the coercion at first hand. Old people were assaulted as they tried to enter polling stations. The Spanish police fired plastic bullets into crowds of innocent people simply because they wanted to exercise their right to vote.

We should know only too well the horrific consequences of the use of plastic bullets by the British Army in recent years in our country. I want to commend the enormous courage of the Catalan people in their efforts to hold a peaceful referendum. That was a huge achievement in and of itself, organisationally and logistically. Families occupied polling stations and kept them open so that their fellow citizens could vote. Catalan fire fighters formed human shields to protect voters and farmers brought in their tractors to form barricades so that citizens could vote. These were not violent actions and they should not have been met with the violent response they received from the Spanish state. As the Taoiseach knows well, the Speaker of the Catalan Parliament has been prosecuted for holding a debate and a vote in the Parliament on the issue of an independence referendum. The former president and two former ministers have also been prosecuted for organising a non-binding referendum on independence in 2014.

Fine Gael has a close connection with the government party in Spain and it is time for the Taoiseach to encourage dialogue. The international community, especially the European Union, has an obligation to ensure that Catalonia can pursue its course of self determination without fear of suppression. Our Government should be to the forefront in defending their right to decide their own future. What they decide is a secondary issue and is entirely a matter for themselves. The refusal to make this case is justified on the basis that these issues are an internal matter for the Spanish state but that is exactly the pretext that was used by the British state for decades to prevent the scrutiny of British rule in the North. It was only when these issues became internationalised that remedies emerged.

Will the Taoiseach stand up for the principles of democracy and the right to self determination for the people of Catalonia and will he use his influence and connections with the Spanish Prime Minister, Mr. Mariano Rajoy, to get him to accept mediation as part of the necessary process of talks between his Government and the Catalan people?

The Taoiseach

Ar dtús, fáilte ar ais a Ghearóid-----

Deputy Gerry Adams

Go raibh maith agat. Tá a fhios agat go bhfuil mé ag baint úsaide as script.

The Taoiseach

An-mhaith. Like Deputy Adams, everyone in this House and everyone in Ireland who watched the news on Sunday was horrified at the scenes we saw broadcast from Barcelona and Girona and to see that level of violence happening in what is a European country that has been a democracy since the 1970s. As I said on Monday, violence is never the solution to political disagreements. Violence by state actors, whether it is the police or the army, against unarmed civilians is disproportionate and should not have happened. It is also counterproductive. We know from our own history in this country and from history around the world that when policemen and soldiers use violence against unarmed civilians, it is counterproductive. It causes people to become more radicalised, causes greater nationalism and greater disunity. I hope the Spanish Government will reflect on the historical experiences of many countries in the world when it considers its next course of action into the future.

I absolutely agree with the Deputy that dialogue is the right way forward and that is what I would like to see occur in Spain. If I have the opportunity to say that to the Spanish Prime Minister in the weeks ahead, I will certainly take that opportunity.

Deputy Gerry Adams

There is a lot of agreement between us on this issue. The question now is what the Taoiseach is going to do about it. I welcome his commitment to raise this with Prime Minister Rajoy. The people of Spain are our allies. They are friends of Ireland but so too are the people of Catalonia. There are notable links between the Catalan and Irish independence movements. The Taoiseach may know that Terence McSwiney's hunger strike in 1920 inspired the independence movement there. When Terence McSwiney died, organisations from Catalonia wrote to the British Prime Minister condemning the treatment of the Cork mayor and there were mass demonstrations on the streets of Barcelona.

We are agreed that we need dialogue and mediation. We are agreed that, as the Taoiseach has outlined, when the State uses violence it leads to more division, disunity and radicalisation.

Will the Taoiseach pick up the telephone to Mr. Rajoy to tell him this? His party and that of Mr. Rajoy are sister members of the European People's Party group. Dialogue is what kick-started and sustains the peace process; therefore, I ask him to move on the very welcome statement he has made and raise these issues directly with the Spanish Prime Minister.

The Taoiseach

I absolutely agree that dialogue is required and that neither violence nor unilateralism is required. Contacts will be made at official level and, when the opportunity is appropriate, I will certainly discuss the matter with the Prime Minister, Mr. Rajoy. I have not yet had the chance to meet him on a one-to-one basis, but we have attended summits together, although he was not at the summit in Tallinn, presumably in anticipation of events that were unfolding in Catalonia.

There have been referendums on independence held in other countries and we are all familiar with the referendum in the United Kingdom on Scottish independence and the referendum in Canada on independence for Quebec. On both occasions the referendums happened in accordance with the law of the state. The referendum held in Scotland occurred under the laws of the United Kingdom, while the referendum held in Quebec occurred under the laws of Canada. The referendum in this instance was different in that it did not happen under Spanish law or within the constitutional legal framework of Spain. As a member state of the European Union, we respect the law, the constitution and the territorial integrity of Spain as another member state. If there is to be a referendum held in the future, as was the case in Scotland and Quebec, it should happen within the legal and constitutional framework of the country. Were that to happen, I imagine there would be a very high turnout and it would be considered to be democratically legitimate.

Deputy Brendan Howlin

On behalf of the Labour Party, I send my condolences and those of my party to and express solidarity with all those who lost loved ones or are fighting for their lives, injured or affected in any way by the appalling events in Las Vegas.

Since taking office, concerns have been raised that the Government prioritises spin over substance. In recent weeks there has been some evidence to give weight to such fears. First, there was the creation of the new strategic communications unit, with an assistant secretary level head and a staff of five members. Incidentally, since the creation of the new unit no press releases have been posted on the Taoiseach's departmental website. We then began to hear about a principal officer-level vacancy being created to head up the communications functions in individual Departments, although it is unclear, so far, how many such individual posts have been created. Together, these changes represent a very significant taxpayer investment in Government communications. The Taoiseach formally told the House that the investment in communications would be cost neutral, but that is only true if the vacancies in question are filled at the expense of other areas of the Civil Service and the public service. It is time that the Taoiseach provided clarity on the number of positions he is creating and the total cost involved.

The creation of these new public sector jobs was a story and in recent weeks we have seen two more stories which cause some concern. The first was the publication of a tender by the Taoiseach's Department, valued at €130,000, plus VAT, each year, for commissioning tracking polls. All political parties invest in tracking polls or polls of some sort to test the public mood on issues, but with this tender it seems that Fine Gael wants to shift the burden away from the party onto the taxpayer. When we were in government, we commissioned research after individual referendum results, but we published the results. I have two questions. First, will the Taoiseach commit to publishing the results of any tracking poll paid for from the public purse? Second, will he set out, in full, the cost of the communications unit and the staff members he is putting in place?

The Taoiseach

I have heard the allegation on a number of occasions that the Government is putting style ahead of substance. I have even seen in the speaking points of one of the Opposition parties that this is something its spokespeople are instructed to say when giving interviews. Congratulations to the Deputy on having some success in getting commentators and others to repeat his speaking points.

Deputy Darragh O'Brien

They are just saying the truth. It is quite obvious what is going on.

The Taoiseach

If Deputy Brendan Howlin wants to see the substance, I will give him some examples.

Deputy Brendan Howlin

Just answer the two questions asked.

The Taoiseach

In the past few months this is the substance the Government has brought about.

Deputy Brendan Howlin

The Taoiseach might answer the two questions asked.

The Taoiseach

Today the unemployment rate fell to 6.1%. A total of 50,000 jobs have been created this year so far. The universal social charge is down, while the minimum wage is up. Pensions are also up, as are payments to people with disabilities, carers, lone parents and the unemployed. We have hired 900 additional special needs assistants and brought in bursaries to help lone parents to access education.

Deputy Darragh O'Brien

Is that the list the Taoiseach handed out to his parliamentary party last week?

The Taoiseach

We have brought in medical cards for children with disabilities by right; started construction work on the national children's hospital; paid off IMF loans early; and concluded a public sector pay agreement with public servants to restore the pay of 90% of public servants within the next few years.

Deputy Sean Fleming

Is the Taoiseach reading his script? The unit prepared the script for him.

The Taoiseach

We presented Ireland's Rugby World Cup bid in London the other day.

A Deputy

This is an election statement.

The Taoiseach

We have introduced subsidised child care for families across Ireland and extended treatment benefits, invalidity pension and maternity and paternity benefits to the self-employed. We have laid out a very clear position on Brexit and next week we will bring forward a budget that will balance the books for the first time in ten years. That is a lot of substance.

Deputy Joan Burton

Tell us about the Olympia interview.

Deputy Brendan Howlin

The Taoiseach is relatively new to his office. He might want to understand the Taoiseach is accountable to this House and that when questions are asked, the simple courtesy of giving answers to those questions is actually expected. That is how Parliament works. I will ask the two questions again and this time the Taoiseach might reply without the spin. What is the full cost of the communications unit and individuals the Taoiseach has put in place since he took office? Will the the findings of the tracking polls he has commissioned at a cost of €130,000, plus VAT, per year be published in order that we can all benefit from them?

The Taoiseach

The Deputy is absolutely right to point out that when he was in government with my party, we commissioned research on polls. I am not sure we are actually carrying out polls-----

Deputy Brendan Howlin

Unpublished.

The Taoiseach

-----but certainly the strategic communications unit is going to carry out some research. I have no difficulty at all with the findings being published. I note that the Deputy has pointed out that this is not new. It is something the last and previous Governments did.

Deputy Brendan Howlin

Only after referenda.

The Taoiseach

Therefore, it is not a major change.

In terms of staffing levels, there will be six staff in the new unit who will be seconded from other areas of the public service. I do not yet know what the net cost will be, but as soon as I do, I will let the Deputy know. I do not know about the staff being employed at departmental level. The Deputy will have to ask the individual Departments about that matter.

It is very much my view that communications are a virtue. There is a big deficit in communications between the Government and the general public. The public have a right to know what the Government does, how their taxes are being spent and about the programmes under way. We intend to improve that process. A huge amount of money is spent by the Government and agencies on communications. Approximately 750 staff work across Departments and different agencies in communications and public relations in some way, for which, believe it or not, the total budget is €170 million, much of which is valid. It involves Tourism Ireland marketing Ireland abroad and Bord Bia marketing the food industry. It involves advertisements advising people to attend for their BreastCheck examination or receive the influenza vaccine. It is all very good spending, but a certain proportion of it involves different Departments and agencies advertising their own logos and so on. That is exactly the kind of thing I want to change. It has been done in Britain and the Netherlands where the overall cost of government communications across Departments and agencies has been reduced, but in a much better way.

There is huge confusion. Many people do not know whether an agency is part of central government or local government or whether that agency is even a Government body.

Deputy Brendan Howlin

Try investing in education then.

The Taoiseach

People often think Government agencies are non-governmental organisations, NGOs. This is an opportunity to end that fragmentation, save money and have clearer communications. That is what we intend to do.

Deputy Micheál Martin

The Taoiseach needs to give people a little more credit. They are a little more intelligent than he thinks.