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Dáil Éireann debate -
Tuesday, 22 May 2018

Vol. 969 No. 4

Leaders' Questions (Resumed)

I also extend our solidarity and condolences to the communities, friends and above all the families of Ana Kriégel and Jastine Valdez, a girl and a young woman who have lost their lives so horribly and cruelly. We can only imagine the feelings and heartbreak of their loved ones at this most difficult time.

Three days from now, the people will go to the polls to vote on whether to repeal the eighth amendment. The only way we can help women facing crises is by returning a "Yes" vote and removing the eighth amendment from Bunreacht na hÉireann. In the course of this debate, it is important that we deal in fact. I have heard assertions from the "No" campaign and its spokespersons that what they call hard cases - for example, pregnancies resulting from rape or those involving diagnoses of fatal foetal anomalies - can be dealt with under the current constitutional framework. Such assertions are patently untrue. The very same people making this argument campaigned against the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Act 2013. That Act, now widely recognised as being wholly inadequate, allows doctors to intervene only where a woman's life is a risk. At that time, the people to whom I refer talked about the floodgates being opened and abortion becoming widely available. They were wrong on that matter just as they are wrong now not to acknowledge that the eighth amendment blocks any action to legislate for what they call the hard cases. How do we know this? We know it because we have tried.

Two separate Private Members' Bills on these issues were rejected on the advice of the Attorney General. Therefore, there is only one way we can help women in these circumstances and that is by returning a "Yes" vote on Friday, and to suggest otherwise is entirely disingenuous.

It is important also to remember that these are not exceptional or really hard cases; these are real women facing devastating scenarios and circumstances every day. The eighth amendment represents a real and ongoing threat to the health and lives of Irish women. It places the threat of criminal sanction against doctors for making medical decisions in the best interests of the health of their patients. Those are the facts. On Friday, we have what I regard as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to right a historic wrong, to learn from the misery - the alphabet soup of misery, the litany of misery - that the eighth amendment has brought us.

People are now being told that repeal of the eighth amendment will mean a free for all, with unrestricted access to abortion, abortion for no reason and abortion until birth. I ask the Taoiseach to address these false assertions and to set the record straight.

I thank the Deputy. I know there has been a lot of talk during this referendum campaign about those hardest of hard cases - young women who are just girls themselves who have become pregnant, often as a result of incest, women who are victims of rape or perhaps young couples or couples with a pregnancy that is very much wanted but who get the devastating diagnosis that the child they are expecting will not survive long outside of the womb, or will not make it to birth. Although I think any crisis pregnancy is a hard case, they are certainly among the hardest of cases.

I would contend that it is actually our hard laws that create those hard cases. The eighth amendment is too hard and forces a very hard law on Irish people and Irish women. Let us not forget what the eighth amendment states. The eighth amendment is eloquent and states that the right to life of the unborn is equal to that of the mother, so the right to life of a foetus of only a few days gestation is equal to the right to life of one's mother, sister or female friends and co-workers. Furthermore, the amendment says the State must vindicate that right, and that is why such harsh and tough penalties are applied.

I heard yesterday, on, I think, the "Six One News", Deputy Ó Cuív, who I respect as an individual, say we could somehow decriminalise the abortion pill or decriminalise women who seek abortions, or somehow reduce the penalty of 14 years imprisonment for women who have abortions or anyone who helps them to have an abortion. Of course, that is not true and we know it is not true because we had legislation in this House to decriminalise abortion and it was refused on constitutional grounds. We had proposals at the time. The Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill proposed to reduce that 14-year penalty and it could not be accepted for that reason.

I have been around the Cabinet table with the current and the previous Attorney General. I have listened to former Attorneys General like Michael McDowell and John Rogers very eloquently and very clearly make the case that the fact the eighth amendment states that the unborn is equal to a woman, at any gestation, and states that we must vindicate that right is what imposes these very hard laws on Ireland and these very hard cases. What I see now, in the final, dying days of this campaign, is a tactic by the "No" campaign to try to make out there is some sort of alternative amendment that we could put into our Constitution. I would ask those people, 30 years after that amendment was put into our Constitution, why in those 30 years has nobody put forward an alternative amendment that would deal with all of these hard cases, and why, only three days from the vote, are people suddenly raising that as a realistic argument and alternative. It is not a realistic alternative; it is just a tactic, and I believe the Irish people will see through it.

I thank the Taoiseach. I share his view that not alone hard law but bad law has given rise to so many hard cases. He wonders, not unreasonably, how it is that those who contend there is another route to deal with these cases have not come forward with that proposition.

There is no proposition because it is not legally possible unless we repeal the eighth amendment.

The coalition is on.

There are some people who believe that a woman should be forced to continue pregnancy in any set of circumstances, even when doing so will have a devastating impact on her health, or might even claim her life, or if there is no chance of the child surviving and all the heart-breaking trauma that comes with that unbearable situation. On the face of it, their message might sound somewhat sympathetic to somebody who might be a victim of rape but beyond the soft words there is no substantive response other than to say that she made her bed so lie on it, that the woman should continue come what may. It is an astonishing lack of compassion and demonstrates an astonishing lack of trust in our women. I am glad that the Government and people across these benches have chosen to turn away from that lack of compassion and choose instead another route and way. Will the Taoiseach specifically address the false assertion in respect of very late abortions, which is being advanced by some in the "No" campaign?

The draft legislation which the Government has put forward is exactly that. I saw somebody pointing to it and claiming it was the law - it is not the law, it is the draft scheme of legislation that we intend to introduce if the referendum is carried on Saturday. That provides for the termination of pregnancies up to 12 weeks but after 12 weeks only where there is a medical indication, where a specialist obstetrician, somebody with ten years' training or more and a second doctor, agree that a termination is necessary in order to protect the health or life of the pregnant woman. Head 4 of the draft legislation refers specifically to viability to ensure that no pregnancy is terminated after the point of viability. The only situation where that could be the case is where, sadly, the pregnant woman is carrying a child who is not going to survive anyway, the case of fatal foetal abnormalities or, under head 5, which is an emergency provision. This is an absolute emergency provision whereby a doctor has to intervene immediately to end the pregnancy to immediately save the life of the woman. There is a double immediacy test under head 5. That is designed for those absolute emergency situations where there is an immediate risk to the life of the woman which requires an immediate termination and indeed something similar is already provided for in our existing 2013 legislation.

On behalf of the Rural Independent Group, I would like to be associated with the expressions of sympathy on the tragic deaths of Ana Kriégel and Jastine Valdez and to thank all the emergency people, including An Garda Síochána and everybody else. These are atrocious crimes, and so sad.

This morning I received a reply to a parliamentary question I submitted to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform that details expenses incurred by the Department last year. The list of costs is extraordinary. In one year, 2017, the Department paid out €3.5 million in consultancy fees. These included almost €1.5 million to Deloitte, financial risk management, under €0.25 million to the Horizon Energy Group for strategic advice and a further €216,000 to KPMG, which we might all remember was adviser and auditor to Irish Nationwide among others. It also included a payment of €182,000 for more research and advisory services to the Gartner company and €100,000 to Accenture, for research and advice.

I would like to contrast those costs with the entire budget made available to local and rural communities, everywhere outside Dublin, to install and operate closed-circuit television, CCTV, crime prevention schemes throughout the State, including my county, Tipperary. The entire budget for that scheme is just €3 million.

That is not only a pathetic amount for a national scheme, we know it is €500,000 less than one Department paid to private consultants in just one year. It is shocking. I raise this because I received an email this morning - we all got it - from the rural development chairman of the Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association, ICSA, Mr. Seamus Sherlock. He referenced the huge frustration existing in rural communities regarding the close circuit television, CCTV, scheme. It is not working. It is cumbersome and people cannot access it. He went on to say that figures released by the Department of Justice and Equality indicate that a mere 4% of the €3 million funding for CCTV has been spent. It cannot be drawn down because it is so cumbersome. Only €120,000 has been spent as the scheme reaches the halfway point.

The report on agricultural crime in Ireland was compiled by Dr. Kathleen Moore-Walsh and Ms Louise Walsh. We know from the report that farmers and rural dwellers have chronic experiences with vandalism, criminal damage, trespass and theft, as well as an extensive level of repeat victimisation. Despite this, the Government in the last five years has paid out over €606 million in free legal aid. One individual was before the courts on 102 occasions with free legal aid. People are left defenceless. Does the Taoiseach accept that the stark difference I have outlined to him between the budgets reveals the utter contempt that he and his Government continue to display towards rural Ireland? There was €3 million for a national crime prevention strategy for communities that are living in fear while €3.5 million went to private consultants. Many of them are friends of the Taoiseach. Will he commit to increasing the budget for CCTV and other rural schemes? Will he also try to make the schemes user friendly? They should not be so cumbersome that communities cannot access them. I refer to the text alert scheme also. It has to be funded by local communities to protect themselves. It should be funded by the Department of Justice and Equality.

I do not have details of the expenditure that Deputy Mattie McGrath mentioned. That is a matter for the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. However, Government Departments regularly retain outside advice, whether that is legal advice, accountancy advice or people who come in and provide ICT projects for example. When a Department uses outside consultants it generally does so for two reasons. The expertise may not exist within the Department. Government Departments often do not have ICT, accounting, or legal expertise. Another reason it is done is because it is cheaper than hiring large numbers of new employees to do that work and taking on all the pension liabilities that come with that.

The CCTV scheme is a relatively new scheme. It is a good one. I know of examples around the country where it has worked well. There are issues and teething problems and there are ways that it could be improved. The Minister for Justice and Equality is keen to see that budget drawn down. He would like to see communities around the country avail of the installation of CCTV so that crime can be discouraged in the first place and detected where it does occur. I would not, however, like anyone to think that the Government's response to crime is solely related to putting in place CCTV systems.

It is about much more than that. The Deputy will acknowledge that a few years ago we reopened the Garda College in Templemore and resumed recruitment to the Garda. Increasing the number of gardaí on our streets and in our communities is one of the best ways to tackle crime. Since the Garda College reopened, 1,600 recruits have attested and been assigned to mainstream duties across the country. Garda numbers stood at 13,500 at the end of January 2018. That was an increase of 600 on 2016. We are also heading to reach our target of increasing the Garda workforce to 21,000 by 2021. That will comprise of 15,000 gardaí, 2,000 reserve members and 4,000 civilians. From 2013 to 2017, €44 million was also invested in the Garda fleet. That allowed 2,000 additional vehicles to come on stream. The Garda fleet now stands at 2,800 vehicles. That is an increase of 150 since January 2016.

I welcome Templemore being open of course. We need more gardaí and we need support for them. The figures quoted by the Taoiseach are just a fraction of what we need to tackle crime.

People are sick and tired of these private consultancy companies. The Taoiseach has admitted that his Department is unable to do this. We are talking about the amount of money spent by one Department. I am not expecting the Taoiseach to understand the frustration of the people, but he should. The Taoiseach set up his own specialist communications unit at a cost of €5 million. That shows how much he cares about the people. A parliamentary question revealed that €112,000 was spent last year by his Department on entertainment for the guests of the Taoiseach, €78,000 on photography and advertising and €99,000 on newspapers, magazines, tea and coffee. People see this largesse and they expect two-way dealing.

The Taoiseach is laughing. I would prefer if he listened, with respect. It is not funny for the victims of crime in this country, those who have nobody to help them and who have been abandoned. We have seen the failure to react to the cervical cancer issue. This is no laughing matter. It is a serious matter in rural Ireland. Fine Gael is a farce but of course, €606 million goes to its friends in the legal profession. The people have been abandoned. The attitude seems to be to let them eat cake. The Government will know, when it knocks on doors to look for votes, how the people feel. They are terrified in their homes.

Schemes such as the CCTV scheme and text alert should be paid for and should be easily accessible, not cumbersome for communities to implement. Communities are holding coffee mornings to pay for text alerts to warn the Garda when an issue arises. We want to support the Garda; I always support them. However, we cannot have this misery perpetrated on people, who are expected to just lick it up.

I can assure the Deputy that I have never been entertained by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, at least not in the form of libations or food and drink. It has entertained me in other ways on a number of occasions, but not in the way the Deputy thinks. Every Government Department has an entertainment budget. My own Department, for example, may provide refreshments or a lunch or dinner for a visiting-----

Some €100,000 was spent on magazines.

-----head of state or government. That is entirely appropriate. When a person is invited into one's house one very often offers refreshments, and I believe it would be poor of us, as a country, not to do so. It may extend to the kind of refreshments we put on at national commemoration events, such as the very successful one we had in Tipperary only a few months ago where a very nice spread was put on for constituents of the Deputy. Other examples include the recent reception we organised for 700 front-line workers who do such a good job.

The Tipperary event was organised by the Office of Public Works, OPW.

The OPW is a part of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, so the Deputy is quite correct. Many of his constituents benefitted from that particular expenditure.

Perhaps the biscuits should be replaced with fruit.

There are no biscuits in the Department of the Taoiseach anymore, but that is another story.

The Deputy does make a serious point about CCTV schemes. It is a good scheme, and I am aware that the Minister of Justice and Equality is very much behind it. I am also behind it, and we want to streamline the process to make sure that communities can draw down that money and put CCTV systems in place in order to deter crime in the first instance and can make it easier for the Garda to detect crime when it does occur.

I join with the expressions of sadness at the tragedies of recent days. Our hearts go out to the families and friends of Ana Kriégel and Jastine Valdez. Their murders have shocked the nation.

This morning and this afternoon, in the Mansion House, not far from here, ECO-UNESCO is hosting the Young Environmentalists Awards. Visiting it today would lift one's heart and spirits and would give one renewed hope for this country. There is an incredible sense of can-do and many visions for what we could do differently. There is a broad interest in the issue of how we can reduce the amount of plastic waste we are creating in our society among the young people getting awards today. It is central to much of their thinking. Since the Waste Reduction Bill, which has passed Second Stage, was introduced almost ten months ago in this House, a number of other events have given us pause for thought.

EUROSTAT has produced statistics which show that Ireland is producing twice as much plastic waste as compared to the European average. We are ahead of every other country in that regard. Producers are obliged to pay a producer responsibility fee to try to reduce and cut back on waste, but similar research has shown that Ireland is the third worst, out of 21 countries in Europe, in terms of what we ask them to pay to meet their responsibilities.

In the past ten months, the European Union has come out with a new plastic strategy that states we have to take this seriously and move to a circular economy because China is no longer taking our plastic waste. We should be setting up new streams of waste collection and creating jobs and recycling here. The UK Government has committed to introducing a deposit refund scheme, one of the initiatives that is in our Bill. More than anything else, the likes of David Attenborough and others have shown the reason that there is so much concern. Plastic in our environment is becoming a serious health and environmental hazard that we have to address with vigour.

Our Bill does that, and it has been a useful process. For ten months we have been in committee. We consulted the library and research team and we have heard from stakeholders and international experts to try to tease out how to do this. This afternoon at 3 p.m. we will go into committee to vote on whether to accept the report from the committee on the Waste Reduction Bill 2017 and move the Bill to Committee Stage. The Minister is suggesting that we include an amendment to state that we will not take the action set out in the Bill. He recommends that we provide that we "may" do something rather than provide that we "shall" and he says that we should wait for Europe to do the legislating rather than doing it ourselves.

I fundamentally disagree. If the Bill is voted through to go to Committee Stage today, will the Government be willing to issue the money order that would allow us to debate the issues further at Committee Stage, and introduce in legislation the very measures for which every young environmentalist across the country is now calling? Will the Government commit to doing that if the committee votes in support of the Waste Reduction Bill 2017 and the report that has been carried out, and allows it to go to Committee Stage?

I agree with the Deputy on one point. I know there is enormous and growing public concern about the impact that plastics are having on our environment. I think anyone who saw "The Blue Planet" or any of the programmes like that can see the impact it is having, particularly our marine and maritime environment. I know the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Denis Naughten, is very interested in this area. He is studying it very closely with his officials to determine what moves and measures may be most effective in trying to reduce the amount of plastics that are produced, reduce the amount that we use and make sure that those we do use are recycled or disposed of in a way that does not damage our environment, particularly our marine environment. In this space, the Minister is working on proposals to ban microbeads before the end of the year, building on proposals that I know were made by Senator Grace O'Sullivan of the Green Party in recent times, and we are very keen to do exactly that.

In terms of the legislation that the Deputy suggests, I refer to the money message. First of all, before a money message can be issued, we first need to know roughly how much money it is going to cost. Second, we must know whether the Oireachtas has voted that money. It is obviously not credible to issue a money message without knowing how much something is going to cost, or whether the Oireachtas has voted that money. We then need to consider whether a scheme could be put in place that would not cost the Exchequer but might actually be cost-neutral. I encourage the Deputy to examine that and to see if he can refine the proposal before it goes to Committee Stage, to make sure that it is cost-neutral, that the polluter pays and that it does not impose additional costs on the Exchequer and the taxpayer. That is money that could go into education, healthcare, disability or other worthy causes.

On that very point, we wish to thank Voice Ireland and Friends of the Irish Environment, groups that have done detailed research work on this area. With regard to the deposit refund scheme, we are saying that there should be a deposit refund of 15 cent. Our estimates are that if the producer's contribution is increased from the current 0.2 cent to 1 cent per container, it would cover half the costs. International experience shows that another quarter would probably be covered by the deposits which are not claimed. The final quarter of the costs would be recovered from the value of the materials that would be collected in a much more sophisticated and effective way. We believe it is possible to introduce this scheme without a cost to the Exchequer.

In regard to the first part of the Bill, we are not proposing a ban, rather we are proposing what the Minister himself suggested before he changed his mind - that the Government impose a levy on non-compostable cups and uses that money to pay for the compost bins we need to start changing our entire system. In further measures without costs, we would ban plastic straws, plates, knives and forks outright, which is what the European Union is saying we should do.

I can answer the Taoiseach's question. To the best of our knowledge, according to the best research and best international experts, we can do this without a cost to the Exchequer. Will the Taoiseach issue the money order if the committee passes it on that basis that afternoon? We are giving the Government two or three years to implement it. We are not saying it has to be implemented tomorrow. We will be doing it at the same time as the UK Government will do it. We will be doing it at the same time as we must radically change our entire recycling system to meet new higher European recycling standards. I believe we do have the answers to the Minister's concerns. We can do this without a cost to the Exchequer. No one knows for certain, as it takes time and we will have to spend a bit of time working through it, but the best research we have states it is possible. Will the Taoiseach issue the money order if the committee votes it through this afternoon on that basis?

If it is revenue neutral and if it will not cost the Exchequer anything then obviously it does not require a money message but I will need more than the afternoon to examine the Deputy's numbers and determine whether his claim is true that it will not cost the Exchequer anything. The Deputy has form in this regard. He was, of course, a Minister in the Government that promised us the cheapest bank bailout in the world and we saw how much that ended up costing. Having been €30 billion out before, it will take more than the afternoon for us to see whether the Deputy's arithmetic has improved in the past decade and whether it stacks up.

This is the future.

Did the Taoiseach not vote for it?

I thought the Taoiseach voted for it.

As is absolutely the case, if it is Exchequer neutral and if it does not cost the Exchequer anything it will not require a money message, so obviously we will examine the Deputy's claim to see whether his numbers add up.

I would have reservations about any scheme that caused us to have to reduce or limit public expenditure in other areas. Even the richest country that wants to balance its books has limited money to spend on public services and most people would want us to prioritise issues such as health, education and disability for additional spending rather than deposit refund schemes.

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