We live in interesting times, but we will proceed to take Leaders' Questions under Standing Order 36.
Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
The announcement this afternoon of the resignation of the Taoiseach and Fine Gael leader, Leo Varadkar, brings us to a critical moment in Irish politics. The decision of who now leads the Government as Taoiseach must be placed in the hands of the people. The decision of who is in government must be placed in the hands of the people. Today’s announcement can have only one conclusion: the calling of a general election. The Taoiseach stated that it was his time to go and that he was not the person for the job. It is clear that it is time for this entire Government to go to allow the people to have their say and to allow the election of a new Government. The very idea that the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party would gather in conclave to reshuffle the office of An Taoiseach – the highest office in the land – without the people having their say is unthinkable. We need a new government that will deliver the change that workers, families and communities so badly want; a government that will fix housing and, instead of going around in circles, ensure that a generation can put secure and affordable roofs over their heads and rekindle the aspiration of homeownership for ordinary people; a government that will fix our health service, ensure that people can see a doctor when they are sick, end the scandal of patients on hospital trolleys, get children off waiting lists and into operating theatres for life-changing surgery, and guarantee that people can get the care they need in the right place and at the right time; and a government that will give our young people the chance to build a good and prosperous life and future here in Ireland instead of being forced to seek opportunity far away in the United States, Australia and Canada and, crucially, will achieve change and build pathways home for those who so desperately want to come back.
Ireland has changed and is changing. All around, we see the signposts to the new republic that this generation is shaping, a generation determined to achieve the Ireland denied our parents and grandparents before us, not held back by the past, but rising to a modern vision of the Ireland that can be. This is a time for fresh leadership, a time for change; not just a change of Taoiseach, but a change of Government and a change of direction. Tá sé in am don athrú, ní hamháin athrú Taoisigh ach athrú Rialtais agus athrú treo don tír.
Fine Gael has been in government for far too long. Ireland had one of the highest rates of homeownership in Europe when Fine Gael came to office in 2011. That has collapsed. Fine Gael has failed on housing and health and has failed to tackle the cost of living. It is out of touch, has run out of ideas and has run out of time. Another Fine Gael Taoiseach is not what people want. This Government of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party has run out of steam and road. Rather than limping on in a caretaker capacity, go to the Phoenix Park and ask Uachtarán na hÉireann for a dissolution of the Dáil. Let us go to the people. They decide who leads.
Deputies
Hear, hear.
Just to be clear, I have resigned as Fine Gael president and leader today. I have not resigned as Taoiseach, but that will follow. Our Constitution – and it is the people’s Constitution – is very clear on this.
The office of president is directly elected; the office of Taoiseach is not. The office of Taoiseach is elected by Dáil Éireann, which is elected every five years. It is not unprecedented for the Dáil to elect a new Taoiseach during its term. That was how I succeeded Enda Kenny. That is how Brian Cowen succeeded Bertie Ahern. That is how Jack Lynch succeeded Seán Lemass, and there are many other examples in our 100 years of democracy where a Taoiseach changed without a general election. There was even one example where an entire Government changed, which was when John Bruton became Taoiseach after Albert Reynolds. There is nothing unusual about any of this. It is in our Constitution, the people's book, and has happened on many occasions.
The three party leaders met last night. I met my good colleagues and friends, Deputies Micheál Martin and Eamon Ryan, and it is our view that this Government goes on. This Dáil was elected by the people. This Government was elected by this Dáil in two different formats. This is a Government that has a programme for Government that will continue. An election will happen in due course but rather than having an early election, we want to continue to focus on the issues at hand such as housing, the cost of living, managing migration better, our health service and law and order.
On the issue of housing, the misleader strikes again. Homeownership in percentage terms is not far off what it was in 2011. In absolute terms, it is higher. Some 1.2 million people in Ireland now own their own homes. The Deputy can have a look at the census. Respondents to the census can choose to report the nature of their occupancy or it is recorded as "Not stated", but the percentage of homeownership was in the high 60s in 2011 and is now much where it was then. We are getting on top of the issue of the cost of living. Inflation is coming down. We now see incomes rising faster than prices, which means real living standards are improving again. We are seeing energy bills fall and I believe we will see interest rates fall during the year, which will be welcome to many people, particularly those who have mortgages. On the health service, we see now for the first time in a very long time that waiting lists are falling. They have fallen two years in a row and we intend this year to be the third such year.
The work of the Government goes on. A political party is always bigger than any one man or woman and a government is always bigger than the person who leads it. We will honour the Constitution and our mandate and continue our work.
Of course, any government must be reliant in the first instance on the democratic mandate of the people. If the Taoiseach is so confident in the Government's achievements as he stands down as leader of Fine Gael and as Taoiseach and if he is confident of that record, he should go to the people and hear what they have to say. We are in times of enormous opportunity and huge challenge. I cannot imagine a time when it would be more important for the people to have full confidence in the Government that is in place and in the Taoiseach who leads that Government. In my strong opinion, that confidence of the people can only be demonstrated, tested and validated through the ballot box. I put it to the Taoiseach again that rather than limping on and passing the office of Taoiseach among the members of the Government again, the correct democratic route at this point is to go to people, put the Government's record before them and have all of us ask them, in a spirit of humility, who should lead. That is the democratic way to proceed.
I thank the Deputy. There is very little humility in any of her contributions. She possesses many qualities but humility is definitely not one of them. As often, she is a master of misinformation.
There will be a general election within a year; there has to be. I spoke to the President today after making my statement and I look forward to seeing him in the next couple of days or weeks, as appropriate. I have also spoken to the party leaders. I did so last night. The view of the three Government parties, which constitute a majority of this duly and democratically elected Dáil, is that the Government's work should continue, and it will.
On a personal level, I wish the Taoiseach well. Politics can be tough and it takes its toll. We can all understand that.
However, a new Fine Gael leader will not address the fact that the writing is on the wall for this Government. Clearly, the Taoiseach can see that as well as the rest of us. Throughout 14 years in office, Fine Gael has failed to tackle the major issues facing this country. Another Fine Gael Taoiseach will not address housing, healthcare, disability services and climate action because if we are going to address any of these issues, we need a change in approach. At this point, four years into the Government's term of office, the Taoiseach stepping down does not instill confidence in the public about the future of this Government and it is clear that this Government does not believe the public has confidence in it.
It is in that context that the next Taoiseach should be elected by the electorate and not by Fine Gael because its track record is one of record house prices, record rents, record homelessness, an entire generation locked out of home ownership or secure housing and another generation forced on to planes in Dublin, Cork and Shannon airports with 21,000 people forced to leave for Australia last year because they could not see a future for themselves here.
The Government claims over and over that housing is its number one priority but where is the evidence? Week after week, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste come before the House defensive about broken promises and missed targets but the reality on the ground is clear to everyone. The Government has failed to address the housing crisis, which is the number one issue facing Ireland today.
I listened to the Taoiseach's statement earlier where he spoke about how during his term of office, the country's finances went from a deficit to a surplus. This is the truly frustrating reality of Fine Gael. Even with an €8 billion surplus, our health service is on its knees with a chronic trolley crisis in the mid-west, a nationwide shortage of GPs and a recruitment freeze that is preventing the expansion of healthcare services we truly need. Disability services are threadbare and shameful, and are ruining people's lives. Waiting lists for an assessment of need are preventing children from getting crucial early intervention. People simply cannot access children's disability network teams while some people cannot access education. We have the lowest employment rates for disabled people in the EU, we are so far off reaching our climate targets and money is not the issue. The Government's approach of throwing money at the private market to fix these issues in all of these areas is tried and tested and has failed. We do not need a continuation of this approach. We do not need a new Fine Gael Taoiseach. We need a new Government. We need a general election.
I thank the Deputy for her kind words on a personal level. As a new TD and a party leader, she has had a meteoric and dramatic rise in politics and I wish her the best in the future. I mean that because we need new people and young people in politics.
The work of the Government will continue. I have made that clear, as have the other party leaders who make up the majority in the Dáil. Any Government has to be bigger than any one person in it and this Government has always been so. I have no doubt that it will do its work and possibly do it better under future leadership than it has to date. We have faced a lot of challenges - enormous challenges - since I first took that minibus to Áras an Uachtaráin in 2011. We had mass unemployment. People were leaving the country in droves because they could not find employment and we have turned that around. We had a big budget deficit. Maybe people forget what that means. It is not a numerical thing. It meant that we sat down as Ministers every couple of months writing a budget - "How do we cut another €400 million?" or "How do we take €600 million out of that?" Even Opposition parties had produce policy showing how they would cut spending. They should think how different it would be for them now if they had to produce policy papers about how they would raise taxes and cut spending. Those are the kind of things we had to do.
The Deputy mentioned emigration. For the past couple of years anyway, emigration has been very much a two-way street.
There are as many Irish citizens coming home as there are leaving. That was not the case back in 2011, 2012 or 2013. Indeed, one of the reasons rents were so much lower was that there were so many empty apartments and houses in the city of Dublin and other cities because people had to leave to find employment. We had to deal with Brexit and the enormous challenge of preventing a hard Border between North and South. That was an enormous challenge. Three deals had to be negotiated with the British Government to secure that, all of which were done during my term as Taoiseach. We had a pandemic, during which we were one of the best performing countries in the world in terms of lives saved and jobs protected. We have come through now, I believe, a very serious cost-of-living and inflation crisis, which is now coming to an end.
The truth is that we are never going to wake up in a country that does not have problems or challenges. There will always be problems and challenges. There will always be a crisis, and if not one, there will be two or three. That perfect country that has no problems does not exist. It only exists in fairy tales. We should be honest with the public about that. Yes, we do face an enormous challenge with housing and we have worked very hard on it. Supply is now double what it was when I first became Taoiseach. I think it can double again. First-time buyers are buying homes now at a rate we have not seen in nearly 20 years. Social housing is being built at a rate we have not seen since before either Deputy Cairns or I were born. I wish we could have done more and done it faster. Absolutely, I do. My biggest regret, if there is one, is that it is not possible to solve all the country's problems at once, but we will keep working on it.
One of the biggest problems for this Government is just not being able to acknowledge the issues people are facing. To refer to addressing them as fairy tales is farcical. It is not a fairy tale-----
(Interruptions).
-----to have access to disability services. It is not a fairy tale to be able to own a home in this country. None of these things should be considered fairy tales. The problem is that on this journey the Taoiseach was speaking about, of going from deficit to surplus, people have been left behind. When we have that surplus the Government is not using it to address those issues. It is not even willing to acknowledge that they are issues.
We need a real change in Ireland, the kind that can only be brought about by a general election. We need to give people in this country a say in who will be the next person to lead it, who will form the next Government and what its mandate will be. A change in leadership in Fine Gael is not going to solve the problems we face as a country across housing, the health services, disability services and climate. In fact, it feels like there is a high possibility it will make them worse. Ultimately, there will be no change in approach to the disastrous policy decisions that have brought people to this point. Calling an election now is the only way out of this mess for so many people. The Taoiseach said he has had success in government. Go to the people on that basis. That is what democracy is all about.
I thank the Deputy.
Let them decide if they want to send another Fine Gael leader back into government.
I am always willing to acknowledge the problems the country faces and the very real problems people have in their lives. I do so pretty much daily, or at least I have for 13 years now. I acknowledge the problems we face when it comes to housing and the deep crisis that exists there for so many people as well as the cost of living and the challenges around migration. I acknowledge all those problems.
I pay a lot of attention to what Deputy Cairns and her party say. They say they stand for three principles. One of these principles is that the Social Democrats stand for honest politics. Why was it necessary to misrepresent and twist my words in the way that was done? Why was that necessary? I referred to a perfect country and perfect world in which there are never any problems. That is the fairy tale. That is what I said.
You were referring to the disability-----
You heard what I said.
(Interruptions).
The truth is-----
(Interruptions).
Deputies, please let the Taoiseach finish.
(Interruptions).
Play it back, Deputy Cairns, look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you engaged in honest politics there or not. I think there is potential in Deputy Cairns and her party, but my fear-----
I appreciate that.
(Interruptions).
There is a lot of potential. My fear is an obvious one. It is that Deputy Cairns is very much a politician of the social media age. It is not about truth. It is not about information. It is about the clip to put online, and if that means misinformation or disinformation-----
The strategic communications unit.
-----if it gets me more clicks and likes, well then, more of it.
Welfare cheats cheat us all.
The strategic communications unit.
Can we return to order, please? I call Deputy Boyd Barrett.
This is not about the personal feelings of politicians; this is about the welfare and future of the people of this country. The Taoiseach's unexpected decision to signal that he is stepping down as Taoiseach bears all the signs of a Government that has lost confidence in itself because it knows it has lost the confidence of the majority of people in this country. We do not need a shifting of the deck chairs on the Titanic or an internal election in Fine Gael. We need the people to decide; we need a general election.
Hear, hear.
That is the democratic thing to do. The Taoiseach says that we in the Opposition think things should be perfect. No, we do not - we know perfection is not possible. However, in one of the richest countries in the world, we think it is shameful that we have the worst homelessness crisis in the history of the State and it gets worse week in, week out and month in, month out. Some 4,000 children are living in homelessness and 13,500 people are homeless. Some 68% of our young adults are forced to live at home with their parents when they want to live independent lives, and it is not exactly fun for the parents either.
There are shocking numbers of vulnerable children with special needs and their families waiting for assessments and basic services. The failure of this Government to provide them will have an absolutely detrimental effect on their future chances in life. One million people are on public healthcare waiting lists of one kind or another, looking for healthcare. Today, 638 people are on hospital trolleys when they should have hospital beds.
We now have the return of mass emigration because young people leaving college or school have lost confidence that there is a future for them in this country because the Government cannot do the most basic thing of providing them with a secure and affordable roof over their heads. How damning is it, in one of the richest countries in the world, that tens of thousands of our young people now believe there is no future for them in this country? They have the right to decide who leads this country, not Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. You have had your chance. Now let the people decide and give them a general election because it is their welfare that matters.
Hear, hear.
I once again restate the Government has the confidence of the Dáil and it will continue its work, albeit under a new Taoiseach and a new leader of my party. Obviously, the leaders of the other parties will remain the same. The Government will focus on the work at hand. I acknowledge the appalling scourge on our society that homelessness is and how shameful it is. I also acknowledge the complexity of the problem and the different causes underlying it, which are varied and are certainly about much more than the availability of housing stock. The Deputy just needs to read the reports and information to know the number of different causes, the complexity behind it and how difficult it is to deal with. We are doing the best we can on it, particularly by ramping up social housing to levels we have not seen since the 1970s and through programmes like Housing First. We understand that for some people who are homeless, it is housing first but they also need the wraparound supports. Those are things that work most successfully and that have really been pushed by this Government and the one that preceded it.
The Deputy is right to say there are far too many people on waiting lists. However, he did not say that the number of people waiting has now fallen for two years in a row and this will be the third year in which waiting lists fall. That is bucking the trend of what is happening north of the Border, in Britain and across the western world. That is not something to be diminished, discounted or reduced to nothing.
Deputy Boyd Barrett is wrong to say there is a return to mass emigration. That is just not the case. There are lots of people leaving and lots of people coming back. For most of the past three years, we have had roughly the same number of people who are Irish citizens returning to Ireland as we have had leaving. It is a different world. People are mobile and they go and come for all sorts of different reasons. When it comes to people from other parts of the world, we have immigration, with many more people choosing to come here from Britain, the rest of Europe and other parts of the world to work, study and build their lives here. Those are the facts and most people will know they are the facts.
I appreciate that there are lots of young adults living at home who do not want to be and who want their own home or to be able to afford to rent. However, the correct figures are that 13% - one in seven - of young adults are living at home. That is a big group, which includes people who are 18 and 19 years old and people who are at home for all sorts of different reasons. The figure is roughly the same as it was 2016 and 2011. It has not increased. The figure the Deputy used, of 68% of young adults living at home, is incorrect and comes from Eurostat data that has since been corrected. The correct figure for that age group is 33%.
The bit the Taoiseach does not point out is that as we face this ever-worsening homelessness and housing crisis, the fact is that house prices and rents in this country now mean that the most basic thing that people need to operate in our society, an affordable roof over their head, is out of the reach of the vast majority of working people. When you look at the chronic state of our health service, the understaffing and under-resourcing of special needs and our failure to vindicate the rights of people with disabilities and carers - all that hardship and suffering - the other side of the coin is record profits for the corporations. Vulture funds and wealth asset management companies are making a fortune. Property developers and speculators are profiteering off the back of other people's misery. That is the other side of the story. It is the legacy of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael priorities and always privileging the profits and interests of those at the top while hundreds of thousands of young, working and vulnerable people suffer. That is the reality and it is why the people, not Fine Gael, should now decide who leads the next Government. Those problems are too urgent and pressing to be left up to the people who have failed our society.
The people will decide who will constitute the next Government when the next election comes, which will be within the next year. In the meantime, the current Dáil should continue to do its work and the current Government will continue to do its work, focusing on the issues mentioned by the Deputy such as housing, health, law and order and many other issues. I know that we have a very deep and real housing crisis which people experience in so many different ways. It is driven by a number of factors. We have a rising population, a growing economy and a prolonged period within which very little housing was built because the banks were bust and the sovereign had no money to spend. We are now finally seeing real progress. I see it all around the country in the number of new homes being built. I travel the route out to where the Deputy lives regularly. He cannot avoid seeing homes and houses being built-----
I see their price too.
-----all over his constituency. We are seeing record levels of investment in social housing and, most encouraging, we are now seeing 500 individuals and couples buying their first home every week. That is so encouraging to see. It is not enough, however, and the last thing that will change that is spending the next month, or two, three, four or five months, having an election and trying to put together a Government. The Government needs to focus on its work of increasing housing supply and improving affordability.
Guím gach rath ar an Taoiseach leis an gcéad chéim eile ina thuras saoil. In ainneoin nach n-aontaím leis formhór an ama, thaitin sé go mór liom i gcónaí go raibh sé díreach gonta lena chuid freagraí.
Baineann an cheist atá agam inniu leis an scéim chúitimh a fógraíodh inniu do dhaoine a chaith tréimhsí in institiúidí máithreachais agus leanaí. My question today to the Taoiseach relates to the compensation scheme announced today for the people who spent time in mother and baby institutions.
I use the word "institutions" because they certainly were not homes. Almost ten years later, the Taoiseach's Government and his Minister have utterly failed to bring in a scheme that is fair and just.
Back in 2014, it was announced that there would be a commission of investigation. Enda Kenny at the time, on 10 June, said:
This is an issue for Ireland because if it is not handled properly, in many ways, Ireland's soul will lie, like the babies of so many mothers, in an unmarked grave. It is important that we ... get this right.
Almost ten years later, we have made an utter mess out of it. That mess started with the commission of investigation, the failure to give the report to the survivors, the fact that it was leaked, the fact that they were told to download it and so on. The commission itself says the evidence of survivors was contaminated. Ten years later, and a year after we said we would bring in a scheme, we bring in a scheme that is exclusionary. It excludes all babies; all people who spent less than six months in these institutions. It is restrictive in every way possible. It is based on business and cost and has absolutely nothing to do with justice or what is right. If I were to give out to the Taoiseach and criticise him today, it would be for his policies. Over and over, he has been out of touch completely with the people on the ground - on this issue, the referendums, water and any number of other issues. This particular one upsets me on every level, personally and professionally, because the Government has utterly failed to learn. This was the chance to learn to do the scheme right. The Government messed up with Caranua, it messed up with the Magdalen redress scheme, which the High Court judge said was maladministered, and it is doing the exact same all over again. There are I cannot remember how many pages in the application form. The Government is insisting, for example, that people have photo ID. When they ring up to ask about that, they are told there is no way out of it. Even on that little issue, there is no humanity and no flexibility. The Government talks about a waiver. Nowhere is it explained in the application form what the waiver means.
Ten years later, with all that experience, it is simply unforgivable that the Government would persist today with a scheme that is unjust and unfair when it has the opportunity to correct it. The Government is in negotiations with the religious orders. The Taoiseach might give an update on that and confirm that when the Government has that completed, that money will be used to have a scheme that is inclusive of all and based on fairness and justice.
The mother and baby homes institutions payment scheme opened for applications at 9 o'clock this morning. It has taken far too long but I am glad the scheme is now up and running. An extensive information and awareness campaign will take place both at home and abroad, and applicants will be supported throughout the application process with the information and advice they need. Where a person does not have photo identification, that will be dealt with empathetically and on a case-by-base basis.
We should not forget that redress is not just about financial compensation but also about other things such as, for example, medical cards and access to birth information, which is so important to people. Ten thousand people have already got information through the birth information and tracing service, which many people in this House opposed. Work continues in respect of Tuam, in particular, to carry out exhumations there in order to make sure that those children get a Christian and appropriate burial. Work is advanced too on the records memorial centre on Sean MacDermott Street, which I think will be extremely important too.
The scheme itself is for 34,000 people who spent time in mother and baby and county home institutions. It is projected to cost €800 million, so it is the largest scheme of its type. I do not believe it is restricted on that basis. It did go further than was recommended by either the commission of investigation or the interdepartmental group which followed.
As regards negotiations with the religious orders, the Government believes that all parties have a collective responsibility to respond to the legacy of these institutions. Last May, the Government approved a proposal from the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, to appoint Sheila Nunan to act on his behalf in leading negotiations with relevant religious bodies with a view to securing a financial contribution towards the payment scheme. Once those negotiations are over, a full report will be provided to the Government, which will then be able to decide what to do with the money, depending on how much there is.
I suppose it is too much hope for that when the Taoiseach announced he was going to resign, he would depart from his written script on an issue of such importance. Thirty-four practising clinicians wrote to the Minister and pointed out that the six-month period was arbitrary and unacceptable. They work in the area of childhood trauma and pointed out that the impact of early trauma does not rest solely on duration within an institution. The letter, which stated "Childhood trauma ... includes separation from primary caregiver ... has the greatest impact" and so on, was sent to the Minister and was utterly ignored. I stood up here, tongue in cheek but actually serious, saying to Deputy Sherlock that he wasted six months getting up at night with his baby because, according to the Minister's scheme, the first six months are a tabula rasa; we simply waste our time mothering our babies for six months because it does not matter. Allow them to scream and roar - that is what the scheme says. In addition, many people are excluded, such as those who were boarded out, those who suffered from abuse because of their race and so on. The Taoiseach stands here today and presides over that. An intelligent government would learn from its mistakes. We have had any amount of opportunities to learn from our mistakes. Bearing in mind what a previous Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, outlined, the Taoiseach might, in his parting words, say this scheme is unjust, that it is a start but needs to be changed and we will clearly look at the report from Sheila Nunan to use that money to make the scheme inclusive.
To reiterate, redress comes in many different forms. Financial compensation is only one element of that. There are more aspects to it than this. The overwhelming priority and need, which has been expressed through extensive engagement with survivors, is access to records and information about their births and their early lives. About 10,000 people have already received that information, with more to come. I am glad that has been possible. In relation to engagement with religious orders, when we come to an agreement with them, should that be possible, it will then be up to the Government of the time to make a decision as to how that money can best be spent. When it comes to medical cards, the legislation underpinning the scheme provides that anyone who spent 180 days or more in one of these institutions is eligible for health supports in the form of an enhanced medical card. We are keen to press ahead with that without any unnecessary delay.