Brendan Howlin
Question:1. Deputy Brendan Howlin asked the Taoiseach the status of the implementation of A Programme for a Partnership Government. [21242/18]
View answerWednesday, 30 May 2018
Questions (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)
Mary Lou McDonald
Question:2. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the implementation of measures in A Programme for a Partnership Government. [21282/18]
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Joan Burton
Question:3. Deputy Joan Burton asked the Taoiseach the status of the commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government on political reform. [21443/18]
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Michael Moynihan
Question:4. Deputy Michael Moynihan asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government regarding increasing the role of Ministers of State; and the progress on same. [23436/18]
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Pat Deering
Question:5. Deputy Pat Deering asked the Taoiseach if he will report on the implementation of A Programme for a Partnership Government. [23578/18]
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Richard Boyd Barrett
Question:6. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach the status of the implementation of A Programme for a Partnership Government. [23579/18]
View answerOral answers (20 contributions)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 6, inclusive, together.
The Government recently approved its second Programme for a Partnership Government annual report which provides a comprehensive update on progress since May 2017. The report will be laid before the Oireachtas in the near future. It highlights progress on the specific plans put in place to tackle issues, in the short and longer terms, in the areas of housing, homelessness, education, rural and regional development, job creation, broadband, agriculture and climate action. It also underlines the emphasis this Government has placed on ensuring that everyone benefits from the strong economic recovery. Budget 2018 reduced the tax burden on low to middle income earners and weekly social welfare benefits and pensions were increased by €5 for the second year in a row. Funding has been prioritised to increase front-line posts, providing more teachers, nurses, gardaí and Defence Forces personnel. These are measures that benefit everyone in our society.
It also demonstrates that the Government that is looking ahead and planning for Ireland's future. This is reflected in the significant work undertaken in the past year to ensure an effective whole-of-Government approach to planning for Brexit and maintaining Ireland's position in the associated negotiations. The economy performed strongly in 2017 and job creation was widespread across the country. Incomes have risen by approximately 2.5% quarter on quarter, income inequality is reducing and poverty and deprivation rates are falling. The Government has a set of priorities and actions aimed to protect our economy and jobs from the implications of Brexit. The report acknowledges that despite many measures having been implemented, much remains to be done to bring about further improvements in the areas of housing and health. The Government is resolute in its determination to deliver results for its citizens in all of these areas. This is why investing in housing and health feature strongly in Project Ireland 2040, the ten year, €116 billion investment plan. Despite our best efforts, we do not yet have a health service that current levels of spending should provide. Guided by the Sláintecare report and the recently published health service capacity review, the Government will shortly publish our implementation programme for the future development of Irish health services. This programme will complement the €11 billion infrastructure investment in healthcare set out in Project Ireland 2040, ring-fenced for new buildings, equipment and investment in ICT.
The report also highlights the many areas of progress on political reform, including new arrangements in the Oireachtas dealing with weekly business, Private Members' Bills, the new Parliamentary Budget Office and my recent meeting with the Chairs of Oireachtas committees, underlining the new collaborative model.
Ministers will continue to play a central role in getting things done across various Departments, both in carrying out the statutory functions assigned to them and other work assigned to them under the programme for Government.
Two years on, this Government is on the right track and will continue with its ambitious programme over the next three years to invest in and care for its people and to lay the foundations for Ireland's future progress.
The Taoiseach referred to two areas on which I wish to ask questions, the primary one being housing. He referred to the budget and spending on housing. Could I ask him specifically about spending on social and affordable housing, and not allowing publicly owned land to be sold or used for private profit? Most house prices are now out of the affordability range for people, in particular in cities, especially Dublin. Will the Taoiseach give us an undertaking that there will be a substantial amount of funding for social and affordable housing and that we will not use public sites for other purposes?
If I am permitted to ask a second question I will ask one about education.
Yes.
There are references in the programme for Government to increase diversity in education. The Education (Admission to Schools) Bill is in the House at the moment. Will the Taoiseach consider reconvening the Citizens' Assembly to deal with diversity in the education system and in particular the fact that patronage is so much controlled by one church, namely, the Catholic Church?
The Taoiseach mentioned the Project Ireland 2040 plan. He regularly refers to it as one of the policies that form the centrepiece of his Administration. Why was Rosslare Europort omitted from that strategic plan? That seems extraordinary given the threatened disruption posed by Brexit. The port is significant and important in any event but it will take on an additional strategic significance not just for the region but potentially for the entire island. Will the Taoiseach explain the omission to me? Will he also address issues around the provision of fibre broadband, in particular in Wexford, but also more generally?
In respect of the implementation of the partnership programme, what is the status of the Taoiseach's discussions with his partner in Government, Deputy Micheál Martin, in respect of prolonging this happy arrangement between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil? Are we to expect that there will be another lease of life in this partnership Government or are we looking at a scenario whereby, come the autumn, the Taoiseach will call it a day?
In fairness, the most recent lease of life given to the Fine Gael component in government was given by Sinn Féin when it strengthened the Fine Gael Party in Seanad Éireann in the recent election. That is a concrete demonstration of the underlying direction of the Sinn Féin Party in recent times as opposed to the rhetoric we might hear from time to time.
In terms of the programme for Government, in the past seven years Fine Gael's handling of health policy has been appalling and has compounded an already difficult situation, in particular in the absence of any proper governance following the removal of the HSE board. Various service level commitments were given in the programme for Government on accident and emergency departments, for example, but we now know that overcrowding in such departments is at historic proportions. That is despite the fact that there is a specific promise in the programme for Government to reduce overcrowding in accident and emergency departments.
There have been significant failures in the mental health area in terms of meeting the targets in the programme for Government and building further capacity in child and adolescent mental health services. Many children throughout the country, in particular in the south, are waiting extraordinary periods to access vital services that are needed for young teenagers who are at risk of suicide and who have very challenging mental health issues. The three commitments on page 66 of the programme for Government are simply not being met in respect of mental health.
I could speak about homelessness.
I thank the Deputy.
May I make one final point?
Yes.
The Government has not been good enough in terms of Oireachtas reform. Will the Taoiseach take the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform to one side and say we have all agreed that proper status should be given to the various entities that have been established such as the Office of the Parliamentary Legal Adviser and the Parliamentary Budget Office? We need high status individuals to come into those offices and not have them pegged at unrealistic levels by the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.
It is amazing that it is more than two years since the Government was formed. Many people inside this House and outside it did not think it would last even six months. It is important to point out that the party on this side of the House took responsibility in forming the Government while others were prepared to sit on the fence and contribute to negativity on an ongoing basis.
The Taoiseach in his contribution referred to job creation. One of the good news stories in recent years has been the recovery in the economy and the number of jobs that have been created. It is very important that everybody has an opportunity to go to work and be able to provide for him or herself and his or her family. The target in the programme for Government was 200,000 jobs to be created by 2020, with 135,000 of those jobs to be created outside the Dublin area. I come from the south east, specifically Carlow, which is an area that suffered and is still lagging behind. While recent figures have been encouraging, many people who got jobs in recent times had to leave the area to find employment. The promotion of a technological university for the south east has been promoted as a key driver in recent years. It has been part of the programme for Government since 2011 and we have had numerous false dawns in regard to it. The legislation was passed in recent months. It is now time to see tangible evidence of what will be provided in that regard.
As fascinating as electoral speculation is, most people in the country are concerned with the capacity of Members to deliver on the issues that matter to them. I have a word of advice for all who are speculating. While I would be happy enough to have an election, nobody will be thanked for bringing about an election prompted by considerations of political advantage rather than clear-cut issues and policy-based platforms.
One of the key issues people want to see resolved, which the Government promised it would resolve and on which it would be tested, is housing. Mel Reynolds, the housing analyst and architect, said today that essentially the figures for the delivery of public housing are being massaged. He said the actual number of direct builds is half of what was claimed, which was already an abysmally low figure. The Taoiseach needs to respond to that. The official housing waiting list is 86,000 but when those on schemes such as the housing assistance payment, HAP, and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, which are not secure forms of housing, are added to the figure, the number increases to 144,000.
I could not get there today but 12 rapid build houses that took two and a half years to be built in Dún Laoghaire on a site called George's Place, were opened today. The families who move into them will be very happy but what is frustrating is that People Before Profit started a campaign prior to the previous development plan for the site to be fully developed for social and affordable housing. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil voted consistently against its development as a public site because the council wanted to sell off part of it. Even now, only a fraction of the site is being used for the development of public housing because I think the council still wants to sell off parts of it rather than build public housing.
The Deputy should conclude.
We need a clear commitment, as called for by Mr. Mel Reynolds, that public land will be utilised for public housing.
The programme for Government should focus on the future. I will be seeking the Taoiseach's support over the next six months on the issue of climate change. The Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment will be considering the Citizens' Assembly report on climate change. I hope the committee's recommendation will be that we set up a short-term committee which will sit until the end of the year to determine how the recommendations of the Citizens' Assembly could be implemented within the framework of the new energy and climate plan that we must prepare for the European Union, the first draft of which must be submitted by the end of the year. The committee would exclusively deal with how the State works. It would not bring in outsiders but would concentrate on bringing in the Secretaries General of key Departments to outline the measures the Government intends to take to raise our game on this issue. I am just flagging this for the Taoiseach now and hoping that he might support it. I hope the proposal will be presented to the House in the coming weeks. It is one of the ways we can co-ordinate the work of this Dáil with the programme for Government in a manner which I hope is beneficial.
I suggest that the Taoiseach takes five minutes to answer these questions. We can take some time from the next slot.
Yes. I have housing, education, Rosslare, the coalition, health, employment in the south east and climate change on my list so even with five minutes, it will be hard to do justice to all of the important questions that have been asked but I will do my best.
On affordable housing, I do not have a specific figure. What we usually do in the context of affordable housing is not so much to provide public money but public land on which affordable housing can be developed. The intention is to use public land for housing but not just for affordable, council or private housing, but a mix of both public and private in the interests of creating integrated communities. Some people would like us to go back to previous policies of building very large council-only housing estates similar to Ballymun, Jobstown or Wellview in my own constituency but I do not agree with that approach. It is better to have integrated communities which is why we will use public lands for mixed developments of private, public and affordable housing.
In terms of social housing, €6 billion has been allocated in Project Ireland 2040. We managed to increase the social housing stock by 7,000 last year. I acknowledge that this was done in lots of different ways. In some instances, local authorities built housing directly while in other cases they bought housing from developers or acquired it through Part V. In some cases, local authorities increased their stock through affordable housing bodies like Clúid Housing and the Iveagh Trust. As Deputies know, the latter has provided public housing in this city for decades. The social housing stock was also increased through the use of long-term leases. There are lots of ways in which we can expand our social housing stock. There is a very active but academic debate about statistics ongoing and I know that the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and Deputy Ó Broin love to debate those statistics. I have met and handed over keys to people in my own constituency in places like Waterville, where the council bought houses from a developer, Hansfield, where the council went into partnership with a developer, and Wellview, where the council built houses on its own land and none of the people taking those keys or living in those houses was terribly concerned about what mechanism was used to acquire that social housing. The people just wanted to live in a property that was owned by the council or, at the very least, leased by it on a very long-term basis and they wanted secure tenancy. I saw joy on the faces of people who had been in insecure tenancies or had been living in hotels who were moving into council owned or council leased house with secure tenancy. We can tie ourselves up in knots having very academic arguments about the exact mechanism used to expand our social housing stock but the most important thing is that it happens.
It is not happening.
If that involves a combination of measures, including direct build, affordable housing bodies like the Iveagh Trust, acquisitions under Part V, long-term leases or direct purchase from developers, so be it. That is the best way to do it quickly. We managed to add 7,000 units to our social housing stock last year. I understand that Deputy Ó Broin disputes that and says the total is 6,300. I will not argue over the difference between 6,300 and 7,000 because either way it is a big increase on the previous year's total. We will increase it by even more next year, with the aim of getting to about 10,000 or 11,000 units per year so that roughly 20% of all new homes built in the country in any given year will be publicly owned. That is the space in which we need to be.
In terms of education, I answered a question on the Citizens' Assembly yesterday but I want to restate the Government's commitment to greater diversity in education. We spoke a lot about choice and the right to choose in recent weeks. I also believe in the right to choice when it comes to education. Some people will want a Catholic or Protestant education while others will want to send their children to a Gaelscoil, a Gaelcholáiste, an Educate Together school or to one of the many other types of school that exist. While it is not always possible to give everyone his or her first choice, we should try to provide for choice and diversity in education. We recognise that there are more Catholic run or owned schools than are justified given the changes in our population. We now need to see more schools that are not under Catholic patronage. This is very much underlined in the Government's commitment to providing 300 to 400 additional multi-denominational and Educate Together schools in the years ahead. It is also underlined in our commitment to surveying parents on the type of school they want when a new school is being built. In my constituency, parents in Tyrrelstown decided that they wanted to have a Catholic secondary school and the Le Chéile school has now been built. It is a beautiful school and is doing really well. In other parts of my constituency, parents decided that they wanted an Educate Together secondary school. That has now been built and is also doing really well.
We must move on to the next group of questions.