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Programme for Government Review

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 13 February 2019

Wednesday, 13 February 2019

Questions (3, 4, 5)

Brendan Howlin

Question:

3. Deputy Brendan Howlin asked the Taoiseach his plans to review and extend A Programme for a Partnership Government. [4262/19]

View answer

Mary Lou McDonald

Question:

4. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when the next progress report in respect of A Programme for a Partnership Government will be published. [5188/19]

View answer

Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

5. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach his plans to review and extend A Programme for a Partnership Government. [6711/19]

View answer

Oral answers (34 contributions)

I propose to take Questions Nos. 3 to 5, inclusive, together.

A Programme for a Partnership Government was agreed in May 2016 during the formation of Government. This is a five-year programme of work being undertaken for the duration of the current Dáil.

The Government publishes an annual report each year, the second of which was approved by Cabinet in May 2018 and is published on www.gov.ie.

I expect the next report to be published in May 2019. This report will reflect the significant work undertaken by all Departments to deliver progress in respect of a wide range of issues, including housing and homelessness, education, health, rural development and Brexit contingency planning.

One of the central tenets and commitments in A Programme for a Partnership Government is, "We will also provide additional exchequer capital, if needed, to deliver on our commitment to bring next generation broadband to every house and business in the country by 2020." Clearly, that commitment will not be delivered upon. Many people across the State are very fearful that not only will it not be delivered by the target date of the end of next year but also that it may never be delivered. In the context of that very firm commitment, what is the status of the national broadband plan? In view of what we have learned about tendering, is the Taoiseach satisfied that the tender that has been agreed by Government is robust? On the nature of that tender, is it still the Government's commitment to provide a direct fibre link to virtually every house or business if not to every house or business? On the comment the Taoiseach made yesterday about lowballing and the comment the Minister for Finance made this morning that something went very wrong with the children's hospital tender, will the tender for the national broadband plan be reviewed in the light of what the Taoiseach now knows?

I would be interested to hear whether the tender process that has been already agreed can proceed.

Many people in my constituency of Donegal and in rural areas, in particular, are waiting for broadband. This process has been something of a shambles with deadlines missed repeatedly.

The programme for Government states that the Government will alleviate pressures on household budgets and refers to a number of those pressures such as energy, childcare, medical and insurance costs. I wish to focus on the latter one. Yesterday morning, the Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, was on radio trying to explain away the huge increases being faced by soft play centres and other businesses. He referred to whiplash, which I do not believe occurs in these play areas. He then used the excuse that some members of the Judiciary are awarding "bananas, off the wall amounts". Does the Taoiseach agree with the Minister of State offering that reason and blaming the Judiciary? The Minister of State blamed the Minister for Justice and Equality at one point in the interview as well.

However, the soft play areas have a serious problem. In Donegal, premiums increased from €2,500 in 2017 to €6,500 in 2018. That is a 160% increase even though there was no claim. A centre in Inishowen in Donegal closed down citing high insurance costs as the reason. The cost of insurance went from €2,500 to €16,000 for a company in Meath over a period of five years, again with no claims. The problem is that there is a monopoly. No insurance company in Ireland will quote for these companies while only one insurance company in Britain will. The working group set up by the Government is simply failing and the Minister of State is blaming the Judiciary as well as his colleagues in the Department of Justice and Equality for blocking his plan A or B. He is now on plan C, D or something of that nature. When will we see serious action on this, such as through the Garda fraud unit or action on the insurance industry, and less of the blame game?

Over the past year, I have repeatedly raised with the Taoiseach the income thresholds for social housing. The programme for Government makes extensive commitments on the provision of affordable housing to our citizens as an absolute priority. However, due to the failure to address the income thresholds, there has been a significant cull of people from council housing lists. Some of the examples I have include people who have been on a housing list for 15 years. I have three such cases. Due to working overtime, which they must do to pay the high rents on the private market, they are taken off the housing list and lose the 15 or ten years of waiting time on the list. They are left in limbo because their income could not possibly allow them to afford housing on the private market. I appeal to the Taoiseach to expedite an increase in these thresholds. He should even issue an instruction that people who are forced to work overtime should not be taken off the list and those who have been should be put back on the list. I strongly appeal to him to do that.

Finally, I have a Valentine's card for the Taoiseach. In fact, I have a number of them. They do not profess my undying love for the Taoiseach but are from school children who were outside the Dáil today. The cards I have are from children in John Scottus national school, but there were also children there from Educate Together schools all over Dublin. The cards, for St. Valentine's Day tomorrow, make an appeal to the Taoiseach and the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Bruton, to take more radical emergency action on climate change, something the Taoiseach also promised to do in the programme for Government. Those children feel he is not doing that. I wanted to let the Taoiseach know that and I will give him the cards afterwards. He might consider what the children who were protesting outside the House were saying.

Does Deputy Micheál Martin have any Valentine's cards?

I have some, but not for anybody in the House.

They do not need a card to profess their undying love to each other. That has already been done on many occasions.

Yesterday's belated apology from the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, was accompanied by a list of projects for this year that will be delayed. The Taoiseach must admit that it is beyond bizarre that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform claimed that the overspend is serious but that no project anywhere will be cut. Is this the first time in recorded history where €400 million is taken out of a fixed budget but everything will still get done? Can the Taoiseach say when he will be updating the rest of the figures impacted by the overrun? It is not just this year as it affects the entire national development plan.

Last year the Taoiseach toured the country with his Ministers and promoted projects which will not be finished for a decade or more. It went on repeatedly and the Taoiseach had supposedly allocated money to them.

They will not be started for a decade or more.

No, they will not be started in a decade. Perhaps they will, but I do not know. Can the Taoiseach be specific? If he can be specific about ten years of promises when launching the NDP, can he now be specific about the huge hole in the NDP which the overspend represents? The fact that the single largest project impacted by the cuts this year is the A5 has caused anger and concern, not just in the north east but for everyone who knows how important that road is to relations on this island. As with the Narrow Water bridge, people are concerned that we are witnessing another case of Dublin backing off engagement with North-South infrastructure. It was taken for granted even during the worst years of the recession that we would get those done. The Government is blaming the lack of a Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive for that, but we require more detail about it.

Finally, I wish to raise the delayed HPV vaccine test. Forgive me for saying this, but one gets a sense from the Government that announcements and commitments are made glibly or very shallowly. For example, it was announced with great fanfare that we would have this test last September. That did not happen and then we were told it would be in January. Today we are told by health officials that they cannot give a date. They blame the backlog created last April as a result of the Minister's decision on the smear tests. There is now a backlog of approximately 90,000 and that is their priority. As a result, they cannot focus on the HPV. Indeed, the Taoiseach said this morning that a great deal of pre-tendering work is still to be done. How did the promise get made? When this broke out in April or May last, how could anybody say that the new test would be available by September? Now it appears that it cannot be introduced for 2019. People should be forgiven for not attaching credibility to anything that is said or committed to by the Government. We must have a more detailed timeline in terms of the HPV vaccine.

The Taoiseach also acknowledged this morning that under pressure he made decisions from the heart rather than the head. My argument is that the decisions were perhaps political knee-jerk responses to an unfolding crisis. There are lessons to be learned from the series of promises and announcements that were made and that never had a chance of realisation. It is no way to respond to a crisis. The knee-jerk reaction that occurred has now created damage and delay for projects that are desirable and should be a priority.

With regard to the introduction of the primary HPV test, we are very keen to get that done. We are committed to it. The original target date came from the Department of Health, which would have received it from the HSE or CervicalCheck. That was not met. The target time was not invented by a politician but was one that came from the same officials who are now saying they are unable to meet that target date. Obviously, I will not express a target date until I am convinced that whatever date is given to us by the HSE, CervicalCheck and the Department of Health is one we can stand over. Unfortunately, one often finds in politics - and the Deputy also served as a Minister - that other people break one's promises for one. One can make commitments in good faith but agencies and people who had committed to deliver sometimes do not.

Those agencies never anticipated the Minister's decision of last April to add 90,000 tests. Let us be fair to the officials and the CervicalCheck team.

I do not believe dealing with the backlog is the reason for the delay in commissioning a new test. It is a different test.

That was said at the committee this morning.

Regarding the national broadband plan, the tender prices are in from the last remaining bidder. They have been evaluated by two external parties - an expert panel involving international expertise and an outside consulting firm - and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment, which is the promoting Department. We are not yet in a position to appoint a preferred bidder, which is the next step. After that we will be signing the contract. There is still some due diligence to be completed and there are some decisions to make.

My understanding of the project and tender is that it involves fibre to the home in 95% of cases but the company is given flexibility to use alternative technologies for the final 5% once a minimum speed of 30 Mbps is provided. I may be wrong in that regard, but that is my recollection. That has been in the specifications since the very start of the process. As people have asked whether the tender will be reviewed, it is important to recognise that it is very different from that for the national children's hospital. The national children's hospital is a two-phase build contract. This will be a single-phase tender. We will know if and when we sign it what will be the final cost and possible contingencies. Unlike the national children's hospital, it is a public private partnership, PPP, with the cost spread over 30 years. The private company which will form part of the PPP along with the Government must invest in the project. It is a very different contract from that for the national children's hospital for those two reasons.

Deputy Boyd Barrett raised the issue of the cost of living. Obviously, energy costs are not under the direct control of Government. Rather, they relate to prices on international fuel and energy markets. However, the Government has not taken any action which would increase energy prices. The prices have fluctuated with the markets, as they often do. The policy of the Government, working with the Commission for Regulation of Utilities, is to increase competition in the sector in order to reduce prices.

The Deputy also referred to childcare costs. Much has been done in that area. Early childhood education has been extended to two years for all children. Maternity benefit has been increased and will increase further in March. Paternity benefit was introduced for the first time and has been availed of by 50,000 fathers. It will increase further in March. An additional two weeks of paid parental leave will be introduced later this year. In addition, various actions have been taken to reduce the cost of childcare and will culminate in the affordable childcare scheme which will kick in towards the end of the year. Childcare subsidies have been increased and extended to more parents. In October or November, subsidies will be increased and approximately 10,000 or 20,000 middle income families will qualify for subsidies for the first time. For example, dual income couples earning up to €100,000 per annum will qualify for subsidies for the first time.

I do not accept that there is a black hole in the national development plan or Project Ireland 2040. It is a ten year funding plan to which €116 billion has been allocated. There is contingency within that €116 billion, albeit in the later years of the plan. We anticipate being able to manage within the €116 billion over ten years. We have not increased the ceiling of €7.3 billion for this year. There is an opportunity to change some of the projects from direct capital projects to PPPs, thus changing the spending profile. Although very few PPPs were initially envisaged, having PPPs in some areas would spread the cost of those projects over a period of 20 years or 30 years rather than ten, thus freeing up money which could then be allocated to projects where there are overruns.

We will move on to the next set of-----

I ask the Taoiseach to briefly address my question on the social housing income threshold.

I ask that my question on insurance be addressed.

It is the same answer I gave on the last occasion Deputy Boyd Barrett raised that issue.

When will it be done?

I do not have an exact date.

What was Deputy Pearse Doherty's question?

I asked the Taoiseach about insurance premiums and whether he agrees with the view of the Minister, Deputy D'Arcy, in that regard.

There are many questions which I did not have time to answer.

We must move to the next set of questions.

Four Deputies asked questions of the Taoiseach and he chose not to answer mine.

The allotted time has elapsed.

On a point of order, the Deputy is incorrect. I wrote down the questions in the order in which they were asked and I went through them one by one. I did not reach the questions on social housing and climate change. I will need more time if I am to reply to the outstanding questions.

On a point of order, if the Taoiseach wrote down the questions in the order they were asked, he would have noticed that I asked my questions before Deputy Boyd Barrett asked his. The Taoiseach did not answer my questions but he answered some of those asked by Deputy Boyd Barrett.

Deputy Doherty's question on insurance was next on my list, followed by social housing and climate change. If I am given more time, I am happy to address those questions.

I will afford the Taoiseach a brief opportunity to address them.

I will answer them as quickly as I can. On insurance, the Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, is heading up several actions to reduce the cost of insurance. Motor insurance costs have fallen from their peak in mid-2016 and health insurance costs have stabilised. Public liability insurance is now the major focus of the Minister of State. In particular, he is facilitating work on a more realistic book of quantum in line with other countries. We expect that will have a knock-on effect in terms of reduced premiums. There will also be far more data gathering regarding settlements to see if they are out of line and more action on fraud, which is an issue of particular concern.

On climate change, the Government's efforts focus on three main areas: investment, the carbon charge and regulation. Investment as detailed under Project Ireland 2040 will get us approximately one third of the way to meeting our climate change targets for 2030. It will comprise investment in renewable energy, public transport, home insulation and all those things we need to do. Regulation relates to decisions such as the ending of the burning of coal at Moneypoint by 2025, taking peat off the grid and banning the sale of new diesel and petrol cars from 2030. The third area is the carbon charge. We are currently working on that model. All three strands are necessary. Nobody honestly believes one can meet one's targets unless one is willing to do all three. I hope that Deputy Boyd Barrett informed the people who gave him the Valentine's card of the extent to which he objects to a carbon charge and why it would not be possible to meet those targets without a carbon charge that drives changes in the behaviour of people and businesses.

The Government did not bring in a carbon charge. Fine Gael backbenchers ensured it did not.

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