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Cabinet Committees

Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 21 April 2021

Wednesday, 21 April 2021

Questions (1, 2, 3, 4)

Alan Kelly

Question:

1. Deputy Alan Kelly asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on economic recovery and Investment last met; and when it next plans to meet. [13097/21]

View answer

Mary Lou McDonald

Question:

2. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on economic recovery and Investment will next meet. [16849/21]

View answer

Matt Carthy

Question:

3. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee dealing with infrastructure last met; and when it will next meet. [19937/21]

View answer

Richard Boyd Barrett

Question:

4. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee that deals with the economy will next meet. [20474/21]

View answer

Oral answers (21 contributions)

I propose to take questions Nos. 1 to 4, inclusive, together.

The cabinet committee on economic recovery and investment has been established and first met on 8 July. It has met on a total of 11 occasions, most recently on 12 April.

The next meeting is scheduled for 6 May. Membership of the committee is comprised of the Taoiseach; the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Employment and Trade; the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications and the Minister for Transport; the Minister for Finance; the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform; and the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Other Ministers or Ministers of State attend when required.

The Cabinet committee on economic recovery and investment is responsible for issues relating to the economy and investment, and had an initial focus last year on developing the July jobs stimulus. Its work programme also includes the development of a national economic and recovery plan, which will aim to support recovery in employment and business activity later this year, with a particular focus on digitalisation and decarbonisation and the ongoing review of the national development plan itself.

Issues relevant to infrastructure can arise, as required, at a number of Cabinet committees, most notably the Cabinet committee on economic recovery and investment, but also in other Cabinet committees, such as the Cabinet committee on environment and climate change and the Cabinet committee on housing. Issues relating to the economy, investment, and infrastructure are regularly discussed at full Cabinet meetings, where all formal decisions are ultimately made.

The stability programme update was published last week. It contained scary figures on employment for this year and next year. Unemployment is projected at over 16% this year, falling to over 8% in 2022. Young people have been especially hard-hit by this pandemic. They have been hard-hit in their education and work prospects as well as rents and the prices of homes and into the near future I predict evictions. Young people are over-represented in insecure and low-paid employment, despite a high level of education, skill and enthusiasm for the future. The pandemic has delayed a generation of talented youth from entering into and engaging fully with the workforce. This will have a massive knock-on effect on future earnings and progression. Nearly 60% of young people aged 15 to 24 are out of work with young women even worse affected.

This is becoming no country for young people. We need a new deal for a new generation. I feel strongly on this; I have raised it previously at Leaders Questions and I will keep doing so. There must be comprehensive Government action to avoid a scarred generation. We need to know what the plan is. We have heard talk about solidarity taxes being floated. The Taoiseach might share his views on that. We have also heard talk of reopening, with many closed sectors of the economy potentially starting again but what level of restart grants will be provided for those retail, hospitality and other services, such as hairdressers, that have been closed? As part of a national recovery and resilience plan due to be published next month, we really want to know what investment is planned to ensure high quality future employment prospects for our youth. What sort of reachback will we put in place to ensure our youth are protected and to ensure that we can catch up in the coming year and give them prospects in this country?

We have a number of Members offering so I propose that we will have one minute for the question because if all ask questions then the Taoiseach will have no time to answer. If Members want to hear an answer we should stick to one minute per question.

The easing of restrictions and the reopening of society open up an opportunity to reset the economy and to rebuild in a way that represents a necessary departure from Government policy thus far on the Taoiseach's watch and from the approach of previous Governments. This will, by definition, mean a more active State with more intervention and less sitting on the sidelines. I raised the area of housing with the Taoiseach earlier, which is essential, including the rental sector, and also the affordability of accommodation. In other words, we need to move away from a world in which co-living is advanced as the new normal into a space where appropriate, sustainable, safe and secure accommodation is provided and regarded as a right rather than a luxury. I mention the area of working life, the gig economy, insecure employment and low pay. All of these things have to be tackled and they have a particular resonance for younger people and workers. I mention the areas of childcare, early education, the rights of children and their economic entitlements and recognition and supports for parents. I ask that there will be some form of recognition, namely a bonus for front-line workers who have seen us through the hardest and worst of times. That needs to be advanced. I would like to hear the Taoiseach's thinking on what that might look like.

Can the Taoiseach inform us whether the Cabinet committee that deals with infrastructure has discussed the issue of the North-South interconnector? The decision by EirGrid to underground the Kildare and Meath high voltage power lines means that the North-South interconnector is the only project in EirGrid's GRID25 plans that it intends to pursue using overhead, pylon supported power lines.

The Taoiseach knows, because I am sure his representatives have told him, that there is huge community anger and frustration with the lack of engagement from and the arrogance of EirGrid. We are told that the Taoiseach committed to a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting that there would be a review into that decision, something that I cautiously welcomed. Yet, the Minister responsible has indicated that this review will just be a review of previous reviews and that it is full steam ahead as far as this project is concerned. Will the Taoiseach commit to adhering to his pre-election commitment to carry out a full feasibility analysis to underground this project, in recognition that it is only through the undergrounding of the North-South interconnector that the project will be delivered at all?

One of the sickest aspects of our economy is the fact that property speculators and vulture funds can make money and profit from putting people who have done nothing wrong on the street. The Taoiseach and his Government continue to facilitate that, despite desperate pleas from myself and others about their failure to close loopholes in the Residential Tenancies Act 2020 that allow this to happen, most recently with the decision to end the Covid related eviction ban on the grounds that the 5 km rule has been lifted. Tomorrow, eight residents of the Saint Helen's Court complex in Dún Laoghaire, who have always paid their rent and who have done nothing wrong, including pensioners, workers, ordinary people and families with kids, are due to be evicted. This will happen because the Government has lifted that eviction ban and because it failed to close the loopholes that are being utilised by Mill Street Projects Ltd., a vulture fund which wants to put people on the street to maximise the value of the property.

I also heard from a young woman this week whose father died in homeless services, who has herself been homeless for most of her life and whose sister's son died in homeless services. She is also due to be evicted next Monday because of the lifting of the 5 km rule. She has lived in homeless accommodation for most of her life, as has her sister. For the first time she had a housing assistance payment, HAP, property, which she was paying the rent for. She has done nothing wrong and now she will be evicted. She also informs me that two of her friends will be evicted from other HAP properties, the same HAP that is supposed to be the social housing solution. What kind of sick economy is that? Never mind the lack of human conscience of the people who would do that to other individuals but what is the Government going to do to stop these brutal and inhumane evictions that are driven by the profit greed of vulture funds and property speculators?

I have five further Members offering and we have five and a half minutes left in the slot. Do we want to take five or ten minutes from the remaining two blocks of questions? There is 15 minutes for each block. Is that agreed or will we go back to the Taoiseach now to hear his response and not hear the five other Members?

Is it agreed to have five minutes for each?

We will have 45 minutes on one subject so.

It is immaterial to me what Deputies do but if they are going to ask the Taoiseach questions, it is quite reasonable that they give him time to answer.

We only need to stick to the time limits.

Can we take five minutes off each block and add ten minutes to this? I ask Deputies to be brief.

The past 14 months of the pandemic have demonstrated how essential some of our workers, who work in retail and other industries that have traditionally been defined by low pay, are. When will we see the introduction of a living wage in this country? Will it be in the lifetime of this Government?

The economic impact of Covid has been shouldered overwhelmingly by ordinary workers and young people, lower paid workers in particular, while a tiny elite of billionaires have actually profited greatly. New figures from Forbes show that the wealth of billionaires increased by more than 60% during the pandemic. Denis O'Brien, owner of the Beacon Hospital and much more, is now €1.4 billion richer than a year ago. His wealth has increased by €4 million every day in the last year but we still have no wealth tax on millionaires in this country. Even the IMF has now called for wealth taxes. The Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, has called for a solidarity tax. Does the Taoiseach agree that we now need to introduce a wealth tax on the super-rich in this country to raise money that could be invested in an eco-socialist green new deal to invest in green jobs, education and an Irish NHS? Billionaires are not essential workers; public services and climate action are essential.

Just as the shocking unemployment figures, showing that 59.2% of young people now stand unemployed, have been revealed to us, the Government intends to contract out the local employment services many of which are run by local partnerships. When the Taoiseach was in opposition, I sat on the social protection committee chaired by a Fianna Fáil Deputy and well attended by Fianna Fáil Members, all of whom opposed the JobPath model mainly run by Seetec and Turas Nua which was basically a punitive model that chased the unemployed down, punished them and made them feel guilty for being unemployed as against the local employment services, LES, model which have local knowledge and encourage local development. They are big enough, small enough and compassionate enough. They understand and engage with people to the degree that 89% of those who go through their services found satisfactory decent jobs and 83% of employers found them as a recruitment mechanism very satisfactory to deal with.

Given the "I, Daniel Blake" phenomenon of the experience of JobPath, will the Government now abandon plans to privatise and tender out our local employment services and look to the partnerships that have been working? Their model has been up to standard in the local communities, both rural and urban. If they have been working, the Government does not need to try to fix them.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are looking to build 409 pylons throughout Meath, Cavan and Monaghan, and then on into Armagh and Tyrone. They will be up to 51 m high and carry 400,000 volts, in some cases only 13 m from people's homes. In the communities along the curtilage of this interconnector there is widespread fear and opposition with concerns over health and the costs to homes, businesses and farms in those communities.

Aontú has prepared a Bill seeking a proper analysis of the true cost of overgrounding which we believe would lead to the undergrounding of this. We have done something strange. We invited all Deputies in the Dáil to sign our Bill. So far, only one Deputy in any of those constituencies has signed. No Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael Deputies have signed the Bill even though they stood in campaign meetings across those constituencies saying they would go to the barricades in support of the communities. Will the Taoiseach help us get this Bill through the Dáil?

I signed that Bill on behalf of Sinn Féin. The review of the North-South interconnector presents an opportunity to get this right once and for all. That opportunity should be grasped. If the review happens as outlined by the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, at the committee that discussed the Estimates last night, it will not amount to a hill of beans. In fact, it will be a pointless waste of time. A short desktop review of the existing reviews will not do. We have an opportunity now. I encourage the Taoiseach to take that opportunity to work with the local communities to deliver a review that will see this project delivered underground. Any real review will identify that as the way forward. It will identify it as being cost-effective and feasible, and in real terms the only way that this project will be delivered.

That is quite a raft of questions for the Taoiseach.

Deputy Kelly asked about the stability programme update and the implications for unemployment. The Government is very seized of the very serious unemployment situation because of the impact of the pandemic on the economy and society in general, particularly for young people. I have said that we need a new deal for young people emerging from the pandemic. It is a new deal that needs to create a society that encompasses education, employment and quality-of-life issues as we emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic. The Government's economic recovery plan focuses on areas such as creating jobs in the green economy, and the digital transformation particularly of public services and also our society more generally. In that respect, the implementation of the broadband plan will be essential.

An early manifestation of that commitment came with the apprenticeship programme launched by the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, and the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins. That is a very expanded apprenticeship programme and internship programme, particularly within the State service. The number of apprentices within Government agencies and semi-State bodies had declined. The apprenticeship strategy now is designed to increase that to 750 per annum within the public service and State agencies but also to reach a figure of 10,000 apprentices per annum in the coming years, which will create opportunities for young people. The recovery plan is designed to create a pathway towards employment creation in the coming years to get back to pre-pandemic employment levels over time.

Deputies Kelly and McDonald also asked about the opening up and easing of restrictions. Both those Deputies had become converted to the zero-Covid strategy; I do not know what their views on that are now. Prior to the end of March, we said that by the end of April we would consider the reopening of hairdressers and barbers, and that whole area of personal services. We understand that hairdressers and barbers, in particular, have been under extraordinary pressures in respect of their businesses and enterprises. We will obviously take health advice, but we want to be in a position next week where we can hopefully signal positive news to hairdressers and barbers, but that will obviously depend on how we progress in suppressing the virus in the coming period.

Considerable progress has been made in reducing the numbers, particularly the numbers of people in hospital and in ICUs. By and large, the people have adhered to the regulations and guidelines. That has yielded dividends and has enabled us to be in a position to at least consider and examine the sectors that we could reopen. A number of people identified that area.

Regarding the emerging economy, as I said, the green economy and digital transformation are two key themes. My Department is also working on a well-being framework to analyse how society measures up, not just the economy and GDP but actually the quality of life within society.

In all of the contributions, Deputies spoke about unemployment. The level of State intervention in the past year has been unprecedented. The level of supports from the State for workers in particular has been unprecedented and will continue. The allocation this year for housing is in excess of €3.3 billion, for homelessness in particular. I agree we have more work to do in terms of homelessness. Everything we do has to be within the law and within the constitutional framework. Deputy Boyd Barrett knows that, but tends to ignore it in all of his contributions and wants to brand the Government in a certain way. The Government wants to reduce homelessness progressively and incrementally and we will do that.

Stop the evictions.

There has been a 42% reduction in family homelessness in emergency accommodation, with a 19% reduction since the beginning of this year. We want to continue to make progress on that front. Expanding Housing First is a key initiative of ours which we will do. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is committed to doing that.

In my view, there is need for, and there will be, a more active State in certain areas. In the health service, it will be bigger. It will far outdistance any other Department in terms of public expenditure. There will be very significant projects within that. There has to be a transformation of health service into the future. Many serious initiatives have to be undertaken. We have to learn lessons from Covid in regard to our health service, but it has stood up well. The €600 million we allocated before Christmas in terms of the winter initiative has been a very positive initiative which has not got the attention it deserves because of Covid, understandably, but it has resulted in certain initiatives that can be imbedded into the health service into the future in terms of primary care, community care and diagnostics, a better flow through the hospital system and a higher volume of home care packages, all of which have been provided this year arising from a huge allocation in terms of the health budget.

We have provided protection for tenants that is consistent with the Constitution and the legal framework. Without question, we have done that. We also want to support sectors of the economy, such as the hospitality, tourism and aviation sectors, as we emerge from Covid. Many Deputies spoke about low-paid employment and so on. Some sectors have definitely suffered more than most. We need to consider how we can help those sectors as we emerge from Covid. We have made clear there will be no cliff edge from the existing supports, including the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, and the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and other related supports around rates relief and so on. They have all been extended until the end of June, when we will then consider, in the context of the national economic recovery plan, how we evolve those support schemes and what new initiatives we need to support those sectors that have suffered the most. We intend to do that.

There are a number of initiatives here, including the recovery and resilience plan which we will submit to Brussels as part of the European-wide recovery and resilience. Depending on how once prices it, over time Ireland stands to get approximately €153 million from that initiative. We will again focus on the green economy, creating jobs there, and on digital transformation and other initiatives to create jobs. We are also applying for the Brexit adjustment reserve fund and it is hoped funding will come our way from that fund. We have a number of initiatives to deal with the issues the Deputies have raised.

In terms of the living wage and Deputy Gannon's point, as a Government we have taken an initiative on that. It has been referred to the Low Pay Commission for examination. We want to progress that initiative. It is an objective in the programme for Government. In terms of the broader issue and the points raised by Deputy Paul Murphy, we want to create jobs in our economy and we want an economic model that works and creates jobs and incentivises enterprise, in particular small enterprises to facilitate them in growing their companies. In terms of inward investment, since the beginning of the year, thousands of jobs have been announced, which is a good thing that then creates jobs in our indigenous sector as well. We have supported workers to an unprecedented extent through the various interventions we have taken.

In regard to JobPath and the local employment services and so on, the Minister for Social Protection will bring proposals in that respect to Government. Again, our objective is to help workers but also to provide opportunities for them. There are issues around public procurement we have to observe, but the Minister is hearing and listening to what is being said. We understand the important work local employment services do and the contribution they have made to date.

In regard to the North-South interconnector, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications has spoken about the review that is under way. The Deputies' know the position of EirGrid. It believes it cannot be undergrounded. I have pointed to areas around the country where certain initiatives have been undergrounded. The context is the all-island single energy market and so on. There is a review.

We have given these questions as much time as we can. We need to move on to Question No. 5.

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