Firstly, I wish to apologise for my absence. I am glad that this budget debate is grinding to a halt, because we have long had an opportunity of discussing the issues set before the nation. At the outset of this budget debate, a statement was made by Deputy Sherlock of the Workers' Party. It is worth reminding the House of what the Deputy said at that time:
I shall speak very briefly but consider it desirable that I should speak. At the outset, on behalf of my party, we see this as a reasonable, well-balanced budget. All we want to do is give the reasons for that decision.
On 27 January last before the then Minister had concluded his address to the Dáil, it was quite easy for me, as the only Deputy for Sinn Féin the Workers' Party then, to make up my mind. The Minister stated on that occasion that VAT would be imposed on clothing and footwear, that the food subsidies would be removed and that there would be taxation of social welfare payments. For a start, these are now out of the way, which is one great improvement in these budget proposals. Firstly, the commitment of £50 million to the building industry is something which will give a real incentive to the working class people.
That sums up the initial support given to the broad basis of the budget put together by the Minister for Finance. I regret to say that as time went on pressure came from the trade union groups about PRSI — something, by the way, which the trade union movement sought. The trade union movement, of which I have been a member all my adult life, has sought the care by social welfare benefits of the less well-off, old age pensioners and poor in our community. That requires that those who have work fulfil their obligation of ensuring that those who have not the same opportunities as themselves are given a realistic standard of living, a reasonable share of the cake.
I recognise, as everyone in this House does, particularly since the recent by-election, that the taxpayer, and the PAYE taxpayer in particular, has reached the threshold of taxation. He can no longer tolerate a situation where his income is taxed and double-taxed, is under constant attack by the State. He seems to have little incentive to work. However, I will return to that subject in due course. I want to refer to the seemingly contradictory attitude of Deputy Sherlock speaking on behalf of Sinn Féin, the Workers' Party, firstly at the outset of this budget debate and then the apparent changes in his attitude which have come about in recent weeks. If the trade union movement is serious, if it wants to see social welfare payments at a reasonably compassionate level, then it will have to take a realistic approach with its members, give leadership and stop being led by the mobs and workers who take to the streets. If the trade union movement will not show that it has a responsibility to the workers and to the less well-off in the community, it is reneging on its responsibility. That would be a tragedy for this country. I recognise the magnificent contribution which the trade union movement has made towards the betterment of conditions for our working class people.
Nobody would deny that the years ahead will be extremely difficult for this Government and for the people of this nation. Very hard political decisions will have to be made, and I disagree with some of my colleagues who suggest that State intervention would not be welcome. I welcome State intervention. We are a relatively well-off nation and have more than most in terms of natural resources. What is needed is more rather than less State intervention. It is obvious that in areas of real wealth such as fisheries, agriculture, food processing and tourism we need more State intervention. Many would say that these areas are better left in the hands of free enterprise, but have they succeeded in the hands of free enterprise? I do not believe that they have. Free enterprise has failed to achieve the necessary objectives for the greater good of the community. Where, for instance, would the small cottier living on the side of a mountain have got an electricity supply if it had not been for the intervention of the State in setting up the ESB?
At this stage I want to pay tribute to the magnificent work done by the ESB on rural electrification and in the most difficult times of soaring oil prices in maintaining an efficient service. That work was done by the ESB, a semi-State body. If that work were in the hands of free enterprise, would the people in the rural areas have electrification now? Would the light bulbs be burning in their homes? Would electricity be helping to milk their cattle? It certainly would not. Even if it did, it would cost far more than it is costing them now. That is one area in which State intervention has succeeded very well. It has brought power to industry at a reasonable cost. Of course, we would all like to see those costs reduced but we know the reality is that the price of oil is outside our control to a large extent.
I have no hesitation in standing over the workers employed by the ESB. I see them toiling day and night. In emergencies they are available to assist us. They have developed a high degree of efficiency, a degree which industry throughout the country could well look to. They have exported their expertise to the Far East and worldwide. Their engineers and workers are highly respected at home and abroad. Those who criticise State intervention should take another look at the ESB. Certainly they have their little difficulties and problems. We all have our problems in whatever our sphere of activities. We have them in the political sphere from time to time. We are no strangers to them. In giving credit to the ESB we are supporting State intervention.
Where would we be if the late Seán Lemass had not legislated for the setting up of Bord na Móna? Where would we be with the little bits and scraps of bogland producing just enough for people in the locality? Where would our exports of peat moss which are so prized abroad come from? Certainly not from the little plots of bog remaining in private hands. State intervention in that area has been a major success.
Transport was a disaster before State intervention. Many people are only too happy to knock CIE and to criticise them for inefficiency, and overmanning, and those kinds of difficulties. The main criticism of CIE — and I admit I agree with it — is that they have difficulty in meeting schedules. Old people are left standing on the sides of the roads in inclement weather, in rain, snow or hailstones, freezing while they wait for a bus between 10 o'clock and 12 o'clock. The scheduled bus has not arrived because the driver had to change shifts, or a fault developed in the bus and it had to go back to the garage. Sometimes free transportation for old age pensioners does not exist and they are put to all sorts of inconvenience.
There could be a resolution of this problem if CIE could produce a scheduled bus on all routes at a given hour and if CIE, Dublin Corporation and Dublin County Council developed a better relationship in regard to the erection of bus stops where it is known numbers of old people are using public transport. In my constituency we have a bus service from the centre of the city to Enniskerry. Despite many efforts by myself and the other public representatives we find ourselves literally on the sides of mountains with a bus service which is infrequent and irregular. This is no fault of the managers in Donnybrook garage. The bus is caught up in traffic between D'Olier Street and St. Stephen's Green. We cannot blame CIE for that.
The roads in Dublin city and county are totally inadequate to meet the needs of people using cars. I do not suggest for one moment that we should ban all motor traffic in Dublin city, but I suggest that it should be made more expensive for people to bring their cars into town. There should be more "pedestrianisation" such as we have in Henry Street, and I understand that at long last we are to have it in Grafton Street. If it is difficult and expensive to park cars in town, the buses will be able to run more easily on schedule and there will be fewer complaints.
That is the one area in which I am critical of CIE. I have nothing but the height of praise for them in other areas — for example, their train service. Their trains are clean and efficient and run on time. They provide a social service in rural Ireland which private enterprise would not or could not provide. That is quite a significant contribution.
Before CIE were set up by State intervention, on certain routes buses would not only not arrive on schedule but would disappear off the roads and never be heard of again, with no public explanation. Buses were to be found on the profitable routes racing one another like cars in Mondello Park to try to catch the customers. On the unprofitable routes there was no possibility of getting a bus. Not only did they not arrive in time but they disappeared without trace or sound. There was very little control at that time.
CIE were set up by wise people who had the overall good of the nation in their hearts and minds. The company developed. There is too much criticism of the workers in CIE. The drivers and conductors in the Dublin city services are very fine people. They have a most difficult job to do. They carry literally thousands of passengers. How many serious accidents have double decker or single decker buses been involved in in Dublin city, despite the hazards of driving in the city? Very few.
I want to pay tribute to the CIE workers on the buses in Dublin and throughout the country, the long distance bus drivers, the men who have driven millions of people in safety and have an accident record second to none. Great tribute is due to them and I pay it to them with great pleasure.
State intervention has succeeded despite difficulties, knockers and people who say State intervention is not desirable. In those cases, private enterprise would not have succeeded. A mixture of a private and public transport service could not succeed. It would be a total disaster. In a pre-CIE situation there would have been conflicting interests, and those competing interests would be competing for profitability and not for the service.
We hear very few complaints about the bus service in rural Ireland because it has not to cope with the same density of traffic as there is in Dublin. One answer could well be the provision of more bus shelters quickly on request from public representatives and those who have their feet on the ground in their constituencies in Dublin city and county. That is a very important recommendation of which I hope CIE and the Minister responsible will take note. I offer my congratulations to the CIE workers, the managers and all the fine people in CIE. If they provide that little extra consideration for those travelling by bus day in and day out in all kinds of weather they will have made a considerable contribution.
I referred earlier to the areas of food processing, tourism, agriculture and fisheries, all areas that could do well with further State intervention. As I said first when I entered this House in 1977, and as I have repeated since, we are exporting thousands of jobs on the hoof to Libya, Egypt and elsewhere, the best of cattle and meat. We are exporting the leather on the animals' backs at the expense of the young people coming out of schools and colleges. We are depriving them, whether we like it or not, of jobs. That is the reality. We shall have to take the economics of this seriously into consideration because the day when young people will tolerate this kind of profiteering for the few is long past.
Agriculture and the beef industry have been neglected and, instead of less State intervention, personally I would support more. Our leather industry has fallen apart at the seams because people, seeing the opportunities presented by the open market system, have legitimately taken what profits they can get. I do not complain of that although the profits are considerable but they do this at the cost of making people redundant and of having more unemployed. From now on they do it at great risk to the future of the nation. Coming from Ballyfermot, having spent three weeks there, I cannot see those young people staying off the streets much longer. I cannot see young people who apparently have no future remaining docile and remaining within the established political system. We must support and defend these young people and provide jobs for them. We shall do otherwise at great risk to ourselves.
I saw Danish ham being sold in a supermarket recently while we are one of the best and richest agricultural countries in the world. A great deal of it was being bought. What has happened to the pigs and bacon industry? It has collapsed. Why? As politicians we, and nobody else, will have to make decisions. That is our responsibility and if we do not make them, in five or ten years we shall find ourselves in major difficulty. We shall find ourselves unemployed and replaced by people who will take these decisions. Some very tough political decisions will have to be taken.
Let us look at other areas, fisheries for instance. I have spent a lot of time in Donegal, Burtonport, Killybegs and so on. I spend any free time I have there because I love the area and the people and it is a beautiful part of Ireland. I know the fishing boats in which they go out to make a living to which they are entitled. They do not do it efficiently and the industry does not employ the greater number of people it should absorb. The fish processing industry is inefficient. The trawler business and the fishery business generally are inefficient. They could provide thousands of jobs but instead we tolerate small trawlers going out to make a quick catch overnight or over a couple of days, sometimes in very dangerous and treacherous conditions, with very little return for the nation. I have examined the food lines in a supermarket and seen the imported food. We find there sardines from France and other delicacies that we ourselves could easily supply and around which we could easily build a fishing industry and a food processing industry which would provide wealth and work and an environment in which people could retain their dignity and would not be depending on the nation but on their own endeavours. They would know that what is produced from the Irish seas and Irish lands was providing them with jobs and dignity. They would be beneficiaries of their own hard work and would not have to look to the State for every penny. They would not need to worry about PRSI. They would know that their work would have created for them a new dignity and faith in their country. That is of vital importance and significance.
Also, it has serious implications for the future of our nation and the whole political system. I regard those implications very seriously. If we want to approach our future on the basis of going from one crisis to another, from one street protest to another and if we can be governed by Independents and others, then let us carry on as we are but at the end of the day fate will catch up with us, and we are not far from the end of that particular day.
As a Dubliner I have no argument with Deputy Gregory nor with the deal that was done with him. In fact, I support it. As a member of the Council of Europe, I have travelled from Dublin Airport with foreigners and I have done my best to avoid driving down Gardiner Street and Mountjoy Square. I am ashamed of them, even though my father came from Summerhill. I am ashamed to bring anybody to the city centre. Deputy Gregory has delivered to the people of Dublin all the things they wanted, aspired to and to which they are entitled. I do not think any Member of the House will begrudge that to our capital city. I do not think people will begrudge more housing for the native people living in the city centre and who have lived there for generations. The more rapidly it is done the happier I will be.
I know that Fianna Fáil had, long before Deputy Gregory came on the scene, a programme for the development of the inner city and I am glad that the Taoiseach was realistic enough to accept the conditions under which Deputy Gregory gave him his support. It was a wise and statesmanlike decision. Is it wrong that the slums of Dublin city should be cleared and that the people there should be given homes, schools, recreation centres and facilities? I do not think so. I know that Deputies in Fianna Fáil representing that area fully support the schemes for the inner city.
Naturally, as politicians, we must look to our constituencies for their support and, in doing so, we may neglect the great issues confronting the world. We neglect the starving millions throughout Africa, Asia, the oppressed people of Latin America and the Far East, Afghanistan, Poland, Guatemala, El Salvador, the 16,000 people missing in Chile and the Plaza del Mayo mothers in Argentina. We neglect the oppression, cruelty and the barbarism created by despots and tinpot dictators. Sometimes we forget the sadness which is on a far greater scale than we have ever known or will ever know. The Third World needs our support, understanding and sympathy. We can provide that if we take the decisions to develop our own country in the way in which I have already suggested. We have the terrorism of the Botha regime in South Africa, the madness of the Russian invasion of Afghanistan and, whatever may be said about America and Latin America, nobody can say that the Americans have deprived us of information about what is happening in those countries. They have given us their version of what is happening and that is the greatness of America. They have a tradition, inherited from Great Britain, of open inquiry, democracy and freedom of information. Of course, from time to time, they try to hide the truth; but, nonetheless, people are free to find out what the real situation is. That cannot be said in the case of Afghanistan where people perhaps are being massacred in their thousands.
I am more than satisfied that this Government are committed to the Third World and its development. We are also committed, but how can we achieve these changes? How can we bring our contribution to the developing nations as promised to the United Nations, up to .07 per cent. of gross national product? We cannot achieve this by the waste and under-productive use of our resources.
I wish to refer again to what Deputy Sherlock said in the course of his acceptance speech of the budget. He said the commitment of £15 million to the building industry is something which will give a real incentive to the working class people, which will mean jobs in local authority housing. He said it was only within the last month that a letter was sent to local authorities directing their managers to transfer 100 per cent. of the revenue accruing from the sale of local authority houses to capital. We all know that would have meant the end of local authority activity in providing services for the people. He said he was glad the situation had now changed and that that 40 per cent. can be retained by the local authority.
I would like to have seen some reference to the meat and timber industries; but we had increases in social welfare payments, something which has been a very contentious matter for a long time in regard to eligibility for health services. Contributory and non-contributory pensioners will now have full eligibility for health services, which must be welcomed. Unpleasant measures have been taken in the budget and many more unpleasant measures will have to be taken in the future. But Deputy Sherlock supported the concept, compassion, understanding and the reasoning behind the budget of the Minister for Finance. We cannot have it both ways. I agree that there is much to be done and I have made that quite clear here today.
One of the priorities we must undertake in our industrial development is the protection of our environment. I notice in the Science Budget, for 1981, the booklet produced by the National Board for Science and Technology, that the physical environment is referred to, its prospects and problems. It says that rapid industrial growth can conflict with the goal of environmental protection. At present the quality of our environment is good but, recognising that pressure on the environment is inevitable, they say it is essential that planning is initiated and action taken to attain a balance between economic development and environmental quality. Legislation designed to protect and maintain the quality of the environment gives local authorities power to regulate some of these new developments.
At the moment a great controversy has arisen in Dublin about the itinerants. I attended a meeting recently at which there was a proposal to put in 20 halts for itinerants on a road reservation where we expect to have a road built in the near future. There was consternation in the area because people had seen the situation in Mountainview, Holyland Park, Nutgrove Avenue — they had seen the wrecks of cars and the dirt surrounding the caravan sites and the tigín sites. They were horrified at the prospect of this kind of thing being put upon them. Maybe it will be.
What I cannot understand is why those people are dumped like that in sites where there are no hard roads, where dirt tracks run up to the tigíns, where the people are carrying mud in wet weather. Why cannot the local authority once a week send in a JCB and clean up all the surface rubbish in the area, all the stuff that is dumped? It is only a small contribution which will not cost anybody very much. It should be done.
Seeing the site in Ballyfermot, with the dumping and the disgraceful general condition of the area, I do not blame the itinerants for it. We cannot blame the settled people in the tigíns for those conditions. Their livelihood—and some of them make a damn good livelihood—is from bits and scraps and pieces which they go around to collect, bring it together and sell. If you walk into their tigíns you find some of the nicest homes anywhere and you will get the warmest welcome anywhere.
If you put up places like that in my constituency at Holylands, and if Dublin County Council or Dublin Corporation just leave it there and do not do some tree planting and environmental maintenance work, and some continuous cleansing operations, we will always have people looking at itinerants and saying they are a nuisance and a curse. They are the same as you and I, and some of them are a lot more decent. Putting in halting sites is not the answer to the problem. It only adds to the problem and to local resentment. Halting sites have been a disaster. The itinerant site in my constituency is a disaster. It has been left to the Itinerant Settlement Committee and other voluntary agencies like the St. Vincent de Paul Society and the good people in the area who take an interest in the welfare of the travelling people.
Dublin County Council have settled a great number of those into homes, and after six months or a year they integrated very well and have caused no problem to their neighbours. Up in Sandyford, where we have been told we will get 20 itinerants on a halt, which I think is wrong, the community have helped to integrate five itinerant families, big families. I know most of those itinerants personally and not one of them has been in the Dundrum Garda station for anything. That cannot be said for many of the people in the more settled communities. They are good decent people who have integrated well.
That is the answer to the itinerant problem. There should not be any halting sites. They should be spread around wherever they might wish to live. Instead of building tigíns for them they should be given permanent homes. Where they have been given proper homes they have kept them as spotlessly clean as anywhere. They may have different attitudes, but if they become settled you will achieve the results Dublin County Council have got. I want to pay tribute to that council for the work they have done. The practice of putting itinerant families in great numbers on halting sites horrifies me and I do not support it. I protest about the conditions in which these settlements have been set up and promptly neglected. It is inhuman. There must be a continuous renewal programme if halting sites are to be provided.
I wish to pay a tribute to people who have engaged themselves in social work in this area. People have involved themselves as nurses, teachers, local voluntary workers, social welfare workers, people whom no amount of money could pay for the work they have done. Unfortunately most of us are too involved in maintaining our own lifestyles, our standards of living and forget the less well-off and less privileged in our community.
For God's sake let us not make that situation worse by bringing in large numbers of families, sometimes up to 300, to halting sites in County Dublin. Let us put them into homes and settle them down, like we have done in my constituency where Dublin County Council have done wonderful work in integrating those families in local authority estates. They have done a magnificent job which should not be overlooked. Unfortunately, the cost demands cannot be met from the financial resources Dublin County Council have. They must be given more help. It is only when they have been given more help that the situation will be defused.
I listened to a radio programme yesterday in which the itinerant problem was discussed with Gay Byrne and I should like to pay a tribute to him and to his producer for it. There was a discussion between the residents who were protesting against the itinerants and the itinerants. After an opening argument, when they set down to talk they came to an agreement. All they had to do was to cut out the nonsense and the emotion. Nan Connors and some of the settled community decided they would settle the problem themselves, after discussion. We have been at it for years; yet here they were ready to settle the problem after an hour with Gay Byrne. That was a remarkable achievement.
I have a lot more to say on the social issues of the day and the problems that face the nation and I hope to have an opportunity to say it some other time. I thank the House for listening to me so attentively. I wanted to talk about areas in my constituency which are in need, about shortcomings in the social welfare system, about Bull Island, the preservation of amenities, the Wicklow Mountains and the national park I proposed some years ago which ran into such great resistance from vested interests.
