Deputy Michael Higgins is in possession and he has 34 minutes left.
Estimates 1991 (Resumed).
Debate resumed on the following Estimates which were moved by the Minister for Finance (Mr. A. Reynolds) on Friday, 5 July 1991: Votes 1 to 3, inclusive, 5 to 44, inclusive; and Supplementary Estimates, Votes 2 and 39.
Last evening I made the point that the defect inherent in orthodox economic thinking represented by conservative politicians over a number of years was the assumption that economic growth led automatically to investment and beyond that to job creation. I would like, this evening, to give further evidence on just that one point because it is necessary. I should like to rely on someone who I believe has perceived the fallacy of what was orthodox economic thinking which led to the assumption that a climate could be created which would automatically produce jobs. The Sunday Tribune of 30 June 1991 contained an article entitled “Goodbye and don't come back”. Paul Tansey who wrote the article may not be responsible for the title but, more importantly, he is responsible for the analysis in it. He referred to estimates from different sources, which I think most people accept, including the Economic and Social Research Institute. The views I offered on the last occasion not simply held by me but by others, including working economists. Paul Tansey states:
The reality of labour market performance over the past five years is both stark and simple. Up to 1991, emigrants' departures, not job arrivals, acted as the principal force for reducing unemployment. Between 1986 and 1990, emigration served to siphon 136,000 people from the country. The domestic labour force, which would have swelled considerably with their staying, instead declined by 5,000 over those four years. Employment agains of 39,000 were then sufficient to reduce unemployment by 44,000 against this background of labour force contraction.
He further states, interestingly:
After a disappointing growth slowdown to around 2 per cent in 1991, the Irish economy is expected to regain momentum next year as the economies of its principal trading partners revive.
This thinking is not unlike that contained in the Minister's speech. He went on to say:
Real GNP growth is forecast to average 3.75 per cent annually in the five years ending 1996. Inflation is set to remain low, averaging less than 3 per cent annually while the balance of payments is scheduled to remain in comfortable surplus throughout the forecast period.
One could describe this succinctly as meaning the climate continues to be right. The Minister did not depart either from such a projection. He continued:
The main constituents of the ESRI's medium-term forecast are shown in Table 2. From a distance, they contain an impression of steady, if unspectacular, economic progress.
He went on to say, and this is where he departs from the Minister:
But, on closer inspection, all of the old labour market problems remain. Through the forecast period, the numbers joining the labour force continue to expand at a rapid pace. Despite the decent pace of forecast economic growth, this fails to translate into employment expansion on a sufficient scale to absorb the net number of new labour entrants. With labour supply overshooting labour demand, it is left either to unemployment or emigration to absorb the excess supply shock.
This is the argument I have made, not against any one party in this House — I think some Members of this House would agree — about the assumption that economic growth rates projected over a period lead automatically to job creation. I have been reviled by people who objected to my suggestion that this is a fallacy. Hence my development on the last occasion of what I called the myth of climatology within economic theory and the notion of the economy without people, the "depeopled" economy. Mr. Tansey goes on to give figures, which I think are drawn from the Economic and Social Research Institute's projections. He states:
As can be seen, between 1991 and 1996, total employment is forecast to increase by 51,000 people, with industry and market services providing the principal impetus to jobs growth. Yet, while this sounds impressive in absolute terms, it represents an annual expansion in employment of just 0.9 per cent a year. Thus, the jobs dividend yielded by economic growth remains disappointingly poor.
He goes on to offer other figures which are truly frightening. He says:
The ESRI projects that in the five years to April 1996, net emigration will amount to almost 90,000 people.
Thus, in the last two decades of the twentieth century, net emigration from Ireland, on present projections, will have amounted to almost half a million people. During the years 1845-1851, when Famine stalked the land, emigration from Ireland has been estimated at roughly one million.
He concludes his article by stating:
The political consequences of a further 230,000 people drawing the dole are too terrible to contemplate.
What comes out of all of this is very interesting, it is, that emigration, and not job creation, has reduced the unemployment volume and rate and that emigration when it eases in volume creates unemployment at home and, politically, that the returned emigrant whom I mentioned on the previous occasion becomes a political problem.
If one wants to be positive about that scenario one has to follow on the logical consequences of such an analysis, which is the investment strategy. You have to ask what have been the sources and investment strategies, factually and historically — let us not rely on rhetoric or ideological proclivity — which have actually created jobs in the recent history of Irish economy? Let us rely on the facts as they have been published in journals and reports. The answer comes very simply — from an atmosphere and climate, not necessarily the one which has been described in the Minister's speech and elsewhere, but the one in which the Government are in favour and facilitate investment through State action, semi-State action and credit policy.
I want to make a point about the monetary side. It has been more rewarding over the five years which have been described in the article from which I quoted to invest in either manipulation of currencies or equities than in a productive activity such as building a factory or creating employment. The marginal return from investing in gross speculation always has been greater than that of the person who had some sense of patriotism — let us call it that and not be ashamed of the word — and invested in creating something for export and creating jobs for people living in the community we call Ireland.
The ethos in this country shifted to adulation of the speculator rather than the productive investor who was seen as old fashioned. Those who had made money speculatively on either currencies or equities received the admiration of the media and many other people took a voyeuristic interest not in how they had got their money but in how they were spending it. Let me place on the record yet again that it was not I but rather the distinguished public servant in his day, Dr. Whitaker, who, in the seventies, drew attention to the fact that even the Irish Stock Market was changing in character with a speculative rather than a productive bias and that the drift in the economy was such that it would in the future facilitate what effectively amounted to gambling with money and equities.
Some of the major figures on the Irish social scene today have come to their positions of personal wealth not by creating jobs in Irish society, by building something, developing a new product or capturing a niche in the international trading economy but rather by job destruction and acquiring companies, which were founded by people who had a better orientation towards the country and its people, asking others to become involved and by going, like a dose of salts, as asset strippers through one string of companies after another. They are the people to whom conservative politicians turned when they were looking for people to put on boards, for advice or to head up companies owned by the State, by the people of Ireland. It was said they created a kind of envy among people, people who were effectively traitors to the State philosophy on investment, who began to think that perhaps they too could be like this; if only they did not have a public obligation they too could be out in the market place on larger salaries having a share of the action.
In bistros, restaurants and bars all around the city the language took off of the little people who wanted a bit of what the people and the community owned. This led to a philosophy of privatisation and flotation but not of what they owned, built, paid for or borrowed money for, but of what the public owned, the PAYE taxpayers who paid up to 87 per cent, in taxes, who put their taxes into creating assets which these people, these sharks, wanted to say would do better outside of the control of the State. Like everything tatty and seedy from the worst pages of the British tabloids came the Irish version of Thatcherism, and like everything in Ireland a disease dies over a longer period and it is still infesting this country.
We have the notion that if only the State were not involved in different enterprises things would automatically be better. This begs the question: better for whom? For some, certainly. There will be an escape from the restrictions of the Devlin report for certain salaries, there would be an opportunity to participate in ownership of something they did not own before, but what would be in it for the families who are looking for employment creation? I do not want to make an emotional speech about this, although I do not subscribe to the theory that if one believes in something strong enough one should be unemotional about it.
Let us look at one of the semi-State bodies on the hit list which has been referred to already in the debate — Irish Life. If we all suspend our views about whether the company should have been floated, the question which is important is, will the investment decision-making within Irish Life stay intact, interested in Irish projects which would create Irish jobs, or will they be the first rat off the ship before 1992 and fly from the country with their investments? Is this but the first anticipatory yellow hint of cowardice before capital flight takes place elsewhere? Where are the examples which would prove me wrong?
I have been watching Irish banking investment decisions for a very long time, for more than 20 years. They change as Dr. Whitaker said — I do not want to misconstrue him because he spoke about the seventies and the position got worse in the eighties — but the Irish banks now gather deposits and charge people for the privilege of depositing their own money which is not very European, but they will learn about this in time. Having gathered up such funds they, too, are invested abroad. The question might reasonably be asked where have they, through their investments, created jobs in the Irish economy, and how many? It is the nature of a society which is nominally democratic but not in reality as Ireland is that they would suggest that these decisions are nobody's business but their own. However, they are everybody's business.
It is a very interesting feature of both annual reports, of Allied Irish Banks and Bank of Ireland, that they report profits on their Irish operations and losses on their external operations. I am sure that when a woman in Clifden or in Schull, who has a number of children whom she hopes sooner or later will be employed, passes the local branches of these banks she will like to know that the local people's money is being spent in America and elsewhere and she will feel a sense of satisfaction that a good, progressive, macho theory of banking is at work.
Let us look at the other list of companies which are ready for the marketplace. I became a Member of this House in 1981 and Seanad Éireann in 1973. I had a conversation then with the former distinguished Minister in this House and a former Member of both Houses, Dr. Noel Browne. This was in 1973 when unemployment was approximately 67,000; we were debating whether it would reach 70,000. In a moment of pure horrific fantasy he said, what would happen in Ireland if unemployment rose to 200,000? The figure now stands in excess of 250,000, it is heading towards 300,000 and this trend is projected to continue. We are so ignominious in economic performance that we are now saying it is a pity our emigrants are coming home and embarrassing us by putting the unemployment statistics up.
Let me say something else which in time will be regarded as a forecast. Thatcherism is over, reliance on the marketplace is dead and this is producing slum economies in every country in Europe. There is not a scintilla of evidence that in any of the great social purposes of economic planning, human, job creation, ecological, egalitarian, social, cultural, that the marketplace has ever solved a single major problem which involved the community of people.
In the individual countries of Europe the marketplace has widened the gap in income, wealth, participation, education, housing and so on. Behind it stands a philosophy which is socially destructive. Faced with the fact that the franchise is distributed widely, there are even now signs that the philosophy is abandoned. I have come to learn in over 20 years involvement in politics that it would be a useless exercise to defend statism. I will not say that centralised economies were successful, that they were without problems of bureaucracy, gross inefficiency, bad investment and ecological damage, but I note the penchant for that critique to get into scripts while at the same time people have an inability to realise the excesses of market economies.
It was in that sense that I spoke last week of an intellectual capitulation in this country. There is only so much the elected representative can do but in the community that is our country, there are historians, social scientists and economists. Where is the originality of thinking that would say something new in relation to forging the new way between at once a form of use of the market which would be a mechanism or an instrument of distribution, which it validly is, and at the same time protect the concept of social investment and of the distribution of income? Instead of that, we get cheap copies of what has been Britain's last month's fashion. I have seen senior figures from the absent party in the Library reading six months later the tired, jaded opinions of Mrs. Thatcher's think tank in Britain, the old policy institutes, tired old trash with its mixture of social destruction for the north of England, racism for London and madness. I never thought the day would come when a 70 year old man, a former British Prime Minister, Ted Heath, would stand up and have the courage to say to Thatcherism what the copyists in Ireland who have applied her tactics here have not the courage to say.
If there is to be an investment strategy it will return to there being a State responsibility for credit policy that will favour productive borrowing as opposed to speculative borrowing. There has to be a restoration of faith in the semi-State bodies and an end to the thuggish destruction of their job creation activities. Again and again in the House these conservative parties — and we are unfortunately benighted with so many of them — have been asked to capitalise the semi-State companies, let them be efficient, compete in the marketplace and create jobs. Rather like the peasant —"We would not know anything about that, your honour", with the cap doffing and the forelock pulling — we have the suggestion that they could not do that if they were in public ownership. "They would need, Sir, to be privately owned, Sir, if they were to be efficient, Sir". That is the mentality of the people who are sending 500,000 people onto the boat and exiling them before the end of the century.
In investment strategy it is necessary to look across the heads of different areas where we could have innovative and creative thinking. There is no absence of good ideas in practically any sector of the economy. Who else but a kind of seedy set of successors of Legs Diamond's mob would be discussing the agriculture and food industry in the way we are? In other countries they have identified food products that can be sold at high value added to consumers who can be assessed and researched. They are placing their products on the shelves. In Denmark, a small country comparable to ours, they have bought in patents and technology. They are a net importer of food for re-export, capturing markets in all the traded food areas of the world. Why can we not do that? Is it because it was people in semi-State bodies like the Agricultural Institute who thought up the different products which are lined up on the shelves?
When I came into this House there was a Minister who was much criticised for opinions which had nothing to do with what was called Posts and Telegraphs, Dr. Conor Cruise-O'Brien. He signed an agreement to borrow £100 million to modernise the Irish telecommunications industry in the earlier part of the seventies. I hope all the people who have been paying for that loan since in their taxes will know that what they modernised and created as a modern entity with potential for future jobs is also up for sale. It depends on who buys it. We all know one potential purchaser who, curiously, at the same time he was nominal chairman of a semi-State body said he would put a price of £1 billion on it. It so happened that this amount was available at the time from a certain rather interesting scam in the United States. In whose interest would it be if Telecom were to develop alliances within Europe? If the State owns it and links with the French system, there will be jobs. If the State does not own it and it is acquired by a private individual, where will the jobs be? I put a moral question: have not the people who paid for that loan a right to express their opinion on a question like this? This is the lack of nerve from the detritus of the peasantry who masquerade as independent politicians, some of them calling themselves Republicans. They do not have the nerve to believe in the concept of the social, the concept of Ireland, the concept of State and semi-State companies and their only contribution at the end of the 20th century, with 500,000 people set to go, is to say, "Have we anything else left for sale, even if we do not own it?"
Across the different Estimates we find this mealy mouthed approach. With regard to social welfare, the people still come to the same old buildings, never renovated or painted, just for the humiliation. In health, if you are a chronic case, literally bleeding on the road, you might be scraped off it, but then the concept of a public health service is an old fashioned socialist one. God be with the days when in de Valera's time we sent to England for their false teeth and false limbs the predecessors of the 500,000 people now to go.
The Minister who thinks he is God has a list of housing lists across the country, while he announces that there is something wrong about a working class person ever owning a three-bedroomed house again. The way of the future is to stop public authority housing. In the Rahoon flats in my city 85 per cent of the people derive their sole income from social welfare. Agriculture will be debated again.
When we ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs a question, he no longer uses the phrase the "Irish position is" because that phrase is now passé. When I, as an elected representative chosen by my party to be the spokesperson on foreign affairs ask him a question on the Irish Government's position on an aspect of foreign affairs, he stands up like a parrot and says, "The position of the Twelve is ...". I introduced the idea of the theology earlier: Ireland is the Twelve, the Twelve is Ireland, in the beginning there was Ireland, there is the Twelve. What nonsense.
The man who is under the delusion that he is Napoleon thinks that this House cannot have a foreign affairs committee. How Irish is that? We are the only people in Europe who would not be up to it; we could not manage too many committees, and would it not bring too much decision making into this old-fashioned Parliament? That seems to be the thinking of the day. God be with the late John Kelly who, when he heard that Chancellor Kohl, and President Mitterand and others were waiting for our visits to decide what to do said once: "And what did they say when you gave them the advice?" Talk about delusions of grandeur. We do not want that, we want something more simple and democratic, accountability. I will vote against these Estimates for Foreign Affairs because of our failure on Overseas Development Aid, the failure to establish a foreign affairs committee and all the mismash I got in reply to my foreign affairs questions.
What happened in the area of communications was a farce. We had an attack on public broadcasting to facilitate a few pets who could not perform in the open air and came crawling back for assistance. The poor dears were asked would they like something to help them on their way. This rugged new frontier breed who are going to replace the people who built up organisations that had an international reputation.
May I remind the Deputy that he has two minutes remaining?
I will now say something about the Gaeltacht. I represent a large number of people whose first language is Irish. I speak for the Labour Party also on the Irish language and I usually speak in Irish. However I will use one minute to deliver my message in English lest it gets lost. Everything I said about the decimation of the economy and society could be multiplied for the Gaeltacht. In the past year we have had divisiveness; an attempt has been made to set those who use the Irish language against those who live in the Gaeltacht and there has been a failure to establish Teilifís na Gaeltachta — yet another broken promise. Teilifís Gaeltachta was promised in the Minister of State's county by no less a person than the Taoiseach, Deputy Charles Haughey. It has not happened and the indications are that it will not happen. We wasted years in this House asking when Teilifís na Gaeltachta would be established. The answer was dribbled out in half truths, that some version of Teilifís Gaeilge would be provided, and good people who changed their names and the rest of it will know the difference.
Tá brón orm go raibh sé mar ualach orm Béarla a labhairt agus cúrsaí Ghaeltachta á bplé agam, ach tá sé tábhachtach go gcuirfí deireadh leis an mbréag go bhfuil suim ag an Rialtas seo ná ag an urlabraí, an Taoiseach féin, ar chúrsaí Gaeilge agus Gaeltachta, i muintir na Gaeltachta ná san Ghaeilge. Ní labhráionn sé Gaeilge sa Teach. Ní fhreagraíonn sé ceisteanna agus briseann sé gealltanais. Is de bharr na fáthanna seo go léir nach bhfuil rogha agam féin ná ag mo pháirtí ach cur i gcoinne na Meastachán mar a foilsíodh iad.
Without a shade of doubt this has been one of the most bizarre economic debates in the history of Dáil Éireann. Deputy Bruton and his party, having lectured the Dáil continuously for ten days on the fulfilment of the Dáil's constitutional responsibilities then went on to abdicate that primary responsibility of any parliamentarian by deciding to abstain from this debate and he left the task of Opposition to the Labour Party and to The Workers' Party. While I would not agree with their arguments, it has to be said to their credit that they stayed here to fight the battle and put their points of view on record. They queried the policies of the Government and castigated them when they felt it was necessary. That is the role of the Opposition. For the major Opposition party to I sulk in a dark corner is not parliamentary behaviour.
Deputy Bruton was quite correct when he said that the Dáil only vicariously fulfils its constitutional responsibility in a whole series of areas, not least in the area of public finance. On another occasion it would be a good thing to debate the type of committee structure that he suggests and how Deputies who have to run in multi-seat constituencies with the vagaries of proportional representation would manage to take themselves away from constituency tasks to fulfil their responsibilities as committee members. No doubt it would be interesting to debate this with him, but because we would not capitulate to Deputy Bruton's view of the future that he should take the major Opposition party out of the Dáil is a scandalous parliamentary tactic. I understand fully the comment made by one of his own backbenchers who referred to "bungalow Bruton" as he led his party members out of this House.
Abstentionism is not a particularly new policy nor is it particularly creative. Storming out of this House in a huff is a poor substitute for standing your ground and submitting your policy options for consideration. While I would be critical of some of the contributions made by members of the Labour Party and The Workers' Party I admire the fact that they stood here and took all the time available in this debate to put their views on the record. The Left, as exemplified by both Labour and The Workers' Party made contributions which to my mind were characteristically long in analysis and rather short on solutions. Deputy Michael D. Higgins, a man for whom I have a warm personal regard and a long friendship, was interesting, indeed absorbing in an academic sense but in reality he did not take use very far. Climatological economic, to use his own phrase, received a scathing dismissal from him.
This is not the first time that Deputy Higgins has dismissed the view that getting the climate right for job creation and investment was less than important. In fact I would go a long way with his analysis, that it is not sufficient just to get the climate right, but that one has also to put in the spurs that will bring the leaders of industry to fulfil their part of the obligation. I sometimes wonder whether Deputy Higgins ever engages his not inconsiderable intellect before he throws his rhetorical powers into overdrive. Does he suggest that getting the climate wrong would create jobs? Would he dismiss the importance of stabilising wages and salaries and getting the public finances under control? Is the Exchequer borrowing requirement to be regarded henceforth as irrelevant? Does Deputy Higgins consider that the money supply is no longer relevant or that the tedious statistics of the balance of trade, the balance of payments and all the other balances can be dismissed? Do the Labour Party dismiss the importance of interest rates?
If they regard all these climatological I indicators as irrelevant what do they deem to be important? It was suggested the last day at the end of an absolutely absorbing contribution that we should rekindle the debate on political economics. I rushed back to be here tonight to hear that debate being rekindled but I have not heard it. I heard the analysis, I heard the restatement of the problem, and I would not disagree with much of what has been said in that regard but I did not hear the solution. As Deputy Higgins' indignation grew the last day he sought first to dismiss climatology, next he dismissed what he referred to as being the Doheny and Nesbitt school of economics. To my mind he should not confuse the tedium of the unreconstructed monetarists that sometimes hang out in that other fine institution and dismiss the institution itself, but having dismissed monetarism, Thatcherism, Friedmanites and all the other "ites" that march along in those serried ranks, he went on, surprisingly to my mind, to dismiss Keynes as well. As his blood pressure rose and his voice soared to Pavarotti proportions, he argued, that attempts in the late seventies to create jobs by depending on the "time worn policies" of Keynes had failed too. After a spectacular performance we know what Deputy Higgins and presumably the Labour Party are against. Unfortunately, having dismissed everything from the classical economists right down to the various types of reconstructed and nonreconstructed Thatcherites, monetarists, Friedmanites and even the odd Keynesianist who is still left, we do not know what they stand for. They reject all pre-existing economic theories. More surprisingly, they reject also the Keynesian view that Government should try to expand an economy which is slowing down, to bolster employment and encourage some economic reflation, because if you reject all Keynes stood for and more precisely if you reject as fundamentally wrong things done in this State in the late seventies, that is what you reject. They believe a resolution of our economic woes is to be found in some mythical way by rekindling the debate on the essence of economic policy, of political economy.
I doubt that many of the quarter of a million unemployed and many of the hard pressed taxpayers of this State share Deputy Higgins' touching faith in the power of rhetoric or the mystical and even magical capacity of a return to a debate on the meaning of political economics. Unfortunately, economics and reality are different from the rhetoric we heard here. Academic idosyncrasy is one thing but naked cynicism is another thing altogether.
Deputy Rabbitte, contributing from The Workers' Party benches, deplored what he saw as a lack of specifics on job creation. I would go along with him in this debate because I believe the issue of No. 1 national importance at this time is job creation. I would go along with any Deputy who comes in here and shows an impatience with the lack of specifics in this area, but he went on to deplore what he described as the use by successive Governments made up of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour of emigration as an instrument of economic policy. Deputy Michael Higgins, who chose to ignore the comments of the Minister for Labour on the last day on this very welcome trend that our young men and young women are returning home, made a somewhat similar point but I accept he was coming at it from a different viewpoint. Given the activities of The Workers' Party over the past 15 years in their various disguises, Deputy Rabbitte illustrates, to me at least, that he has a cast iron neck to come in here and talk of job creation. No party in the history of this State has done more to wilfully destroy jobs than The Workers' Party. I say that in a measured way. They have wilfully set out to destroy jobs in industries that are running and to subvert job creation elsewhere and I will give some specifics. Their alliance with armed thugs, which they say ended ten or 12 years ago, did nothing to help Ireland's industry or create a confident economy in which jobs could flourish. Their continued connections with people who operate beyond the pale of the law in Northern Ireland does nothing to assist this nation's financial wellbeing, the creation of jobs for Irish people, North or South of that sorry Border or to create peace and reconciliation in this island.
At yet another more specific level the Workers' Party subversion has been destructive of jobs. I said previously, and I am pleased to say now, that for many years the labour movement in this country and the Labour Party had a very close connection. The Labour movement, trade unionists and the Fianna Fáil Party have a very close connection. At no stage in the history of the Labour Party and certainly at no stage in the history of Fianna Fáil was there ever an attempt to subvert the traditional labour movement and use it in a way which is inherently destructive of the interests not just of working class people but of all the people. However, we are all too familiar with industrial disputes which have become politicised and more intractable because of their politicisation as a result of the malignant involvement of The Workers' Party. Then their spokesman comes in here and castigates us, not just for mistakes, which is his right, but questions our whole contribution for the life of this nation and our whole interest in creating jobs and creating wellbeing for the people of this nation. He not only casts doubts on our bona fides in this matter but he questions the bona fides of other parties with whom I might disagree from time to time but whose bona fides I would never question.
Towards the end of his contribution Deputy Rabbitte promised to examine some possible solutions. He failed abysmally to do so. His party have no solutions. They are not interested in solutions. Problems are more the stuff their politics are made of. He criticised the Minister for not being specific on job creation, although the Minister indicated in his speech the intricate relationship between economic issues he wished to handle and the whole jobs crisis. To his credit the Minister recognised we have a job crisis, an employment crisis, and it has to go to the top of the priority listing, yet, having pounded us all about the ears, Deputy Rabbitte, and The Workers' Party had nothing to say on job creation. They talked about cutbacks which have not been announced as if they had occurred and suggested that all these and all our other woes could be resolved by collecting what he described as the best part of £2,000 million in taxes which he, Deputy Rabbitte, suggested have been assessed and uncollected. Deputy Rabbitte knows as well as I and every other Member of Dáil Éireann know, that there is no £2,000 million of £3,000 million of uncollected taxes out there. There is not jackpot of revenue on which we can fall back on this occasion. To my mind it is a sign of political desperation when the elusive, non-existing crock of gold is seen as the sole solution to all our problems. Wherever else we can expect help in our moment of trial we cannot expect leprechauns to come up with the money to get us out of our present predicament.
In his contribution the Minister sought to put the current problems with the national finances into perspective, and I think he is right to do so. There is little to be gained from panic, less from fatuous policies and nothing at all from political rhetoric.
Over the last few weeks Fine Gael voiced the opinion that the 1991 budget had been fraudulently cast, that the Estimates on which the budget was based were at a minimum defective and in fact fundamentally unsound. This is a very serious charge and when it was made by a serious Opposition party it should be substantiated because it impugns not just the integrity of the Minister but the integrity of the much maligned officials in the Department of Finance and in a whole variety or other State agencies. In so far as there is any proof to substantiate those charges this is the place where that proof should be laid. Fine Gael who are away sulking, are not here to support their views, which is a great pity because I believe their views are unsupportable.
There has, of course, been serious slippage — a word which I do not like — in the 1991 budget figures.
It is rhetoric.
If the Deputy can come up with an alternative word I will accept it, but the Deputy will accept it is a piece of rhetoric or jargon which has slipped into everyday use. There have been serious problems with the 1991 budget figures, and the explanations put forward by the Minister seem to be tenable explanations. The over-run on social welfare of £66 million is due to the growth in the number of people signing on. This arises primarily from the fact that foreign job markets are in recession and that our people are coming home. We should celebrate their home-coming — this is the point Deputy Higgins was making. These people are not a problem and they should never be perceived as such. The one wealth we have in this nation is our people. If there is a cost to be borne by their returning home, this nation, if it is worth anything, should be happy to bear that cost. Whatever the cost, when people who were forced to emigrate from these shores come back, we should rejoice.
The over-runs on Exchequer returns could certainly cause us concern but they should not lead to panic. Revenue for the first half of the year is slow, and we all accept that, but there is nothing novel about that. One slow-down which concerns me, and which Ministers should address, is the slow-down to a trickle of European Social Fund moneys. In addition to disrupting the budgetary figures, the slow-down in ESF funding is causing very real problems for some of our voluntary organisations who are increasingly dependent for their existence on such funds. A person from Fine Gael referred today to our dependence on such funds as being a begging bowl mentality, but that is not the case. It is part and parcel of the Europe the Irish people entered in 1973; part and parcel of the policy of creating a Europe that will work.
I welcome the undertaking given last night by the Minister for Labour in this matter. I hope he, and his fellow Ministers, will press the European Commission for some rationality in this matter. It is wrong that moneys which are due to voluntary organisations and health boards are not forthcoming. It is very wrong that health boards and voluntary organisations have to boost overdrafts and increase their running costs because funds to which they are entitled have not been paid over.
Critics of the budget choose, consciously no doubt, to ignore other realities. One reality they choose to overlook was the Gulf War and its impact on the world economy. I do not say this as a carping excuse, but it is a reality and something which those who criticise the Minister, and his officials, should bear in havoc with world markets. It has certainly deepened and lengthened the recession in nations which are our trading partners and, naturally, we will suffer from that.
Another fact the critics have failed to acknowledge is that the over-run which we now face is by no means unprecedented. We have had over-runs before, some when Government critics were in positions of power and about which they did nothing, but the sky did not fall in. We have been able to tolerate over-runs before and, provided this is a temporary over-run and we keep our wits about us, we will weather this over-run too. However, we must not be panicked into doing certain things. We should be very wary about applying the cleaver of public expenditure cuts to public policies which have already been pared back to the bone. I say that because I am conscious that in the next few days and perhaps the next few weeks, discussions will take place and some people will find it politically more acceptable to suggest we should have cutbacks rather than move away from some well-favoured political objectives of theirs.
Do not listen to them.
I certainly will not listen to them. It is predictable that some industrial pundits should propose, as was done last weekend, that there should be further cuts in public services. Ministers should be cautious about accepting such advice, whether it comes from political advisers, new political allies or industrialists. The people putting forward this proposition should at least have the decency to publicly identify those services which they suggest should be cut. It is all too easy to propose further belt-tightening in the abstract while retaining the right to enter into special pleas for one's special area of activity, and we should not go down that road. That is not to say that any areas of public service activity should be regarded as sacrosanct. Clearly now more than on any other occasion Ministers must ensure that we get a pound's worth of value squeezed from every pound spent, but we should also ensure that the weak and the powerless in society do not carry the cost.
There is a second temptation to which we should not succumb, the suggestion that is going the rounds that selling off State companies could and should be used to overcome current difficulties. I do not take the same view as Deputy Michael D. Higgins about the privatisation of State enterprises. Some of our State enterprises have grown within the all-encompassing cloak of the State to a point where they could quite readily, and without fear, be sold and be expected to do well. I am glad, for example, that in the sale of Irish Life the Minister has retained the golden share option. I share the fear of some people that investment decisions would increasingly be relocated elsewhere, and that could have the flight of the central activities of the company to another location. However, in so far as the Minister has retained options, those fears can be allayed. Capital funds released from the sale of State bodies or any other asset should be used for the creation of new State-owned assets. Whether they should be invested in schools, hospitals, roads or infrastructure I do not know, but they should be used in that way, or preferably, to lower the national debt.
Ireland has never adopted an ideological stance towards our State enterprises, and we should not start doing so now. It is interesting if we look back at the debates that took place in Dáil Éireann in the late twenties at the time of the foundation of the State enterprises we are now talking about, particularly the ACC and ICC, we will see that the privatisation of those companies, purely on pragmatic and certainly not on ideological grounds, was envisaged. The ICC and ACC were created solely because the Irish banks had behaved in a selfish way then, as they do now, had behaved rather oddly as regards making loans available to Irish farmers and Irish industry. It was felt when those companies were set-up that with the passage of time they would mature, be sold off and become private banks. Therefore there is nothing revolutionary in what is happening with regard to our State-sponsored bodies. I would, of course, be more than a little concerned if they were sold off right, left and centre for entirely current purposes.
Another policy area in which much has been achieved, an area in which we should take a note of caution, is the area of taxation reform. Again there are some people of political mien who do not hold office in this House who have been arguing vociferously for the last two years about the need to rush into the same sort of taxation policies as the conservative Government did in Britain a few short years ago.
The improvements which have been made in personal taxation are welcome and we should continue to make every effort to ensure that PAYE payers get the tax equity to which they are entitled. However, I urge Ministers to look closer at the contention that taxation cuts across the board, to all levels in society, will automatically in some unspecified way, lead to economic improvements and more jobs.
Taxation improvements introduced in the last four years have been worth of the order of £800 million. If there was an automatic linkage between taxation improvements and job creation we should expect to have seen an upturn in jobs at this stage. This line was argued very consistently for some time, predominantly in debates conducted outside this House. Before we accept the line of argument it needs to be cautiously reviewed. The experience in the United Kingdom bears close examination. Improvements in personal taxation certainly did not improve the employment situation there. I would be ad idem with Deputy Higgins on the point about simply creating the climate and hoping that the jobs would flow; a more coercive role has to be played by the State.
Improvements in the United Kingdom in personal taxation led to regressive transfers of wealth, boosted short term consumer expenditure and resulted in an economic mess——
And increased it.
——and it did not create jobs. It created unemployment and increased the series of economic problems. Ministers will, in the next weeks and months, have to review, as happens with every government in their mid-term economic policies. The expressed view of the Minister for Finance that we move in a steady paced way along this policy option is a very wise policy. The Minister for Finance said in his contribution that we have a major unemployment problem and this has moved to being our number one national priority. For some years the number one priority was control of the public finances. When a measure of control was achieved, tax reform, rightly, became a priority and tax equity for the PAYE payer remains a priority, particularly tax equity for the low paid. It is very wrong that, even with the changes we have had, people are dragged into the higher rates of tax at a very low level of income. However, the creation of sustainable jobs must now be the number one national priority.
The Minister for Finance has said, and I endorse his sentiments, that we must intensify the employment content of growth and the speed of growth but we must disentangle ourselves from the notion that the jobs will automatically come. I am not happy that existing policies are achieving the level of growth in jobs that they should. Irish industry, and in particular major Irish enterprises, have been particularly selfish in this regard. The benefits of the Programme for National Recovery— and there were very real benefits — and the new PESP have been accepted by Irish employers but they have not delivered on their side of the bargain — the jobs have not come.
If workers are expected to curb their wage ambitions, more security for existing job holders and more jobs must be delivered. Workers, and their unions, have a role to play. The race to redundancy which has been a feature of Irish life needs to be re-examined. All too often jobs which have cost the taxpayers of this country thousands of pounds, even tens of thousands of pounds to create have been sold away for a couple of hundred pounds or a couple of thousands of pounds. That cycle must be examined and broken.
Another aspect of public policy which needs examination is the linkage between job creation, economic growth and the growing, and welcome, environmental awareness. Inevitably there is an environmental cost in any development. When one puts a spade into a green field and turns the sod for the foundation one does damage to the environment. This environmental cost is a factor which is not being addressed or even identified at present. The failure to address the relationship between environmental cost and job creation is something which those of us who represent County Wicklow have become painfully aware of recently. Our job creation policies, and the growing environmental awareness of the people, are not in sychronisation. At present, the job creation agencies are not taking the people into their confidence and the result is that there are clashes between the people's conscious awareness of the value of our environment and the need to create jobs.
In County Wicklow a major Irish conglomerate made funds available to a small Irish manufacturing company and they proposed a very revolutionary project whereby they would buy-out a Japanese production facility and move it to the village of Kilcoole. The people of Kilcoole were kept in the dark and rumours began to abound and circulate. Some people in political circles sought to make political capital with the local elections coming up by adding to those rumours. Ordinary decent men and women were told that a major chemical manufacturing plant was being moved secretly into their village. There was no communication between the people of the village and the State agencies. As far back as October 1989 I contacted the senior personnel in our county council and senior personnel in the IDA and said: "for goodness sake, bring the people into your confidence". There was no effort to bring the people into anybody's confidence until July 1990 and at that stage such a level of distrust had been created that the project became untenable.
There will be other occasions when we will discuss industrial policy and I will deal with this in more detail. This case, and similar cases, illustrate the absolute necessity when the IDA and county development teams become aware of a project as a valuable project that they must take the people into account. It was wrong in that case that people who were concerned not just about their environment but about the health and wellbeing of their families were subsequently castigated by State agencies as being obstructionist. It was not the people who were obstructionist but rather those who refused to take the people into their confidence.
The problems the budget has run into are very real. They arise in large part because of world circumstances which are beyond our control but they arise also because of factors which are within our control. The fact that our people are returining to these shores in their tens of thousands is not a problem; it is a privilege and an opportunity. What we need is a community effort not just within the community of people that form the nation but among the people who form the political opinion in this State. We may differ on certain points of principle but we should be at one on the importance of creating an environment in which jobs can grow and develop.
The debate has necessarily been heated over the last few days. It is a great pity the major Opposition party have absented themselves from the debate which is ongoing. By so doing they have also abdicated their responsibility to participate with the other members of the political community in struggling towards a solution to the massive problems which face this nation.
The economic, financial and social problems which face Ireland with slightly in excess of 250,000 unemployed are so great that no politician, worthy of the name, has the right to absent himself or herself from the search for a solution.
It is appropriate that in a debate on the Estimates the Labour Party should state their position which would indicate to the Ministers and the Government that we are generally dissatisfied with the Estimates as presented to us, their inadequacy and the problems which will be created, unless the Government are prepared to meet their responsibility. This means having priorities which would give to the people whom we represent a measure of service in the areas of health, social welfare, job creation or any other economic service on which the people whom we represent are totally dependent.
Over the past few weeks there have been statements in the media purporting to come from reliable sources in Government that the Cabinet are meeting in crisis with a view to curtailment of public expenditure, postponement of promises made to people involved in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, to go back on promises made to people in agriculture and to consultant surgeons in the health service. They are a very special group on whom people are totally dependent because of the very heavy responsibility they bear. Today I spoke to consultant surgeons throughout the country who said emphatically that if the Government are prepared to break their word on guarantees and agreements entered into, some of the consultants are prepared to work to rule. This is not industrial action but it reflects the frustration of specialised people in the community who are totally dependent on the goodwill of the Government regarding agreements. The Government dramatically changed the terms of reference of their common contract and their contracts for service in public hospitals.
In this House we debated the new Government proposals which would offer people, irrespective of their income, the right to have consultant services and beds in public hospitals. The Minister for Health gave a solemn assurance to this House that there would be no change in the number of public beds available to public patients throughout the country. Since the legislation was passed, all the health boards, without exception, have sent their programme managers and officials into public hospitals with measuring tapes, note books and pencils to determine which corner of a hospital they could designate for private beds so that the income from the VHI and other private sources to health board administrations and hospitals would be protected. That is not in accordance with the wishes expressed in this House. The beds closed by the Government and the Minister, which were lying idle, were brought into service and redesignated as private beds. I did not have a problem, ideological or otherwise, regarding the programme the Minister announced, on the basis that these beds were lost to the public service anyway. I was assured by the Minister that the numbers of public beds would not be interfered with but I am not satisfied that the number of public beds has been left intact.
The Estimates for the Department of Social Welfare do not reflect reality or the real figures of unemployed people actively seeking work. They are not reflected in the numbers of people who have legitimately claimed unemployment benefit but who have been refused their entitlement by social welfare officers who are now a law unto themselves. They demonstrate their independence to our constituents by saying that it is irrelevant whether a person goes to a local TD or other public representative because the social welfare officers will make the final decision. Many of those decisions are subject to critical analysis and review by the Ombudsman in certain instances but it is an indication of the instructions by the Government to all their officers to make it almost impossible for people with legitimate claims in the area of social welfare to benefit when, in spite of their best efforts, they are unable to get gainful employment or survive in the community. Children have been forced to leave their parents' homes because the Government have determined, through the social welfare officers and means testing, that people will be assessed with means because they are living at home.
I know the Minister for Social Welfare and the Minister for Labour have problems in relation to people leaving school — who are legally adults — claiming unemployment assistance to tide them over the period when they will be endeavouring to get jobs or during the time in which they prepared to emigrate. The Government have made it almost impossible for some of those people to get their rights. If that is what the Estimates for the Department of Social Welfare mean, it creates a problem for legitimate claimants. Nobody in Opposition advocates that people who are not entitled to compensation for being out of work should receive it; nobody on this side of the House has ever advocated that people who do "nixers" or operate in the black economy should be looked after. The State, with its constraints on public expenditure, could not tolerate a system where people would be signing on and working at the same time. However, I am concerned at the attitude of Government to legitimate claimants under this system.
Tomorrow we will have the opportunity of debating the Estimates for Agriculture and Commissioner MacSharry's proposals in the review of the Common Agricultural Policy and the GATT negotiations. The reviews will ensure that the levels of unemployment will escalate to figures beyond our wildest fears because compensation for farmers to cease production in whatever percentage is necessary will not compensate for the loss of jobs which will ensue from a lack of production in the processing, food and milk industries. Losses of jobs will inevitably follows if Commissioner MacSharry's proposals are accepted. As I said, tomorrow is a day when we can debate that matter at length, a day when the farming community — the "culchies" as the "Dubs" would call them — come to town to listen to what their parliamentary representatives have to say about their future in rural Ireland and whether they will be able to survive there.
As the Labour Party's spokesman on Health, I am particularly worried about that Estimate. Notice of the Government's present discussions has already appeared in the newspapers on a daily basis but today, for instance, it has been leaked that the Government are concerned about overspending and an over-run in the General Medical Service. Many people avail of that service because they have small incomes, they live in poverty and caught in the poverty trap. They are eligible for the service and come within the guidelines laid down by the Minister and health boards.
Members of the Labour Party in the House, including myself, are concerned about the services that will be available to those people who are legitimately entitled to these services under the 1970 Health Act. I say to you, Sir, and to the Ministers present that if there is further diminution of the services available to people on the medical card list the Labour Party will oppose tooth and nail every Government proposal to curtail those services.
We are concerned about the pace of Cabinet discussions. When the Dáil is in recess — early and much disputed as the date for the recess might be — the Government will have the freedom of the news media and the airwaves to decide without recourse to the House what they intend to do in health, education, social welfare and all other strategic areas of economic development. We are extremely concerned that people who had benefited in the past and who are eligible within the guidelines laid down could find that they are unable to receive their legal entitlement. That the Labour Party will oppose vehemently.
It is known that the Government entered into negotiation with the general practitioners, a profession for which all of us have a special regard. The medical profession was not satisfied with the previous fee for item basis of recompense. In negotiations between the Department and general practitioners and in the agreement reached a certain level of compensation was agreed for members of the medical profession. Irrespective of whether they attended the people we represent, they were given a certain level of compensation. As democrats, trade unionists and members of the Labour Party, we accept the concept of free negotiation and agreement. But now it is found that the Department's negotiators completely under-estimated the cost to the State of that particular system. Figures recently released by the payments board for the General Medical Service show an overrun on the Estimates of some 5 per cent to 6 per cent, going into millions of pounds. That could cause a diminution of the services provided medical cards holders.
I am not concerned about the doctors, they can negotiate, debate and argue their rights of payment — and I shall uphold whatever rights they have achieved — but I shall not allow the Department, in the process of fiscal rectitude, to decide that because the agreement reached with the general practitioners cost more than was estimated that should result in a reduction in the services to the people we represent who are legally entitled to them. I do not want there to be another list of medical card prescriptions that are no longer covered under GMS; I do not want a different rate of payment for those in the drugs refund scheme; I do not want another reduction — indeed, I would look for an additional declaration — in the illness defined as long term illnesses. Help for people suffering from long term illnesses is a worthy cause and admittedly, it does cost money. If the Government do not respond to the challenge given them in 1989 and are unable to decide what their priorities should be, people in certain categories must be protected at all costs, irrespective of fiscal rectitude, I feel they may have deserted those who supported them.
In the most recent local elections unemployment was highlighted and discussed with all of us on the doorsteps. Likewise, health services were also analysed critically by the electorate. Your own area, Sir, was an exception, but the electorate reflected their dissatisfaction with the level of Government spending and the Government's priorities on health administration and delivery of health services.
Until 1987 people throughout the country who had medical cards were entitled to free hospitalisation and free transport to clinics. On the excuse that the system was being abused — abused by whom we do not know, certainly it was not by those who qualified — in 1987 all systems of transport within most health board areas was curtailed or abolished. That meant that people in rural Ireland who live 35 or 40 miles from a hospital or clinic were left to find their own way — to walk, cycle or taxi at their own expense — to the point of delivery of the service to which they were entitled. That is a disgrace and that practice continues to this day, 9 July 1991. People in genuine need of hospitalisation and outpatients' attention have to pay £35 or £40 on taxi fares to reach their nearest acute, general or county hospital. My own constituency provides an example. People from areas such as Emly, Cullen, Lattin and Bansha — places 15, 20 and 30 miles from the nearest hospital in Clonmel or Cashel — will be left at home by the Government unless they can afford a round trip in a taxi, costing about £35. I admit that the expenses in travelling to a hospital outside a region are covered, but that is poor consolation for those who need to visit their general practitioner, local hospital or local consultant for the medical and clinical tests to which they are entitled. Those are some of the anomalies arising from the cutbacks that have taken place, and I say this evening that the Labour Party will not stand for further cutbacks particularly in health.
I know that Cabinet have monetary problems; I know that they have problems trying to balance the books but those same Deputies were not generous in their attitude when other Governments faced the same dilemma and I hope they do not expect carte blanche approval just because they now have financial problems. In the past months Ministers were prepared to spend any amount of money for certain occasions and for certain provisions of a personal, business or official nature for Government members from the Taoiseach down. There was no problem about the expenditure of public money when it came to those measures, but when it comes to the delivery of services specifically related to areas of crisis — to issues that affect the poor, the sick, the underprivileged and the handicapped — the Government have been very quick to leak information that there are problems and that the Government, in Cabinet would have to consider what might be done about them.
Every other day there are leaks that the Department of Health have a problem or that the Department of Education have a problem. However, this Government were quick to say not many months ago that things were looking up, that the country was booming and blooming and that there was a 3.5 per cent improvement in the economy. They entered into all sorts of agreements with the trade union movement that if they were responsible in the area of wage increases the country would survive and continue to grow. We made comparisons with all our EC neighbours. We made comparisons internationally. We listened to a certain amount of euphoria that was coming from the Government benches and we allowed them an opportunity to follow through and prove that to the electorate. The reality is, unfortunately, that now they are sounding the warnings which will allow them, when we are gone from this House, to announce various Cabinet decisions which will not be accountable to this House which we will be unable to critically analyse or condemn, and we will be unable to debate what this Government might decide.
The budget figures announced by the Minister and approved by a vote in the House are the figures that we all believed in, the figures that were presented to the public in the area of taxation and tax changes which indicated that the benefits from the Programme for Economic and Social Progress in the areas of social welfare and health would automatically follow because of the decisions of this Government and this Parliament. That is an important distinction because a Government can make decisions but we know from experience that when the vested interests get down to debating with the Government many changes follow.
The Fianna Fáil/Progressive Democrats Government once more outshine themselves in their totally cynical and contemptible attitude towards the public it serves. Inappropriate decisions by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Albert Reynolds, not to introduce a list of spending cuts in response to an overrun of some £200 million in the budget until after the Dáil goes into recess illustrate the cynical style of politics that is prevalent in this current Coalition Government. Now that the local elections are out of the way, the Minister for Finance is about to introduce a whole series of cutbacks. I have warned him about some of them and I will elaborate futher.
These cutbacks will, at the very least, place a serious question over the already threatened health services in respect of which I am spokesman for the Labour Party. If the Government decide to pursue a policy of cutbacks in the health services their memory will have to be refreshed. In response to the overwhelming rejection by the people of the health cuts in the 1989 general election the Government were forced to take certain measures. Up to them, of course, the Taoiseach admitted that he was not aware that the crisis in the health services was so bad. His own forces in the previous 1987 election spoke about how important and serious health cuts were for the old, the sick, the handicapped and the poor. In 1989 when this became an issue on the doorsteps late into the campaign the Taoiseach admitted that he had not realised that things were so bad. In response to the overwhelming rejection by the people of the health cuts in 1989 the Government were forced to take measures. These measures included the restoration of the casualty service in the Dublin hospitals from just one hospital operating in North Dublin and one in South Dublin to six hospitals and 150 additional nursing staff to man the extra but urgently required casualty service. Before that there was no problem. Then suddenly as a result of the election these were the steps that had to be taken. Otherwise this new Government would have been routed from office.
In addition 500 positions were promised arising out of the introduction of the 39 hour week which was also agreed by the trade union movement which hospitals found very difficult to operate without bringing forward additional posts in the health services. However the reality is that the cumulative effect has been the removal of approximately 5,000 beds from the hospital system which illustrates the very real crisis in all the non-acute hospital admissions. There are still beds in hospital corridors in spite of promises to the contrary. The Government have promised to take action in areas like Kilkenny. Now there is a warning from the Minister that all capital programmes might have to be postponed, curtailed or deferred. Does this include the much vaunted and publicised improvement in St. Luke's Hospital in Kilkenny?
In regard to the Tallaght hospital, I was the first to itemise the problems of that project in this House. I will spell out the problems in that area as Deputy Rabbitte and Deputy Taylor have done. There are still hospital beds in corridors in many hospitals. One has only to walk the corridors of these hospitals to see the insult that is offered to patients by way of a health service or a hospital service. It is not good enough. The Government have made a promise and I am anxious to know if this promise will be honoured particularly in view of the Health Estimate in the capital programme.
The waiting lists for hip replacements and heart surgery for public patients has spiralled even further. We on the Opposition benches have been trying to bring it to the attention of the Minister and the Government that some of these waiting lists are totally unacceptable. We accept that there will always be some measure of waiting lists for some of these medical interventions but it is not acceptable that the list should extend over a number of years when people are in agony, out of work and unable to participate in a normal life. In various debates we have consistently identified in a constructive way some of the problems that have arisen in the areas of the health service.
The criteria in determining priority for a whole range of operations is still related to the availability of finance. Priority is not based on clinical diagnosis. We pointed out, on other legislation, to the Minister for Health that if somebody has money to go to a private consultant for an opinion as to the need for hospitalisation or surgery, that person's chances of being admitted to a public bed in a public hospital are improved. This was refuted by the Minister although we went so far as to name people so that the Minister could verify the cases.
With the health services already critically depleted how can the Government attempt further cutbacks without disastrous consequences for the people? I admire the Minister as a person who is professionally committed in his area but I know he must live within the constraints placed on him by the Cabinet and the Minister for Finance. I am asking the Minister to give a commitment not to resort to using redundancy packages as a means of cutting health board budgets. This procedure was used most effectively from the Minister's point of view, from 1987 to 1989 when up to 5,000 health workers were coaxed to leave the health service with attractive redundancy packages. This has left vacancies in strategic areas in the health service. I want the Minister to give a commitment that he will not force hospitals to resort to further bed and ward closures.
The Minister said that it is normal for hospitals to close wards in the summer. It has not been the norm. People get sick in the summer and have accidents in the summer. Until this year in my constituency and in many other constituencies, whatever about the Minister's constituency, hospital wards have not been closed in the summer. In spite of the decision forced on health boards by the budget I hope the Minister will not make them resort to further ward closures. The Minister should resist any attempt by the Department of Finance to further reduce community health services which have already suffered under the Government. We need an efficient, vibrant community health service to cater for all needs. The Government, in spite of their public utterances have allowed the community care service to collapse in some areas and to be reduced in others. I hope the Minister will stand up to the Department of Finance whose only priority is to balance the books irrespective of the social, economic and health consequences of their actions. The Minister for Health must accept responsibility for his very important portfolio. In discussions with the Minister, in debates across the Floor of the House and during Question Time I have never found the Minister other than forthcoming in his commitment to the service but I am aware that the Minister, like previous Ministers for Health, has to live and fight with the Department of Finance. The health service cannot afford further cutbacks and we cannot afford continuing underfunding, without neglecting people.
The Labour Party have been constant in their opposition to the running of the health services. We are not opposed to the Minister as a person but as the political head of his Department. Our arguments against health policy should strengthen the Minister's hand in Cabinet and in negotiations with the Department of Finance. The support of Opposition parties for increased health funding should sustain the Minister for Health in his arguments in Cabinet. The Labour Party unequivocally adhere to the belief that health care is a basic human right and that there is an explicit obligation on the community to discriminate positively in favour of the poor. The Government policy has been to discriminate against the less well off. The Government do not want to admit that we have any poor people and they discriminate against the less well off in our community making it increasingly difficult for people on low incomes to secure access, let alone equality of access to the health services.
We will never be able to describe the health service as a service giving a basic human right until we face up to the need to provide adequate resources. The House should support the principle that resources for health should be a priority. The Government have had the benefit of a whole range of reports in this area, a report from the Commission on Health Funding, the Kennedy report, the Fox report and so on and still they have done nothing other than to fiddle around at the edges of the problem. At the end of the day both partners in Government will have to make a decision in principle in regard to these areas of priority. No final decision can be made in regard to how much should be spent on our health service until such time as we decide that health care is a basic human right. If we decide that health care is a basic human right then we must take the necessary steps to give effect to this important principle. If the Government renege on their commitment to make this a priority area then they will have to answer to the electorate in future elections. It has become more and more apparent that the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Coalition Government do not consider health care to be a basic human right. Despite the warnings which were sounded by the electorate in the run-up to the 1989 general election and this year's local elections the Government have done nothing to improve our health services. Fianna Fáil candidates have suffered defeats in these elections as a result of the decisions made at national level by the Cabinet. The Government's decision to introduce further cutbacks blatantly illustrates that they do not consider health services to be a basic human right. It is tragic I have to say this because many members of the Government, particularly Fianna Fáil members, are committed to improving this sensitive service. However, that commitment is not followed through at Cabinet level in terms of fiscal rectitude.
The effects of the cutbacks have been visible all around us for the past six months. The Government have decided yet again to postpone the construction of the new hospital in Tallaght. This is a disgrace. In spite of their public commitments to build this hospital I signalled on the Floor of this House some months ago that they would renege on this promise to the people of Tallaght. In view of the urgent necessity to provide this acute facility for the people of Tallaght, I find it almost impossible to understand the Government's decision to postpone the construction of the hospital. The site development was initiated in the mid-eighties to provide this essential service for approximately 150,000 citizens in the Tallaght area and surrounding districts. However, no provision was made in the 1991 health capital programme for this much vaunted and promised hospital in Tallaght. As a result, all the work, planning and development has come to a halt.
Earlier this year the Minister for Health charged health boards with the responsibility of providing the same level of service as that provided after the 1989 general election. However, the current budget provisions will not allow health boards to maintain that level of service. This means that health boards will be forced to severely cut back further on services, thus giving rise to further waiting lists. I have identified here specific health boards who have financial problems and cannot pay their suppliers. These financial problems are so bad that health boards are almost bankrupt. They have had to tell their suppliers they cannot pay them for goods, drugs, medi-cines and services rendered to them. I do not think it is good enough that health boards should be placed in such a position in this day and age. People who supply goods and services to servants of the State do not expect to have to worry about if and when they will be paid.
We recently read in the newspapers the proposals by health boards to close down beds for the summer. The Minister referred to this as a tradition. This is a bad tradition and should not be regarded by any Government as tradition, particularly in the case of services which may be urgently required at any given time. The argument that it is holiday time and there is a budget deficit will not stand up if even one life is lost as a result of this procedure. As I said initially, this tradition was started by the Minister for Health, Deputy O'Hanlon. Perhaps it is a tradition in his area but even if it is he should not be proud of it.
The Dublin Rape Crisis Centre made an announcement today about their severe financial problems and the possibility that they might have to close their doors. Their director has maintained that unless the centre receives assistance — this statement has been circulated to all Members of this House — it will have to terminate all counselling and therapy within the next three months. I repeat this warning in the House tonight in the hope that either the Minister for Health or the Minister for Social Welfare will respond to it. If the Government allow this centre to close, Dublin city and county will have no rape crisis service and people whose lives are already shattered as a result of child sexual abuse will have no one to turn to for help. In January of this year the Government promised to allocate a meagre £10,000 to the Rape Crisis Centre but to date they have not received this money. This is a damning indictment of the Government. None of us like to talk about the problems suffered by the people in this very sensitive area but we all acknowledge the need for this service. If the Government do not fulfil their promise to this centre, further problems will be created down the road in the long term.
The level of services provided for people with physical or mental handicap has deteriorated in recent years. We have debated this issue regularly in the House. The Minister has put forward proposals, plans and figures which seem to indicate that everything is much better in this area but I intend to put on the record of the House some of the specifics in this area which show the way in which we have neglected the mentally handicapped. The review group appointed by the Minister outline graphically in their report which was published last month the problems in this area. They say that there has been a standstill in real budget terms while those with a disability or mental handicap and their families have grown older and their demands more pressing. This is a terrible indictment of any Government in regard to the provision of services for this very vulnerable group.
The crisis in this area covers many aspects, the most worrying of which is the lack of a multi-disciplinary early intervention service for parents and children. The absence of pre-school services for children with delayed development has meant that parents have to cope alone and children are losing crucial opportunities which they may not be able to avail of again. The Government need to respond to the crisis in the area of mental handicap. The hardship suffered by people who have mental and physical disability will increase unless appropriate plans are made but planning must take place in the knowledge that resources will eventually be made available.
Debate adjourned.