A total of 14 Deputies are offering. Will Members remember that they are to ask questions, not make statements? May we have concise questions and answers, please.
Questions on Promised Legislation
The programme for Government contains a commitment to "make available more competitive capital funding to allow Leader groups bid for additional resources for projects that best support rural economic development". What progress has the Government made to date in meeting this commitment? How many Government Bills will have been passed by the end of the year?
I will get the information for which the Deputy asked in the second question. I was very involved in the discussions on the part of the programme for Government that refers to Leader groups. The Government's view was that overall funding for Leader groups in the last round of funding should be reduced.
There is a new structure in place with much more integration with local government in terms of decision making and, as such, we have said to Leader groups that we should get on and spend the money that is available for the Leader programme. We have said the Government will look at the success of that programme with a view to increasing the funding for it over time. For the moment, most of those programmes are only getting up and running in the last number of weeks. Let us spend the money that is there and we can add to that if the schemes are successful.
Will the Minister in his rental strategy address the issue of landbanks held by local authorities for housing? I know from his reply to a parliamentary question that the Minister does not have any data on it, which is quite worrying. It is a grievous error that in the depths of a housing crisis the Department has not collated the landbanks local authorities have zoned for social housing. When will the Minister's rental strategy be published and when will we have an opportunity to debate it in the Dáil?
On the landbank issue, we have an audit under way not only of local authority lands, but of all State-owned lands whether in semi-State companies, State agencies or, indeed, local authorities. We need to get that full picture. I hope that we will then make decisions to transfer lands between agencies, in particular for some of the new social housing projects. Part of our rental strategy next week, if it is approved by Government, will involve a much more proactive use of publicly-owned landbanks with a view to creating mixed-tenure developments sooner rather than later and to use the leverage local authorities have because of the landbanks they own. Many local authorities have a great deal of land available to them to do that. In terms of when the rental strategy will be launched, I hope to get approval from the Government next Tuesday. We will publish it immediately after that.
In the past week, the media have been full of heartwrenching stories about children caught in domestic abuse. The tragedy of the situation is that those children do not now have the protection of law. We are assured that the domestic violence Bill will be published soon. I am sure that the Minister and, certainly, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs are aware of the campaign by Barnardos calling for badly needed protections for children to be included in the Bill, including safety orders, protections for children from abusers who are not their parents, and so on. Can the Minister assure the House and all of us who have signed the Barnardos petition that those measures will be included and set out when we will see the Bill?
The Bill is planned for next week or the week after.
It can only be next week.
Sorry, it is going to Cabinet next week or the week after. In fact, the Cabinet will be sitting on Christmas week, for the information of the House. The Bill will come to Cabinet next Tuesday or Tuesday week.
In light of the absolutely despicable treatment of workers in Independent newspapers by two of the richest people in the country, Denis O'Brien and Dermot Desmond, and the decision of a profitable company to further boost its financial position by slaughtering the pension entitlements of its workforce and pulling out of a defined benefit pension scheme, does the Government propose any legislation to prohibit profitable companies from pulling out of defined benefit pension schemes? It is one thing where the company is making a loss, but these are profitable companies which are just boosting their profits and slaughtering their workers' pension entitlements.
The Minister for Social Protection met recently with the chairperson of the Pensions Authority and has asked the authority to report back to him with an assessment of the current overall position in regard to such schemes. I will certainly refer the Deputy to the Minister on that. He is looking at it. This is a private company and, as such, the Government needs to be wary of raising expectations about what is possible. However, he is certainly taking advice on it.
I refer to the programme for Government with regard to the environment.
I am glad the Minister, Deputy Naughten, is in the Chamber. As he may know, some very hard-working people from our tyre industry are protesting outside the Houses today against the proposed levy which would see the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment impose a new tax on the motoring public. It would increase the cost of changing tyres on a motor car by €13 per car and hauliers would pay €15 or more per truck tyre.
Surely at a time when we are trying to keep our customers spending their money in the Republic we do not want people from the midlands and elsewhere buying their tyres in the North. People are working hard, selling and repairing tyres. They live in every parish, town and city in the country. We do not want to see their businesses being closed down.
The hard-working people in the tyre industry are working today. A handful of people are outside the Houses protesting.
It is more than a handful.
Let the Minister respond, please.
Tyres are a major issue for anyone travelling around the country. There are mountains of tyres in Ireland. The current system is not working. Between 25% and 50% of the tyres that are put on cars in this country are unaccounted for. The tyre regulations have a non-compliance rate of 46%. The current system is broken. Consumers are already paying somewhere between €1.75 and €3.50 for every tyre to be recycled, yet that is not happening.
We are introducing a clear and transparent system. The charge will be approximately €2.80 for car tyres. We are introducing a free scheme for agricultural tyres because we do not have a handle on those figures. We are determined to ensure that all of the tyres that are taken off cars in this country are fully recycled.
My question relates to the programme for Government and the recent budget announcement of the welcome extension of medical cards to children in receipt of domiciliary care allowance. A recent parliamentary reply received from the Minister for Health stated that the heads and general scheme of a Bill are being prepared, but we have no timeline for the progression of this. That could prevent children getting the medical cards they deserve. Can the Minister provide a timeline around children in receipt of domiciliary care allowance?
The Government has already given approval to draft the heads of a Bill. I understand the Taoiseach gave a commitment that the Bill would be brought before Cabinet and, subsequently, to the House in the first quarter of next year.
I refer to the programme for Government and the recent budget announcement regarding rural social schemes. We welcomed the announcement of 500 new places. That was the hand that gave, but the hand that took made sure that there were changes to the terms and conditions. People involved in the schemes could be involved for life, but a person can now only be out for between three and six years. I want to know whether the Government will review this. Teachers and nurses have made claims. We need to treat people equally. The people to whom I refer have been in schemes for 55 or 60 years. Now people will only be allowed out for three years.
I need to check the details of the scheme for the Deputy. My understanding is that the focus of these schemes is to try to help people back into employment. That is why they are of a temporary nature.
They are farmers.
I will get the detail for the Deputy and correspond with her.
One element of the programme for Government is to ensure that there is an extension of credit for small and medium enterprises and people starting new businesses, in particular. The European Investment Bank is opening an office in Ireland tomorrow. While the Government and its agencies can access funds from the bank, people who are seeking funds through that source have to do so through mainstream banks. That is a problem.
We all know that people involved in businesses have come through the torrents of the economic crash and may not have a good record when seeking funding from banks, but they may have a very good idea or business for which they cannot get funding. I want to know whether the Government would be prepared to consider allowing people to use local enterprise offices, LEOs, to apply for funding for new enterprises. People are frozen out of the banks.
The important thing to recognise is that the European Investment Bank is not a retail bank. It operates through other banks or registered financial managers. There are a number of examples of this. For example, it funds social housing through the Housing Finance Agency and it has funded an interesting loan programme linked to the dairy industry through a structure that Glanbia set up. It is also funding small business investment through pillar banks in Ireland. There are models that work. It is important that we use the existing retail banking infrastructure where possible rather than looking at trying to reinvent what can and should be provided through pillar banks.
With reference to the programme for Government and dealing with the housing crisis, does the Government have any plans to introduce either legislation or guidelines on the provision of bonds for developers to proceed with the building of houses? I am aware of situations where some local authorities are looking for a bond based on the value of the contract. Others are looking for that but are adding a time limit, with some as long as five to seven years. This is making it practically impossible for the developer to get the bond to build the house. This is an issue and, as Deputy Lowry mentioned earlier, creates red tape and difficulty around getting jobs started.
The Minister mentioned an €18 million announcement this morning for 56 houses in O'Devaney Gardens. That equates to €320,000 per unit. The cost of building needs to be reduced and this forms part of that issue.
There are a lot of site works required for the O'Devaney Gardens project so I would not simply divide the money by the number of houses we are building and make deductions from that. It is a much broader project that will probably involve the expenditure of a couple of hundred million euro. There will be some 600 multi-use and mixed-development units, including mixed-tenure units, involving both public and private money.
On the financing of projects, one of the reasons we are changing the planning decision making process for large applications is to get much more certainty into the decision making process, which has a direct impact on the ability to get finance. No bank in Ireland will put any financing into a project unless planning permission has been granted. We are also putting a fund of approximately €200 million together through the Irish Strategic Investment Fund to help developers finance infrastructure on site. Further, the State will probably announce next week where we will spend €200 million of public money on infrastructure to connect sites in order to get them moving. We are doing a lot on the financing side. If there are other innovative things we should be examining in terms of issuing bonds, I am happy to receive the detail on them.
We are waiting more than two years for the publication of the new motorised transport scheme and the new wind energy guidelines. Will the Minister update the House on when we might expect publication of both of those?
The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Denis Naughten, and I are working on the wind energy guidelines and may be in a position to bring something to Cabinet next week. If we do, a judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union now requires that we undertake an environmental impact assessment of any new guidelines, which will involve some consultation early next year. It will, therefore, be a few months before new guidelines are settled and agreed because we are required to go through a process that had not been anticipated. However, getting a draft agreed that can then be subject to environmental impact assessment is a priority for us.
It has the same priority as it had for the last Government.
The Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, is involved in ongoing work on the first issued raised by Deputy Troy. I will try to get detail on it for Deputy Troy.
I apologise to the six other Deputies who I did not have time to call.