Last night in a very brief introduction to what I had to say in relation to this Act, I was dealing with the question of the delay in producing audited accounts of the Departments and indeed the various local authorities, county councils and health boards around the country. This leaves people in the position that they are dealing with matters that took place some couple of years previously and, therefore, make it infinitely more difficult to evaluate and sometimes to eradicate wasteful expenditure.
All contributors to this debate have singled out public expenditure as an area for much closer scrutiny for the future and therefore we must have the opportunity to examine in detail matters which take place on a regular basis.
To think that we can deal with this problem on the basis of reports being presented to us some years after actions take place is very regrettable. That is why we have had, as was mentioned yesterday, expenditure on the leasing of office blocks where the occupants for whom these offices were originally intended did not take up occupation for as many as three years. It is economic suicide to try to stand over that kind of delay in the context of our difficult economic problems.
Reference was also made to the disease eradication programme and I have the Comprehensive Public Expenditure Programmes which the Minister produced last year. On page 71, dealing with the bovine TB eradication scheme, it states—
Animal incidence which stood at 17% in the 1950's was reduced to 0.2%, with herd incidence standing at 2.76% at the end of the last yearly round of testing. However, virtually no progress has been made in recent years. Accordingly, additional measures have been introduced this year and further measures are under consideration, with a view to achieving greater cost effectiveness and combating abuses and illegalities.
It is fairly clear from what has been said about this programme and what is known about it in recent times that it is, regrettably, a national scandal. For the farmers concerned, and particularly for the vast majority of those who have tried diligently to co-operate with this scheme since its inception, it is a major disappointment and has cost the farming community as well as the taxpayer very considerable amounts. It is, therefore, very regrettable that the Minister has chosen to cut back on the intensification of this eradication scheme. I am not asking him directly to spend more State money on the scheme. I have always accepted that farmers should contribute to it and they have done so in the past.
The necessity to impose levies for the eradication of this scheme is essential. However, we have the figures before us to indicate that since 1966 the lowering of the incidence of this disease has been infinitesimal and we are, therefore, faced with continuing the kind of half-hearted effort that has been part and parcel of that programme in recent times. The investment of that money at this time is actually a waste of very scarce national resources.
It is well known that this bug is far tougher to eradicate completely than the brucella. Fantastic progress has been made in terms of the eradication of brucellosis but unfortunately this final step in eradicating TB has been a major stumbling block. Various reasons have been given for this but we have not got down to researching the real problem as far as this eradication scheme is concerned. We will have herds this year that will not have any test at all. We have evidence regarding water supplies and different other matters where local veterinary personnel have indicated to the Department that they consider that these are adding to an already difficult problem and yet there is no intensification, no research, no scientifically based programmes to try once and for all to rid the country of this disease. We continue to deal with it in a piecemeal, half-hearted way. It is no wonder that it is becoming a matter of public debate and of concern and, indeed, embarrassment to many people who are directly involved in the implementation of the scheme. I share the worry of the veterinary profession, particularly as enunciated by one of their members representing the Department of Agriculture last evening, when he said he was disappointed that they did not have the resources available to them to combat this problem in the way that they should.
In this comprehensive public expenditure programme, I want to refer to the fact that 96 per cent of passenger traffic in this country is carried on our roads. Almost 90 per cent of freight traffic is carried on our roads and yet the investment in our roads is less than the estimate, or the grant to CIE. These percentages illustrate the magnitude of the problem before us. Córas Iompair Éireann have available to them a sum of money greater than the State is providing on our roads as they carry 4 per cent of passenger traffic and less than 10 per cent of freight.
In relation to receipts from road taxation generally, we spend a paltry 25 per cent of those receipts on road improvements compared with European countries, where the average expenditure is 56 per cent of road taxation, or America where almost 100 per cent of road taxation is spent. We have a very difficult problem ahead of us. I am not proposing that the State should involve itself in increasing direct expenditure on roads completely from its own resources. In recent years efforts have been made to try to pump in private finance and toll roads and bridges have been considered. To tackle this problem we will have to involve private finance and try to generate and make available more finance, because many of our roads are disintegrating. They are creating bottleneck problems for the development of commerce here and for our exports.
In the past two years, with the development of the Naas by-pass, we have shown what is possible in that regard but it only scratches the surface of the problem. Most people involved in commerce point to the additional burden of transport because of the bottleneck problems which involve accidents, damage to vehicles and costs of hospitalisation. A significant percentage of accidents are caused by bad road surfaces which are not capable of taking the axle weight of many vehicles. I would ask the Minister of State and the Government to ensure, before this network disintegrates before our eyes, that additional funds are made available. Some kind of tax incentive should be devised which would enable the Government to have available to them private finance for this purpose. It is fair to admit that in the current economic strictures we are not going to have available to us directly from State funds adequate finance for this purpose. Huge amounts of money will be necessary. When we note the statistics which indicate the percentage of traffic carried by our road network and then compare the amounts of money spent on the road network with the amount made available to CIE, it is quite clear that much more investment in that area is required.
The fundamental and underlying problems in our economy still remain despite optimistic reports in our newspapers. I hope more of these reports will be forthcoming, because the whole country needs an injection of confidence to grapple with its very serious problems. However, even with these partly optimistic reports, there are still over 208,000 people in our dole queues. There are five times that number under 14 years of age who will be coming on the employment market in the near future. Every 100 people working are expected to carry 200 others whether on social welfare benefits, young people still at school, people who are ill or in hospital. With the lowering base for taxable income, the increasing number in our dole queues, the growing population compared with our European partners and the fact that any improvement in world trade will, because of those reasons be slower to combat our problems, it is easy to understand why there is such an outcry against the levels of taxation both from employers and employees. An effort must be made to change our tax system in order that the load which is by any standards — European or world — very substantial is more fairly distributed. I am not going to bore the House with statistics. They are readily available to anybody who wants to read them. The percentage of people employed in the upper tax net is ten times greater than in most other developing countries. The Minister, undoubtedly, has to live within constraints because, as I have indicated already, for every 100 people employed there are 200 literally depending on them. That lowering base could on the Government's own estimate be even worse at the end of this year, because provision in these estimates caters for an increase of an additional 25,000 to 30,000 people coming on the dole queue this year. Whatever constraints are on the Minister we would all urge him to try to make a start. It may not be very significant in the context of our difficulties, but he should start on the road to making a radical change in our tax system which will allow people a greater disposable income, but, more importantly, to try to get a greater commitment from the employers and the workforce generally towards the greater development of our country.
There are those in society who have no chance of getting a job, who do not know what it is like to go to bed tired at night because they have been working, who cannot look forward to the following day and anything positive to do and who may be faced with looking at members of their families following down the same tunnel with no light at the end of it. That is the greatest problem facing us at the moment. It is far beyond politics. It may be as a result of some political failure, but now that it has happened there is no room for politicking between major parties. It is an area where the greatest national concerted effort should be put together in a dynamic effort to try to cope with this problem in a new way.
It is all right to have a target for full employment but it is false to indicate that we can have full employment in the near future. You can stretch your imagination as much as you like, let this economy improve on the basis of the Central Bank report, let national income increase by the percentage points that they indicate it will but they still say unemployment will continue to rise this year. Many of the old ways of approaching this problem are not going to be successful. We are not going to be able to find additional jobs in the public sector because the percentage of our national cake which has already been devoted to that sector is, by any standards, too great and has to be reduced. Therefore, we have to look to the manufacturing and the processing sectors in a new way. I have said here before, and other speakers have also said it here and in other places, that the food sector is not going to produce all the solutions, but for God's sake let us try to look at it and find some other way of increasing jobs other than on the primary processing on which we have concentrated all our efforts up to now.
We import £800 million worth of foodstuffs annually. It is reasonable to say that half of it could be substituted by home products. Many jobs are involved in £400 million worth of produce.
We have concentrated on the primary producing sector. The problems of seasonality of supplies, downstream processing and added value have been neglected. I am sorry to say that in our programme again this year no great emphasis is placed on, and no extra funds are being made available for the vital research and development that have to take place in order to develop new products and in added value to existing downstream processing for the future. We do not have the research and development or the investment that our cooperatives and our major food processing concerns in the country have. Research and development are only slightly over one-half per cent of their total output. We sometimes tend to ignore the value of the home market. Other countries — far distant from here — have sought to penetrate our market. They have seen it is worthwhile to come thousands of miles with their products into our home market.
As well as looking for exports — we export about 70 per cent of what we produce — we cannot neglect the possibilities which are undoubtedly on the home market for import substitution. It is claimed that 96 per cent of the product is produced locally. We have to import raw materials from other countries for most of our manufacturing. Currency fluctuations and other factors, over which we have no control, can increase the cost of raw material overnight. In the manufacturing area about 16 per cent of the raw material is produced in this country. On average we are importing more than three quarters of what we require for a big proportion of our manufacturing units, yet we still try to make that profitable and against a lot of odds manufacturing output increased this year.
Córas Tráchtála, the workers, the trade unions and everybody involved in this effort during this economic recession are to be congratulated. We have been able to do that in the existing climate. Yet as far as our natural resources are concerned, where our own basic raw materials are concerned, we can produce 96 per cent of what we require for most of these products which are being produced elsewhere and transported and sold here. We neglect to do the fundamental research and development which needs to be done if we are going to find many more jobs in that area. I am not saying that it is going to solve all of our problems, but it is the effort that we make in a variety of areas which will contribute to the fundamental, underlying and desperate need to grapple with our unemployment problem.
We can build more jails, we can increase our prison space, we can have more courts, we can send more trainees to Templemore, all of these help in their own way, but they are trying to cure a problem that is already there and they do not deal with the fundamental, underlying necessity that people have to use their energies in gainful employment. Until we try to deal with that problem, the expenditure on social welfare, and in many of these non-wealth producing areas, essential as they are, are not going to solve the problem.
Figures have been trotted out — 89,000 homes robbed last year and those figures are estimated by the Garda authorities to increase by 20 per cent this year. When canvassing in Dublin Central, people would not open the door to us after 8 o'clock in the evening. These are features of Irish society. I am a member of the Mid-Western Health Board. There are 500 children on our books in that area for non-accidental injury. There are symptoms all around us of a society and a social order that are breaking down. We have fabulous sums of money available to us — overnight if you like — to try to deal with drugs, security, prison space and courts. What have we available to us to try to motivate people to do more research into what we can do ourselves? We walk down supermarket aisles and we see on the shelves the simplest of products coming from far-Eastern countries and nearer places. Heaven knows, we have all said to ourselves that it should be possible to produce those at home, but we have not succeeded in doing it. It is about time that we made that change. I say this in all sincerity as a politician to this Government. We are faced with having to come forward with new ways of dealing with that problem. We cannot see a society grow sick because so many channels are open to people who do not have the normal expectation of employment available to them.
It is possible to notice a drift away from the political system as we know it. Many politicians are obviously worried by the attitude of the public generally to politics and indeed to politicians. Therefore, in our interest — but more importantly in the national interest — we have to be seen to be closer to these problems than we are. The crossfire and the "opportunity knocks" type of attitude which is sometimes taken up are all right in the heat of the battle, but many people looking for solutions are growing more apathetic when they see this kind of posturing which does nothing to get closer to the deep-rooted problems that affect our society today.
I would like to ask the Government to consider having a single Department to find out what is wrong with our system of food production. At farm level there is the seasonal problem to battle with and at co-operative level there are problems of development, research, consumer market orientated products and so on. We cannot afford to waste much more time trying to deal with that matter. If one looks at our food imports, one will notice that our imports of meat and meat preparations have doubled since 1977. That is just one example but there are many other statistics available which indicate that there is a growing opportunity for outside interests to penetrate our markets. We cannot rely on spasmodic "Buy Irish" campaigns which peter out after a few weeks but must get down to the real problem. We must be competitive; we must have new products; we cannot say the old ways will do; we must give the consumer what he wants. We are not going to be able to do that in all areas, but we should look at the areas where we have the capacity, find out what can be done and then come forward with new solutions.
In the public capital programme reference is made to the farm modernisation scheme. Just before Christmas we had a song and dance about the reintroduction of this scheme. No sooner was the scheme reintroduced than we had a statement from the bureaucrats in Brussels that they were abandoning certain sections of that scheme. This will invitably mean that about half of what our Government had proposed for this year cannot be implemented. I understand that about half of that was proposed was to be geared towards the dairy sector and that the 50 per cent proportion of those grants which was normally paid by the EEC would not be possible under the new régime in Brussels. I would like to ask the Minister whether the Government will be making up the difference or whether this section of the scheme, which has only been reintroduced, has been abandoned.
I ask for this information because the majority of farmers involved in the farm modernisation scheme are in the dairy sector. The majority of those who want to be involved in the scheme are the smaller to medium-sized farmers who could not afford to do this work earlier. I would like to know if the restriction on the scheme is going to be imposed on this band of farmers who have come late into the modernisation stream, who had not been using the technical and scientific services that are available from the Department of Agriculture through ACOT and An Foras Talúntais, but, who now find themselves in a position to carry out modern development, and who, inevitably, unless they are grant-aided will be unable to meet all the costs.
This scheme has been misinterpreted by the media and by people outside agriculture because no money is paid until schemes are properly designed and completed. Off-farm employment is created in many of the service areas, in particular the sand, gravel, cement, timber and hardware industries. We have seen Kellys of Portlaoise and a number of other companies in the steel area go to the wall. One of the reasons for this has been the abandoning of that scheme because many companies depended on farm development for their existence. Not only had this scheme the advantage in the preparation of in-winter facilities, particularly land improvement, for small and medium-sized farmers who have not developed their holdings up to now, but it also had employment potential which is so badly needed in many rural and outlying areas that have little or no other prospects of alternative employment. I ask the Minister to say whether the Government will be making up the difference, or what is the position arising from a decision which has been taken in Brussels with regard to one side of the scheme.
I would also like the Minister to ensure that during the negotiations this year both the AI subsidy, which has been of immense benefit to AI societies around the country, and the lime subsidy, are maintained. These schemes do not cost the Exchequer very much but their implementation has a major psychological effect. A couple of years ago, An Foras Talúntais indicated that in order to have the Ph in our soil at proper levels the normal expected usage of lime would be two million tonnes a year. We saw that figure drop as low as .7 million tonnes, which is a little over one-third of the normal requirement if we are to get land to full production. Two years after the implementation of this scheme in 1981, the annual output has increased to 1.8 tonnes, almost the normal requirement. All the people involved in the lime industry and in agri-business are satisfied that the stimulus the subsidy gave was an important factor. I do not have the exact cost — it is not more than £4 or £5 million — but the advantage in employment terms and in keeping our land at the proper fertility level is immense.
The same would apply with regard to the AI subsidies. If we want to improve the quality of our stock, have the proper progeny testing and increase our milk yields, the best progeny tested bulls must be available. The AI subsidy has been instrumental in halting the decline of AI and in stimulating the increased national growth of between 10 and 12 per cent. Again, I ask the Minister to ensure that the provision of these services is maintained this year.
I do not like to be too parochial, but I would like to make a plea for a young Nenagh committee dealing with children at risk, which was established last year, and is chaired by the local CEO. There is a population of 6,000 in that area and it is said that as many as 36 young people have had brushes with the law. They have come up with a scheme which arranged employment opportunities and training for these young people, together with other young people in the area who were at risk. Employers, having seen how this scheme operates for 12 months, would then be in a position to employ the young people. This is a very worthwhile scheme arranged through the Youth Employment Agency and AnCO. Unfortunately a letter received last week indicated to the committee that it may have to be abandoned. Since this is of particular concern to the Minister of State present, I would ask him to ensure that there is no fobbing off of this committee, because this is a very well organised and very worthwhile scheme, and at a time when there is available considerable funds for such a scheme, I would ask the Minister to ensure that sanction is granted quickly to this committee to proceed with that scheme.