We are dealing with the Revised Estimates for the Department of the Taoiseach. I welcome the Taoiseach and his colleagues from the Department. We will start with an opening statement.
Vote 6 - Office of the Chief State Solicitor (Revised)
I welcome the opportunity to appear before the select committee as it considers the 2018 Estimates for Votes 1 to 6, inclusive. The committee has been supplied with a detailed briefing document on the various Votes. I will briefly outline the work of my Department and its proposed 2018 Estimate, as well as outlining the proposed 2018 Estimate allocations for the President’s Establishment, the Office of the Attorney General, the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, and the Office of the Chief State Solicitor. While I have certain responsibilities to the Oireachtas in respect of administrative matters in these offices, they operate independently of my Department. My colleague, the Minister of State and Government Chief Whip, Deputy McHugh, will outline the 2018 Estimate allocation for the Central Statistics Office and will take any questions relevant to that Vote following the committee’s consideration of the other Votes in my group. I am joined by Mr. Martin Fraser, Secretary General of the Department, Ms Mary Keenan, head of corporate affairs, and Ms Geraldine Butler, finance officer.
The 2018 Revised Estimate for the President’s Establishment is €4.32 million. This includes some €3 million for pay and administration, with the balance to fund the centenarians’ bounty. It is estimated that approximately 450 centenarians will receive the bounty in 2018.
The 2018 Revised Estimate for my Department is €35.9 million, which includes €24.9 million for administration costs. Following the recent review of the work of the strategic communications unit, I am reducing the 2018 funding allocation by €2.5 million to €2.5 million, €2.2 million of which has already been spent. I am requesting, therefore, that the committee approve a 2018 Estimate for my Department of €33.4 million, which is a 9% reduction on my Department’s 2017 Revised Estimate.
I will now briefly outline for the committee the progress made by my Department on key priorities in 2017 and indicate where we are focusing our efforts in 2018 and beyond. The primary role of my Department is to support me in my executive functions as Taoiseach, to support the Government and to oversee implementation of the programme for Government. It also supports the four Ministers of State assigned to the Department in full or in part. These are the Government Chief Whip; the Minister of State with responsibility for defence; the Minister of State with responsibility for European affairs and the Minister of State with responsibility for data protection, who is also assigned to a number of other Departments, as I mentioned. In addition to supporting my work as Taoiseach and that of the Government, the Department’s strategic priorities are: a sustainable economy; a better and fairer society; strong relationships in Europe and in the world; Brexit; and leading Government and ensuring it acts in a joined-up way in terms of policy implementation and communications.
The Department is also responsible for a range of other issues, such as State protocol, including commemorations, constitutional issues, relations with the office of the President, relations with the Oireachtas, Government press and communications, the National Economic and Social Council, the Creative Ireland programme, the Citizens' Assembly and the Dublin north-east inner city initiative. The Department funds a number of inquiries from its Vote, including the Moriarty tribunal, the Cregan commission on Siteserv and other matters and the Cooke commission on Project Eagle. An important part of my Department's work is providing a secretariat for meetings of the Government and of Cabinet committees. The Government has established Cabinet committees on: the economy; social policy and public services; the European Union, including Brexit; infrastructure, which covers housing; health; national security; and justice issues.
Ireland continues to experience sustainable and balanced economic growth. Employment continues to increase and now stands at 2.2 million working in the State.
Unemployment was down to 6% in February, the lowest since August 2008 and well below the euro area average. The Government's focus now is on achieving full employment and ensuring that the jobs created are quality jobs. By this I mean jobs that raise living standards and reward employees, not just in terms of salary but also with good working conditions, work-life balance and benefits, including adequate pension coverage on retirement.
That is why on 28 February, together with the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty, and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, I launched a five-year roadmap for pension reform. It outlines a range of reforms across the pension system which will ensure that it is sustainable in the face of an ageing population. In particular, it includes the introduction of an auto-enrolment pension scheme for private sector workers, with first enrolments in 2022.
Earlier this month, the Action Plan for Jobs 2018 was launched. This year's plan is a more strategic and streamlined document reflecting the key risks and opportunities facing the economy. It outlines 55 actions to be delivered, with a target of creating approximately 50,000 additional jobs. My Department will oversee implementation of the Action Plan for Jobs and the delivery of the Government's other economic priorities through its support for Cabinet committee A and its related senior officials' groups.
The Government is keen to ensure that every sector of society - as well as every region - feels the benefits of our recovering and growing economy. We must continue to ensure policies and services not only protect the most vulnerable in society but provide opportunities equally for all citizens to learn, work and prosper irrespective of gender, race, social status or sexual orientation. My Department supports the work of shaping and reforming key public services, especially those requiring a cross-Government response through Cabinet committee B. On 20 March, Ireland's ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was deposited with the United Nations. This is a significant landmark for Ireland and its commitment to people with disabilities who have waited more than ten years for successive Governments to deliver.
I have signalled my intention to advance a set of measures to improve gender equality. These measures will promote wage transparency in businesses and correct the imbalance at board level, where only 17% of board members of Ireland's top-listed companies are female. Last year, 52% of appointees to State boards were female. The State is now in a position to tell business to do better. The Government is looking at options to extend paid parental leave in the first year of a child's life. The Government is keen to make child care more affordable for parents. The initial reforms put in place in 2017, including the universal subsidy for children between six months and three years, have ensured parents of 67,000 children have benefited from enhanced payments. In 2018, the Government expects to make significant progress in terms of enacting the required legislation and supporting IT infrastructure to deliver the new affordable child care scheme.
I recently visited Dublin's north-east inner city - I have been there on several occasions - to witness, at first hand, the work under way to revitalise and support the local community. Significant work is now being done by the programme implementation board established last June to oversee the implementation of actions recommended in the Mulvey report. This involves a strong collaborative effort between the statutory, community and business sectors and is working effectively to date. My Department continues to support the work of the board, which recently published its progress report for 2017.
Increased investment in the health service must happen in tandem with reform and productivity gains. My Department oversees the health reform agenda through its support for Cabinet committee E and the related senior officials' group. Budget 2018 provided a record allocation of funding for health, including €55 million for the National Treatment Purchase Fund to reduce long waiting times for treatment. Significant steps have been taken following the publication of the Sláintecare report by the Committee on the Future of Healthcare, including a commitment to early engagement with general practitioner, GP, representatives on the reform of the GP contract to support primary care improvements. A negotiating mandate in this regard was given to the Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, at Cabinet this week. An independent group, under the chairmanship of Dr. Donal de Buitléir, to examine the impact of removing private practice from public hospitals is up and running and is expected to report later this year. A recruitment process for an executive director of the Sláintecare programme office has been undertaken. The final interviews for that are being held this week.
The publication of the health service capacity review in January and the commitment of €10.9 billion in the national development plan Project Ireland 2040 are significant in supporting necessary changes to models of care and to meet ever-increasing demand due to a rising population and the availability of new treatments. A significant new hospital building programme is under way with three new hospitals under construction, in addition to new wings and departments across the country.
Housing and homelessness remain a Government priority. We are committed to delivering an increased supply of affordable, quality and accessible housing. In 2017, under Rebuilding Ireland, the Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, 26,000 households had their housing needs met, which is 100 households being housed every day by the State. Up to 4,000 individuals exited homelessness, 18 family hubs began operations and there was a 33% increase in construction commencement notices. To date the Rebuilding Ireland home loan and the enhanced long-term social housing lease scheme have been launched. The affordable purchase scheme has been announced while the affordable rental scheme is being piloted. Improvements have been made to the repair and leasing scheme. New planning regulations have been introduced and new guidelines on design standards for new apartments are being finalised. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is leading implementation of the plan, but this is a whole-of-Government effort which is overseen through meetings of Cabinet committee D and associated senior officials' groups.
My Department supports me in an extensive programme of international engagement. The focus of the programme is on advancing Ireland's strategic interests, developing bilateral and multilateral relations, enhancing Ireland's international reputation and promoting trade, tourism and investment. In 2020, Ireland is seeking election to the UN Security Council. Our candidature reflects Ireland's continuing engagement on issues of international importance and the centrality of the UN to our foreign policy.
The Government is committed to further strengthening Ireland's capacity to represent ourselves effectively on the international stage. In four cities in the United States over St. Patrick's week, I had an extensive set of meetings and engagements with political, business and civil society representatives. This included meetings with the US President and Vice President, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Senate Majority Leader, the Senate Minority Leader and the Friends of Ireland on Capitol Hill. I also met the governors of Oklahoma, Texas and New York, as well as the mayor of New York. My main focus was on advancing Ireland's economic and political interests in the US, including reaffirming our strong commitment to membership of the European Union; outlining our priorities in the context of Brexit and the importance we place, in that context, on two-way transatlantic trade and investment; promoting Ireland as a location for jobs, trade, tourism and investment; and continuing to make the case for US immigration reform.
Last week, I had a fruitful bilateral meeting with the German Chancellor, Dr. Angela Merkel, in advance of the March European Council. She reiterated her strong support for our unique concerns arising from Brexit. In the past few weeks, I have also had good bilateral meetings with the Dutch and the Luxembourg Prime Ministers, as well as with the President of the European Council, Mr. Donald Tusk. I have also invited the President of the European Commission, Mr. Jean-Claude Juncker, to visit Ireland in the coming months.
On becoming Taoiseach, in order to ensure an effective, whole-of-Government response to the challenges ahead, I assigned lead responsibility for Brexit to the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade. I have also re-organised the structure of Cabinet committees, with Cabinet committee C dealing with European Union issues including Brexit. My Department maintains strategic oversight of Ireland's response to Brexit, which is a crucial and cross-cutting issue. This work is led by the Second Secretary General, John Callinan, who acts as my Sherpa, and the international, EU and Northern Ireland division. The work of this division includes supporting me in my role as a member of the European Council and in my engagements with other Heads of State and Government and senior figures in the European institutions, as well as preparing for the work of Cabinet committee C and its supporting group of senior officials.
The work led by the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade includes the ongoing detailed preparations for the negotiations at EU level; engagement with the administrations in Belfast and London; and the co-ordination of planning around the economic impacts of Brexit. Across the Government, relevant Departments, agencies and overseas missions are also being further strengthened to deal with Brexit. The objective of this ongoing work is to ensure Ireland achieves the best possible outcomes across all four priorities identified by the Government. These are trade and the economy, the peace process, the common travel area and the future of the European Union with Ireland as a committed member.
We are also working to help maintain peace and develop relationships on the island of Ireland, and between Britain and Ireland, especially in light of the challenges posed by Brexit. The European Council provides overall guidance and maintains close political oversight of the negotiations with the UK. The European Commission task force on Article 50 negotiations with the United Kingdom, led by Mr. Michel Barnier, with which we are in constant contact, represents the EU 27 in the ongoing negotiations.
Last December, the European Council agreed that sufficient progress had been achieved on the phase 1 withdrawal issues to allow us to move negotiations to the framework for the future EU-UK relationship. Acknowledging the progress in subsequent discussions between the EU and the UK on a draft withdrawal agreement, the March European Council adopted a set of guidelines for discussions on the framework. The guidelines confirm the conditional agreement on an orderly transition period dependent on progress on the outstanding issues in the draft withdrawal agreement, including the protocol on Ireland and Northern Ireland and the backstop option on the Border. The European Council will review progress on all these issues in June.
Ireland will, of course, remain a member of the European Union. It is, therefore, crucial that we are active in the debate about its future and that we focus more on what we want to achieve rather than on things we want to block. With the support of my Department and the Tánaiste, I have been engaged in many bilateral contacts with the leaders of other EU member states and the EU institutions with a view to exchanging views on the priorities of the future of Europe. These bilateral contacts are vital to defend and promote Ireland's interests, which include a strong, stable, prosperous and more integrated European Union. I delivered a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg in January that highlighted the need for a forward-looking agenda for the Union with ambition and direction.
I have tasked the Minister of State with responsibility for European Union affairs, Deputy Helen McEntee, with leading a domestic engagement on the future of Europe so that Irish citizens can have their say on what they want for the EU of the future. I launched this engagement process, known as the citizens' dialogue, last November. The process is due to conclude on Europe Day, which is 9 May.
My Department works closely with colleagues in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade on Northern Ireland matters. It is disappointing that we have not yet been able to secure agreement on the re-establishment of the institutions of the Good Friday Agreement as we approach its 20th anniversary. The Tánaiste and I will continue to work closely with the British Government and all the parties in Northern Ireland to try to make progress in the coming months.
In August, my Department published National Risk Assessment 2017 – Overview of Strategic Risks. The document highlighted the intensification of risks arising from Brexit as well as a more general perception of increased geopolitical instability in the world; risks around climate change; human capital and skills needs; technological risks arising from potential cyber attacks or data fraud and theft; continued housing supply constraints; changing demographics; and potentially unrealistic expectations for public expenditure.
Work on this year's national risk assessment has begun and we intend to publish the 2018 report early in the third quarter. The most important actions that the Government can take to mitigate risks, including risks associated with Brexit, and seize future opportunities is to vigorously implement the substantial plans set out in Project Ireland 2040. That will be a significant focus of our attention during the year.
The national digital strategy will be developed during 2018 and will provide for an overarching long-term vision of the impacts of digital developments on Ireland. In a related area of work, my Department continues to play a supporting role in data protection policy by seeking to ensure that the Data Protection Commissioner continues to have the resources she needs and to ensure that Ireland continues to be a leader internationally on digital and data issues.
Finally, my Department supports the National Economic and Social Council in providing forward-looking strategic advice on economic, social and sustainable development issues. The current NESC work programme includes jobless households and the quality of supportive services; climate change and governance for the transition to the low-carbon economy; and land use, land value and urban development. The Secretary General and an assistant secretary, Ms Liz Canavan, serve as chairperson and deputy chairperson of the NESC respectively. The council is meeting today, as Deputies are aware.
I have outlined some of the main outputs of my Department in 2017 and some of the priorities we are working on to make progress in 2018 and beyond. There are of course always new challenges and the Department must be flexible and adaptable. Looking ahead to later this year, for example, the successful organisation of the papal visit will be a significant objective for the Department and will require considerable work by the protocol section in particular.
I will comment briefly on the other Votes. Vote 3 relates to the Office of the Attorney General. The 2018 Revised Estimate for the Office of the Attorney General is €15.32 million. The majority of administrative expenditure relates to staff salaries, which cost €11.7 million this year. The largest expenditure item is a grant of a little under €2.3 million to the Law Reform Commission. Vote 4 relates to the Central Statistics Office. As I mentioned previously, the Government Chief Whip will present the 2018 Revised Estimate for the CSO to the committee. Vote 5 relates to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. The Revised Estimate for the office is €43.5 million. This represents a 6% increase, or €2.4 million, in the budget for the DPP. The increase is designed to cover salary costs and an increase in the provision for general law expenses. Vote 6 relates to the Chief State Solicitor's office. The 2018 Revised Estimate for the Chief State Solicitor's office is a little under €33.7 million. Salaries, wages and allowances account for €17.37 million out of a total administrative budget of a little over €19.68 million. The remaining €2.3 million is attributable to the general running costs of the office. A provision of €15.1 million is allocated for the payment of legal fees incurred. This comprises €13.5 million for counsel and €1.4 million for general law expenses, which includes items such as expert witnesses and stenographers. The balance is to be used to pay external solicitors.
I thank committee members for their attention and I commend the Revised Estimates to the committee.
Fáiltím an Taoiseach agus a chomhghleacaithe chuig an choiste.
I will begin by asking the Taoiseach about a comment in his opening statement. How can the committee take the Taoiseach seriously in his claim that homelessness remains a Government priority, given the level of homelessness we have seen under his reign? Since the last general election, homelessness for children has increased by 100%. Last night, a total of 3,755 children were sleeping in emergency accommodation in hotels, bed and breakfast accommodation and family hubs. In the past 12 months, child homelessness has increased by 50%, yet we are expected to believe somehow that this is a Government priority. If it is a Government priority, does the Taoiseach acknowledge that he and his Cabinet colleagues are failing miserably? I say as much given the unprecedented level of homelessness, in particular child homelessness, that we now have in the State.
Are you taking the questions in groups, Chairman?
No, Taoiseach. The best thing is to answer as you go along.
Deputy Doherty's question is how can he take seriously that homelessness is a Government priority. Deputy Doherty can take us seriously is several ways on that point. First, a new Department has been dedicated mainly to housing, planning and local government. This change involved taking functions out of that Department and moving them to another Department so that the new Department could focus on housing.
A total of €140 million has been spent on emergency accommodation, which represents a major increase on spending on such accommodation. This is taxpayers' money that we would not be spending if this was not an emergency that required spending on emergency accommodation. That is why we do it.
Committee members can see in Project Ireland 2040 a money-backed commitment to build 110,000 social houses, including new homes and new houses over the next ten years. Committee members will have seen our commitment to establish a State development agency, a new State body that will acquire or buy State lands and build on them.
If commitment is down to the amount of work we are doing and the amount of money we are spending, then I do not think anyone can doubt the level of Government commitment to this issue. What we are not seeing is the kind of results we would like to see. That is unbelievably frustrating, most of all for people who are affected by homelessness but also for those who are trying to solve the problem and assist people who are in homelessness.
I saw figures yesterday that indicate a big reduction in the number of people who are rough sleeping. That is welcome and is, in large part, down to the additional bed spaces made available and the additional funding for the agencies. It seems there has been a small reduction in individual homeless but a big and disturbing increase in the number of families who are in emergency accommodation. Certainly, more are becoming homeless every month than we can get out of homelessness and that is extremely disturbing. It is very frustrating that we have not seen sufficient progress to date, but it is certainly not down to lack of prioritisation, funding, effort or commitment from Government. We need to drill down into that and understand better why the policies that we have put into effect thus far have not had the results that we would have hoped for.
The Taoiseach mentioned that it is deeply frustrating for those working to resolve this crisis. That applies to none more than those working on the front line. I imagine the Taoiseach is aware of the comments made by Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy, the founder of Focus Ireland, this morning. She said she has "lost all confidence" in the Government's ability to solve this crisis.
Fr. Peter McVerry has said that the Government's housing plan is deeply flawed and that it was presented with a stack of press releases aimed primarily at presenting a positive picture. That is what people on the ground are saying. Reconfiguration of a Department or more and more press releases on this, that and the other will not solve this crisis. Will the Taoiseach acknowledge that under his leadership, the buck stops with him? He is not a commentator, but the Taoiseach of this State, and under his leadership child homelessness figures have increased significantly. This is not just a matter of statistics or percentages. It is a disservice to those families with children to talk about a 100% increase or a 50% increase as we sometimes do when talking about figures. These are citizens, living in this country who have found that they are homeless as a result of policies the Taoiseach has introduced or refused to introduce, such as real rent certainty and the Focus Ireland amendment, which the Government together with their Fianna Fáil Party colleagues voted against. These are matters that have resulted in the astronomical figures we have today, where, as we speak, almost 10,000 people are homeless in our State.
What does the Taoiseach say to those on the front line who do not have a political axe to grind, but are articulating that the Government's plans to deal with the housing crisis are deeply flawed and that they have lost confidence in the Government to resolve this crisis?
I did not mention anything about press releases or statistics; it is Deputy Doherty who brought that up. One thing I am absolutely certain will not solve our housing crisis or the challenge we face in dealing with homelessness is political point scoring. It will not provide a house for anyone or bring down anybody's rent or make it easier for anyone to get a mortgage or find a home. Political point scoring will achieve nothing in solving people's real problems. I do not think it is the kind of issue that one should try to exploit politically.
I did not mention press releases, rather I mentioned the concrete things the Government is doing, including the significant increase in spending on housing, ranging from emergency housing which we provide for people and the increasing amount of social housing that is being built. Only a few hundred social housing units were being built a couple of years ago and now it is up in the thousands. We expect that up to 4,000 homes will be built this year and the change to the planning regulations will make it more affordable to build apartments.
A point made by Sr. Stanislaus Kennedy this morning that struck me, and she made a very valid point, was that we are seeing all over Dublin, and other cities as well, student accommodation being built. I see cranes all over Dublin and in other cities where commercial property, hotels and student accommodation is being built. All of this is welcome but we need to ask ourselves the fundamental question as to why we are seeing a significant level of construction but not the construction of residential property. There is some residential development and the figures show that 40% more homes were built in February 2018 compared to February 2017, but it is not ramping up enough. It seems to be economic and profitable to build student accommodation, hotels and commercial property and we need to try to work out in the next couple of weeks why it is not as profitable to build residential property.
We need to be very careful that any policy interventions by Government do not inadvertently make the situation worse. We must consider the possibility that some of the Opposition proposals might do that or perhaps some of the things that Government has done in the past, while well intentioned, may have actually been counterproductive.
I did not say the Taoiseach mentioned press releases; it was Fr. Peter McVerry who referred to press releases when describing the Government's plan to tackle the housing crisis as deeply flawed. Fr. McVerry said it was presented with a stack of press statements aimed primarily at presenting a positive picture. On the day when figures emerge that 10,000 people are in emergency accommodation, and children are waking up this morning to go to school from hubs, bed and breakfast accommodation and hotels, the Taoiseach is saying we need to ask ourselves the question as to why this is the case. That is shocking. The Taoiseach has been in Government for seven years. This did not happen overnight. We have seen the homeless figures increase steadily under the stewardship of the Taoiseach's Cabinet but also while he was a Minister sitting at the Cabinet table. He tells the families who are in emergency accommodation that we need to start asking why this is the case.
We need clear actions. This is not political point scoring. Are we supposed to ignore the fact that we have a housing crisis, yet the Government still does not deem it an emergency? Are we to ignore the fact that on five separate occasions our party put to the Taoiseach a proposal on real rent certainty, which he, together with the Fianna Fáil Party, opposed? Are we supposed to ignore the fact that the Focus Ireland amendment, which was simple and stated that one should not evict people into homelessness, was opposed by the Government and colleagues who have entered a confidence and supply agreement? These are some of the reasons that we are seeing the rise in homelessness in the monthly figures. I hear nothing from the Taoiseach on the concrete actions of how he will deal with the issue, bar more commentary about why this and that is happening. It is simply not good enough.
I did not intend to raise this issue today but the Taoiseach in his opening statement mentioned it as a priority. Obviously, if it is a priority, it is failing dramatically when those on the front line state that the Government's plans are flawed. The Government needs to revisit some of the proposals that are being put forward by the Opposition and stop rejecting them simply because they come from the Opposition. Let us hear the issues and hear the proposals that are coming from the front line to deal with this issue. Let us get to grips with the situation which is now a national emergency. It is a travesty that so many people are in emergency accommodation.
I have no difficulty whatsoever describing the housing shortage or the homelessness crisis as an emergency. We would not be spending €140 million a year providing emergency accommodation in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation and family hubs for 10,000 people if it was not an emergency. It is an emergency, but declaring it an emergency does not solve the problem and does not allow us to build houses or apartments more quickly or to provide one more house more quickly for any family. I am happy to declare it an emergency, but that is rhetorical. That will not solve the problem and make things better for any citizen in the State.
The reason that we do not support some of the proposals being put forward by the Opposition is not because they come from the Opposition, but because we believe they would make a bad situation worse. If the Opposition was in charge of this problem, it would make a bad situation much worse. Imposing very hard rent caps, for example, would mean that there would be fewer rental properties built. There would be fewer people willing to rent out their properties and to enter the buy-to-let market. That would have the effect of freezing the market. One might protect a certain number of people from rent increases, but it would make it virtually impossible for new people to rent. Similarly, the effect of other proposals made by the Opposition would cause us to have less supply in the housing market. My contention is that this is an emergency and the Government is acting, but we are not getting the results we need so we need to do more. I am, however, absolutely convinced that if we were to accept the Opposition proposals, such as the ones that Deputy Doherty put forward, we would make a bad situation much worse.
We could debate this issue all day, but I must say that the Taoiseach has some cheek. On a day when under the Taoiseach's stewardship there are 10,000 people in emergency accommodation, the best he can offer is that if the Opposition was in Government, it would be worse because we would introduce a measure that one could not evict a family into homelessness. Let us think about the proposal that Focus Ireland is putting forward, and what we in the Sinn Féin Party have put forward, which is the Focus Ireland amendment, where a landlord who has been supported through the tax net, which means he or she got beneficial treatment in terms of tax because he or she was a landlord, cannot evict a family into homelessness. We say that is an appropriate measure but the Taoiseach states the family can be evicted into homelessness, yet he tells us this is a priority. This is why a large section of those 10,000 people are in homeless accommodation today and this is why I cannot take what the Taoiseach says on this issue seriously because he will not take the steps that will prevent this emergency.
By calling the housing crisis an emergency, it means we can take emergency actions. We can have follow up and a fire in the belly to deal with this issue. We understand the pain, suffering and damage, both psychological and emotional, that is being done as a result of the situation in which many people find themselves today. There is no fire in the belly of those in Government in regard to the housing crisis, and instead they state how many millions are being spent on dealing with it. The Opposition supports the simple proposal not to evict tenants into homelessness.
The Taoiseach does not agree with the proposal and believes it is fine to do so, which is what is happening now. I am dealing with a constituent who is facing being evicted into homelessness for a second time because the Government will not deal with the issue.
The Taoiseach spoke of hard rent caps and rent certainty. Rent certainty is about tagging rent increases to inflation to ensure we do not have further increases in rent such as those that have occurred under the Government, including double-digit increases in certain areas. Rent increases have resulted in people who belong to the "barely getting by" class finding themselves unable to get by and having to present as homeless to local authorities. Solutions to the current emergency have been proposed and the Government must implement them and get a grip on the problem. It must not allow more families to become homeless and then deal with them as emergency cases.
Last week, as other members will attest, representatives of a State-owned bank informed this committee that it had 1,000 properties lying empty. The Taoiseach has tried to convince me that the Government considers this matter an emergency or a priority. The figure of 1,000 empty properties relates to only one bank. There are many others, for example, the Housing Agency offered more than 1,000 properties, of which only 400 were taken up.
The Deputy's time is about to conclude.
I wish to raise a number of other points.
The Deputy will not have time.
I will make one further point on the strategic communications unit, SCU, and the Taoiseach's opening statement. I welcome the decision to disband the unit. Has the Taoiseach or his Secretary General obtained clarification from Mediaforce, the agent acting on behalf of the SCU, regarding a conflict in the evidence in the Secretary General's report where it suggested that no advertising masthead had to exist? It appears Mediaforce presented one version of an email to the Secretary General and an editor of a newspaper presented a separate version of the same email. No clarification was provided at the time of publication. Has such clarification been obtained?
Will the Minister of State indicate how many of the 15 individuals who were seconded to or employed by the strategic communications unit will be redeployed? Will all of them be redeployed?
Will the Minister explain the allocation of €2.5 million for the strategic communications unit in the Revised Estimates given that so far this year the unit has spent €1.5 million?
It appears from the report and information obtained under freedom of information legislation that the Taoiseach was communicating using his private email address. He has provided an explanation for this? Will he explain how often it transpires that he is unable to receive emails on his Oireachtas account? Deputies receive emails on our Oireachtas account on mobile telephones, iPhones and so on. How often does the Taoiseach experience the problem that senior officials in the Department cannot communicate with him through his official email address and he has no access to such emails and must, therefore, use his private email?
I will finish on some of the housing issues. This is an area to which I will pay much more attention in the coming months. While I have paid much attention to the issue already, I would like it to be a bigger feature of my work than answering questions on the strategic communications unit, which seems to have been the major priority of the Opposition for the past few months.
Deputy Doherty spent most of his time speaking about housing.
Deputies will know from figures for the last quarter that rent increases were approximately 1.1%. It is the view of the Residential Tenancies Board, as opposed to my view, that rent increases are slowing. The Sinn Féin policy would effectively place a cap on rent because inflation is virtually zero. While that would certainly protect many people who are currently renting from rent increases, it would also freeze out of the market new people, including young people, those looking for properties for the first time and people moving to this country, because it would reduce the number of people who are willing to enter the buy-to-let market and rent out their properties. The Sinn Féin policy would, therefore, make a bad situation worse.
Evictions are very much a matter for the courts, which are very sympathetic to individual family circumstances. It would be useful to look at the percentage of people in family homelessness who were evicted as it is by no means the majority. We intend to amend the law to strengthen the protections for people with families who face eviction. We will do so on foot of proposals made by the Minister of State, Deputy Kevin Moran. We will strengthen the hand of the courts in respect of evictions by empowering them not to evict families into homelessness. However, one must bear in mind that there are circumstances in which people who can pay the rent do not do so. These are individual cases, which is the reason cases of this nature are dealt with in the courts, as they should be because the courts are generally sympathetic. The percentage of evictions in Ireland compared with other countries is relatively low because our courts take a very sympathetic view of families.
To be helpful to the Taoiseach, the point I was making related to the notice to quit for landlords as opposed to evictions from houses that are to be repossessed.
That is a fair point.
On the strategic communications unit, the SCU has 15 members of staff, seven of whom worked previously in communications in the Department and were seconded from the press office or Government Information Service to the new unit. The remaining eight staff were new, if one likes, in that they came from elsewhere or other sections of the Department. It will, therefore, be a matter for human resources to decide what will happen to these staff. While I do not propose to discuss what will happen to individual staff and I know the Deputy does not want me to do so, it is certainly intended that some of them will be redeployed. Some may well be approaching retirement and will retire, while others are seeking promotion and may be moved to other sections of the Department or other parts of the public service. These are matters for the individuals in question.
One of my greatest regrets in the whole debate concerning the strategic communications unit is the extent to which 15 decent civil and public servants were brought into a public debate and had allegations made against them - perhaps not by Deputy Doherty but by others - that they were doing political work and favouring one political party. That is not true, is not backed up by the evidence and was very unfair to them. Those of us who are involved in politics sign up for this and, to a certain extent, we sign our families and friends up for it. However, these are civil and public servants and they should not have to go home to their children to answer questions as to whether daddy or mummy has done something wrong. However, that is the position in which they were placed as a result of the highly personalised and unfair commentary made against public and civil servants working in the unit. I will come back to that issue at another stage.
In terms of the €2.5 million figure, the budget for the SCU is being reduced from €5 million to €2.5 million. Of this, €2.2 million has been either spent or is committed by contract and approximately €300,000 will be required to wind down the unit.
In terms of private email, my Department has an email policy on which I signed off last October and with which I comply. I have an Oireachtas email account, an email account for the Department of the Taoiseach and a private email account. My policy and practice is to use these accounts for the purpose for which they are intended. However, there are occasions on which I have used my private email account for departmental use. This occurs in perhaps three scenarios, the first of which is when the system is down. While this does not happen often, it happens on occasion. The second is when the battery on my telephone dies, which often happens, and I then use my personal email account on my private phone. It happens much more frequently that people who have my private email address email me about stuff. These would be a mix of things, including-----
The original email sent to the Taoiseach about the SCU on 7 July was sent by senior officials in his Department to his private email. The officials could not have known the Taoiseach's battery was down. The system was still up and running because the officials were using their Oireachtas emails. This is what I do not understand. Why are senior officials - I know Mr. Frazer-----
We must conclude.
While I cannot answer on behalf of a third party, the real world experience is that I have had, I think, four different official email accounts in the past seven years. The first was in the Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport, which was quickly shut down when I moved from the Department. A couple of weeks later, I got an email account for the Department of Health and I subsequently got email accounts for the Departments of Social Protection and the Taoiseach. Many people know me either personally, through business or through work longer than I have been Taoiseach. They have my personal email account and they will email me to that account on occasion because that is the email address they have had for me for years and it may be programmed into their phone.
I comply with my Department's policy which does not forbid the use of private emails. It requires one to make sure they form part of the public record. There are three ways to do this. One can print it and add it to a file; one can forward it to oneself or someone in the Department in order that it is within the public domain; or one can make sure that in the email thread there is somebody with a departmental address. As the Deputy will know, the email to which he is referring was on the public record and released under the Freedom of Information Act for precisely that reason.
There is one last question. Have we received clarification from Mediaforce about the version of the email sent from that company to the Taoiseach suggesting it did not ask the editors not to use the word "advertising"? I also refer to the email from the editor which is identical apart from the reference to the word "advertising". No clarification was received at the time. Has the Taoiseach received oral or written clarification and what follow-up action is to be taken?
Mr. Martin Fraser
I can answer that question as I happen to know the answer, while the Taoiseach does not. As the Deputy knows, I asked Ms Elizabeth Canavan to carry out the investigation because she had not been involved. Quite late in the process one of the editors told her that the email they had received was a little different from what we had seen when we investigated it. We put that to Mediaforce before the investigation was concluded. It did not come back to us in time for inclusion in the report. I had to report to the Taoiseach and the Government on the Tuesday. I did so and the report was published. We have since had clarification. I have seen it, but I have not had time to reflect on it or look at the paperwork. I think I saw an email last night, but we should reflect on it. We will certainly publish it. It does clarify Deputy Pearse Doherty's point, but it would be wrong of me to get into it now. However, I will be very happy to share the clarification with the Deputy once I have had a chance to read it properly. I have not briefed the Taoiseach on it because it was received by Ms Canavan and we have been doing other things.
That is fair enough.
I welcome the Taoiseach and his officials. I wish to continue on the issue of housing and homelessness. I listened to the Taoiseach in his exchange with Deputy Pearse Doherty. Does he accept that the position is getting worse?
Of course, I do; yes, absolutely.
Why does the Taoiseach think that is?
I think there are a number of factors. Problems in politics and with policy that have one cause are easier to solve than those that are multi-factorial and have a complex phenomenology. This is obviously a country with a rising population and increased household formation. Every year in Ireland more housing is needed, unlike in other countries where the population is dropping or there are fewer households. There is also a lack of supply, but it is not as simple as that. It was probably best explained to me by somebody whose name I cannot remember. I went out before Christmas with a group, the name of which I cannot remember. I think it was Streetwise, or perhaps it was the group of doctors who visit people who are sleeping rough. I spent the evening meeting people who were on the streets or living in tents and talking to those who worked with them. The way she described it was this and in some ways it best explained the problem to me. In a normal scenario, were it not for the boom and bust cycle, about 30,000 new homes would be built in Ireland every year. The figure would be in that ball park. In Ireland, because of the financial crisis and the economic crash, there was a seven-year period in which virtually no homes were built. The Government and the local authorities did not have the funds to build homes; the banks were bust and the construction sector was destroyed. During that period about 200,000 or 210,000 houses would ordinarily have been built, but they were not. As a result about 200,000 households which in the past would have bought a home are now renting. As a result, another 200,000 households have been pushed down, some of which have been pushed out of the rental market altogether and fallen off the ladder. That is the best simple explanation that has been given to me for the worsening homelessness problem and housing crisis.
We are going to have to catch up. Not only will we have to get supply to equilibrium, that is, provide what is needed to meet the natural increased demand every year of about 30,000 houses, we have a catch-up figure of about 200,000 to achieve. That is not going to be done quickly. It will take us quite a number of years to get back to building 30,000 houses a year, which is where we need to be, and then catch up on the 200,000 that were not built during the last decade. In the meantime, we are going to have to do lots of things to treat the symptoms of the problem. If I were to apply my medical expertise, there is an underlying problem which we need to solve - a fundamental lack of supply. While we fix that problem we will have to treat the symptoms. That will involve doing some of the things we are doing - providing emergency accommodation; focusing on prevention in order that people will not fall into homelessness; allowing the uplifts in the housing assistance payment; and identifying people early before they lose their home.
Deputy Michael McGrath asked a straight question. Yes, the position is getting worse. I absolutely acknowledge that and have given the Deputy the best analysis I have heard as to why that is the case.
Yes. I, too, will be perfectly honest. I do not get the sense that the Taoiseach and the Government are on top of this issue. The reality is that promise after promise has been broken. There have been commitments given by the Government that the position would improve. When he was Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, the Tánaiste pledged that hotels would no longer be used by July 2017. Not only is the position getting worse, it is getting worse at an accelerated pace. A total of 3,755 children are now homeless; the figure has gone up by nearly 50% in the last year. There is something fundamentally wrong. The Taoiseach has come before the committee and said he will give more time to this issue from now on. What does he mean by that? Has he not been giving it the level of priority it deserves during the months since he became Taoiseach?
There is never enough time in this job to give any one issue all of the time I would like to give it. Whether it be Northern Ireland, Brexit, health which is another huge issue for citizens, keeping the economy on an even keel, one always has to try to find time.
I accept that.
I monitor what is asked during Leaders' Questions and Taoiseach's Questions. I note that the Deputy's party leader has asked many more questions about the strategic communications unit than about housing, but that does not mean I do not think Fianna Fáil thinks housing is not important. It is just a demonstration of the fact that people have to choose how they will spend their time and I would rather spend my time dealing with things like the economy, Brexit, housing and health than other matters that others clearly think are important.
It is not fair of the Taoiseach to select a very short period of time and then extrapolate over a longer period. The amount of resources and Dáil time we have allocated to housing has been very substantial. The Taoiseach needs to acknowledge that. He has acknowledged that the problem is getting worse and states he intends to give more time to dealing with it in the period ahead. The problems are obvious. Some of them were touched on, but it remains the case that there is very significant land hoarding in Ireland. As long as it is more profitable to hold or trade land than to build on it, there is going to be a problem. That remains the case. Banks, including the State-owned banks, receivers, vulture funds and private landowners are sitting on land that could be developed. In many cases, the land has been zoned and is located where services are actually available. This happens because it is more profitable to sit on the land and rely on the expectation that its value will grow. I do not know what the Government is planning to do about this using tax measures. Will they actually be implemented next year?
We have been promised a report on the cost of building housing. We still hear from many builders and developers that it is not viable to build in certain parts of the country. That remains a problem, but I have not seen any such report from the Government to tackle the cost of building housing. It seems to take local authorities forever to get schemes off the ground, even where they have been sanctioned. That obviously is an issue. There are also issues with funding. It was announced in the budget last October that a new €750 million fund would be made available for house building. That has not yet happened.
However, builders and developers are having to borrow at very expensive rates from international funds at perhaps 12% or 14%. It is pushing up the cost of housing with the result being a growing affordability gap and a structural shift in our society where fewer and fewer people into the future will be able to afford a home. This is the reality of what is happening out there. From the work I do at constituency level, and every Deputy does a lot of constituency work, I can tell the Taoiseach that it is getting worse. I have seen a very dramatic uplift in the number of housing-related queries in recent weeks. Far from being confident that the Government is getting on top of this, I think it will get worse. Nothing said by the Taoiseach or the Minister of State will give people confidence that the tide is actually turning because time and again, the Taoiseach has said it will get better and the Government is getting on top of it but the figures get worse at an accelerated pace so something is very badly wrong in the Government's approach.
I would contend that at the very least, we are seeing some improvement in some areas. Rough sleeping is certainly down. The initial count indicates that rough sleeping is down significantly from the last count. I think people will have seen to a certain extent with their own eyes over the past couple of months that rough sleeping is down. We know from the RTB figures that the increase in rents is starting to slow but certainly I have no argument with the Deputy and I will not contend that homelessness is not getting worse. That is evident. There are more families in emergency accommodation than there were before and the number is continuing to rise. I would not take any one month's figures as a trend but certainly the trend has been in the wrong direction over the past couple of months.
We should be talking about solutions here and lots of people want us to focus on solutions, not on the politics of it. The Deputy mentioned land hoarding, which is certainly part of the picture. It is definitely part of the problem. We brought in the derelict sites tax or levy, whatever one wants to call it. This will take effect from 2019. We have announced the establishment of Home Building Finance Ireland, which will be funded from this year. ISIF already provides finance to building so it is not as if it is not being done already. It is but Home Building Finance Ireland will provide more of that. As part of Project Ireland 2040, we have made a commitment to establish a State development land agency - essentially a State developer - that will be able to acquire and develop land. This is one of the things that will form part of the solution. We must bear in mind that even if there is land hoarding, building is also taking place as well but this building is generally not residential. It is commercial property, student accommodation and things like hotels. It is not residential so even in the context of land hoarding, that development is happening but not in residential and not in sufficient numbers.
Does the Taoiseach have an adviser who specialises in housing? If I look at page 21 of the briefing, I can see that there are eight special advisers. Are they within the Department of the Taoiseach?
I think so.
So the Taoiseach has eight special advisers?
I am not sure if there are eight but that sounds about right.
In respect of whole-time equivalents, it says the number is eight. The total number of politically appointed staff is 18.6 whole-time equivalents. What are the eight advising on?
The way it breaks down is that they cover different policy areas. One is a chief of staff who, evidently, is the chief of staff. Two are on the press side and the rest have Departments divided among them. One covers housing.
So one person-----
Not exclusively.
Not exclusively housing so would they have a portfolio that would include housing but would also include other things?
Yes. It is not my practice to have a special adviser for every different policy issue. I could do so but I do not want to and do not intend to do so. I could have one for housing, one for agriculture, one for Europe and one for Northern Ireland. One could do it. I could have a whole cabinet of maybe 20 or 22 special advisers. I decided not to do that. We have Government Departments and Ministers, each of whom has their own advisers. Rather than trying to replicate every Department in my Department, I decided to have a smaller number of advisers than the previous Taoiseach, the Taoiseach before him and the Taoiseach before him. I rely on the Department of Finance and finance advisers for advice on finance. I use the same arrangement with housing and health and have a smaller number of advisers who have a few portfolios each. If the Deputy is advocating that I take on more advisers, I will give that consideration.
If the Taoiseach wanted to bring more expertise in the housing area to his Department, I do not think anyone in the Opposition would object. In respect of subhead A4, tribunals of inquiry, on page 28, are we still paying bills relating to the Moriarty tribunal?
Yes.
Could the Taoiseach flesh that out? What has been the cost of the Moriarty tribunal so far? It reported in March 2011 and we are still dealing with third party legal costs. Is that correct?
The cost to date is €62 million.
How long does the settlement of costs go on for once a tribunal concludes and reports? It has been seven years since the tribunal reported and it is still going on.
It can go on for as long as there are legal challenges.
Is the Charlton tribunal included in this subhead as well?
No, it is included under justice.
Regarding commissions of investigation, the Estimate is €4.7 million in 2018. Is that correct?
That is correct.
The spend in 2017 was about half of what was estimated. The Estimate was about €4.7 million or €4.8 million and €2.4 million was spent. Regarding the commission of investigation into IBRC, what did the Taoiseach make of the former Anglo Irish Bank CEO's statement that the cost of that commission of inquiry could reach €100 million?
The estimate we have is less than that. We think it is going to cost somewhere between €20 million and €25 million. That is for the first module dealing with Siteserv. This is based on the current rate of expenditure, the extended timeframe for its work, the risk of further delays and the risk of significant third party legal costs that may arise. I do not think it will be a mystery or surprise to any politician that commissions of inquiry and tribunals are very expensive. When we set them up, and they are set up by the Oireachtas and not by the Government, we need to have regard to the fact that this is expensive and will cost taxpayers a lot of money. I would encourage all parties in their calls for inquiries to bear that in mind.
With regard to the budgetary implications of the decision to wind down the SCU, the Estimate that was provided to us in advance under Vote 2, Department of the Taoiseach, showed that the cost was €35.9 million but today the Taoiseach is reducing that by €2.5 million as a result of the Government decision. Is that correct?
Yes.
So the Taoiseach's statement this morning is updating the Estimates we were presented with?
We discussed this before we came in. I am not sure whether or not it can be done but what we are saying to the Deputy is that €2.5 million will not be spent. I am not sure the committee can do it today but if it can take €2.5 million from that global figure, that is what we are proposing.
I do not believe we have any power to change Estimates. We do not even adopt them. We note them as such. Is that correct?
Yes, we cannot do anything else.
If it is noted, what we can do in the Dáil is present it as a Revised Estimate with a figure that is lower.
I understood that when the budget of €5 million was announced or provided for in the budget last October, it was stated that this was a re-allocation. It was not extra money or a new cost. Is that correct?
It was an allocation from within the Department of the Taoiseach's budget so our budget actually went down compared to what it was in 2017. Our budget in 2018 was lower so it was from within the existing envelope of the Department which will be lower again so we are probably one of the few Departments in Government that is still reducing its budget every year.
The Taoiseach has stated the €5 million represented a reallocation in the Vote for the Department of the Taoiseach last year.
Yes, in the overall Vote.
Is the Department's Estimate for 2018 which includes the strategic communications unit still less than the Vote for 2017?
Correct. That is what I meant when I said it was cost neutral. We said we would find the money in the Vote and have done so. There was no increase in spending by my Department. In fact, it went down and will go down again.
Am I correct in stating the Taoiseach is taking €2.5 million of the €5 million and that the remaining €2.5 million has largely been spent or has already been committed?
The figure of €2.2 million has been spent or committed, as in contracted. For example, there were to be radio advertisements and partnerships for Project Ireland 2040. We have decided not to proceed with them, but because the slots have been contracted and committed to, we will use them for something else, most likely something such as Healthy Ireland, a campaign that is not as contentious.
When the Taoiseach refers to contracted slots, how many months of activity have been contracted. It is very early in the year for half of the budget to have been committed. Were contracts entered into for activity throughout the remainder of 2018?
I do not know the answer to that question, but if one looks at the figure of €5 million as being for the full year, spending €2.5 million by the end of July would not be unusual. One would spend half of the budget in the first half of the year and the other half in the second half of the year.
We are at the end of March. How much has been spent?
Some €1.33 million has been spent and another €900,000 has been committed, largely for Project Ireland 2040 and Global Ireland.
The money has been committed. Was it to be spent by July? Is that the relevance attached to the Taoiseach's reference to July? Why did he mention it? Will the campaign be wound down in July?
A figure of €2.2 million has been spent or committed. Had the SCU continued, another €2.5 million would have been committed. However, that will not happen.
What are the lessons to be drawn from the issue?
That is a good question. There are many lessons. One particular lesson that might be learned is that in politics and when it comes to the reform of Departments, the Civil Service and public service, any time one tries to do anything new or different, inevitably there will be controversy. I am not sure if the Deputy recalls that merrionstreet.ie was established in 2010. The Government of the time - the Deputy was then a backbencher - had the newfangled idea - God forbid - that it should have a news service and a website with videos. Actually the debate at the time was very similar. There were conspiracy theories and allegations, as well as paranoia, except that the shoe was on the other foot and it was people in my party who were saying the kind of things members of the Deputy's party are now saying. I think the lesson is that any time one tries to do anything new, particularly in the communications and media space, it will generate a degree of political paranoia, controversy and conspiracy theories.
Does the Taoiseach think that is the only lesson to be learned?
No; I think it is one lesson. A second lesson - an unfortunate one - is that the Civil Service and the public service can come under attack unfairly, as I have mentioned. One of the difficulties in the Civil Service and the public service is that it does tend to be risk averse because that is always the safe option. It is not particular to the Department of the Taoiseach; it is true across the Civil Service and the public service. It is always a safer option to do things in the way they have always been done. One of the jokes in the public service is that the safe thing to do is to give the contract to IBM, not to a new or an innovative firm because if one does things as they have always been done, one will not be criticised, but if one innovates and tries to do things differently, one leaves oneself open to criticism. I hope that will not be a lesson to be learned from this, but I fear it will be.
The Taoiseach does not appear to have reflected on any lesson that he could have learned from the Government's approach; therefore, there is no acknowledgement that the campaign crossed the line, at least on occasion, into politics. There has been no acknowledgment that things could have been done differently or better, which is worrying. The lessons the Taoiseach has highlighted involve no acknowledgment that the issue could have been handled much better and that things could have been done differently and perhaps avoided controversy.
I do not think there was anything that could have been done to avoid controversy. I think controversy was inevitable. It started from the day I announced I was setting up the strategic communications unit. There was controversy even before it was established. It did not happen until many months after the announcement as I was answering questions about it in the Dáil. By the way, I do not believe it crossed the line into politics. Ms Elizabeth Canavan's report indicates that it did not.
There are two obvious lessons to be learned. First, I accept that there is a lesson about controls that could have been put in place in advance. Second, I issued a guideline on the matter, but, on reflection, I should have done so earlier. If I had known more about these things, it was about the requirement for all editorial content to be signed off on by the SCU and the Department in advance and as part of the media partnerships. Decisions on how the advertorials would look and what photographs would be included in them were left to local editors. It would have been advisable for us to say from the outset that the SCU would sign off on the editorial content. While it was the case that 100% of the advertorials were clearly marked as being in partnership with Project Ireland 2040 and the Government, we could have been much more prescriptive in how that should appear.
A number of weeks ago I made five points on what could have been done better. There is certainly a lesson to be learned in that regard. If it had been done earlier, perhaps there might have been less controversy, but I think there would still have been controversy.
I thank the Taoiseach for appearing before the select committee. I will focus on the strategic communications unit and make no apologies for doing so. I know that the Taoiseach has been quick on a number of occasions to say the Opposition should not focus on it, but I think there is significant public interest in what I see as public money being used for political purposes. As far as I understand it, the Taoiseach will not appear before the Committee of Public Accounts. Therefore, this is the opportunity we have to question him about it.
This is a much more senior committee.
It moves around with the Chairman.
Yes.
I pay tribute to the journalists Ms Ellen Coyne of The Times, Ireland edition, and Mr. Hugh O'Connell of The Sunday Business Post for pursuing this issue. In particular, Ms Coyne's article was described as inaccurate reportage by the Taoiseach, but I think it was subsequently largely accepted by him as being accurate. They shone a light on this issue when, by its actions in terms of FOI requests and so on, the Government was eager for a light not to be shone on it. Mediaforce was acting on behalf of the strategic communications unit. I am not saying the strategic communications unit knew about this thing, but Mediaforce was acting on its behalf. Correspondence between Mediaforce and newspaper editors stated part of its deal with the Government was that copy would not include a label similar to an advertorial, that the sponsored content should look like editorial, that journalists were told to give Government copy a local angle and that if they did a good job, there would be "more to come on Brexit". That was a communication that went to a series of publications, many of which were under financial strain and some of which were in the same ownership group as Mediaforce, which the Taoiseach accepted was problematic.
I would have to look at that email again. There has been some conflation on this. Mediaforce was also used in the Creative Ireland campaign, which predates the strategic communications unit.
I have separate Creative Ireland emails. These are reported as being the Project Ireland 2040 emails. The essential point is that Mediaforce did request that copy would not include a label such as "advertorial" and that the sponsored content should look like editorial. Does the Taoiseach accept that was the essence of some of the communication?
The email to which I think the Deputy refers states:
A couple of points on the above that I wanted to reiterate.
In terms of strapline - attached is an idea of how this should look.
It should read "Brought to you in partnership with Project Ireland 2040".
The email was absolutely clear and reiterated that it should read "Brought to you in partnership with Project Ireland 2040". It went on "This will clearly illustrate to readers that this is a Govt initiative and negate the need to have ADVERTORIAL on the page etc." That appears on page 39 of the Canavan report. As the Deputy correctly acknowledged, Mediaforce did not have a contract with the strategic communications unit but was a subcontractor.
Does the Taoiseach think it was problematic that Mediaforce was paying for articles which were not being marked as advertorial, sponsored content or something which made clear that it was not editorial, but paid-for content from the Government?
What it says, and it was the direction from the strategic communications unit and complied with in 100% of the cases, is that everything had to be clearly marked "Brought to you in partnership with Project Ireland 2040", that it was a Government initiative and often had the Government logo. I do not think that any reasonable person looking at those advertorials would not have seen that it was clearly marked. The word "advertorial" might not have been used but that is a different matter.
The Taoiseach does not accept it was a problem that they did not say that they were advertisements or sponsored content. The term, "in partnership with" might be deliberately more vague or it might be accidentally more vague. The Fraser report accepts that these should be clearly marked advertorial in future. Is that not an admission that it was problematic that they were not?
If one looks back at the advertorials that were done for the national development plan in 2007, none said they were from the Government. The term "Government of Ireland" was never used; they used phrases such as "commercial feature", "public information" or "special feature". It was for the reader to figure out this was coming from the Government. I think what was done in this case was, if anything, more transparent than what was done in the past because it used "Government of Ireland" with a big harp logo. Based on previous practice, I think this was more transparent than what was done in the past but we have learned from this. I have set out some guidelines for the future, which have been reflected in Mr. Fraser's report. These say that in future, if my Department pays for content of this nature, it should be marked with one of a number of possible terms such as sponsored feature, commercial feature or advertorial. I partially accept what Deputy Paul Murphy is saying but not fully.
When the Taoiseach says that he is not as bad as, or as bad as or slightly better than Fianna Fáil, he is not winning in the spinning stakes.
Maybe not, but there were a number of allegations, one of which was that this was the biggest public relations campaign ever run by the Government. It was not. It was not even the biggest run this year by the Government. The allegation was that this was somehow unprecedented, which I dispute. An allegation which was made and which has now been completely refuted by four local newspaper editors, was that they were somehow pressurised by a civil servant or someone acting on the Government's behalf to use pictures of Fine Gael Senators and candidates. All four confirmed that was not the case. Either the editors are telling porkies or are involved in some sort of cover-up or the Opposition was involved in coming up with conspiracy theories. Which does the Deputy think was true?
Does the Taoiseach dispute the idea that senior staff at several newspapers owned by Iconic, which in turn is owned by Mediaforce, were directed by Mediaforce to make sponsored content look like news?
Where is that?
That is in Ellen Coyne's article of 26 February, headlined "Make 2040 ads look like real news, papers told."
Was that not Creative Ireland?
Is the Deputy sure?
Yes I am. There is a separate reference to Creative Ireland.
I may be wrong, so do not hold me to this, but I think that what the Deputy referred to was communications in respect of Creative Ireland, a campaign which predated the strategic communications unit. While that is not inaccurate, it is conflation, which is never good.
Let us look at that. The Creative Ireland project directed by John Concannon used Mediaforce and had this problematic media communication, which seems more explicitly problematic than the Ireland 2040 project. We are talking about John Concannon, strategic communications unit, Mediaforce and the media. How did Mediaforce end up giving these directions, which were not clear? Where did they pick up the idea that there would be pressure, indications or hints that Mediaforce wanted material to look editorial rather than being clearly sponsored content? Does the Taoiseach know where that came from?
I cannot answer questions on behalf of Mediaforce.
Unfortunately, it will not answer questions.
It is a third party with whom the Department did not even have a contract. I had not even heard of Mediaforce until this became a controversy some weeks ago.
Will the Taoiseach continue to use Mediaforce?
I will have no role whatever in deciding who gets a private contract from any Department. I never have and never will. I can absolutely assure the Deputy that I will not ever decide on that when something goes out to tender and someone wins the contract. I am sure the Deputy is not suggesting that I should take it into my role as Taoiseach to make decisions on who gets contracts or subcontracts. I never have and never will. I can assure the Deputy that I would never decide that. When something goes out to tender, it goes out to tender.
It is possible, then, that Mediaforce could be used again by whatever replaces the strategic communications unit but if it is, the Taoiseach or his Department will issue very clear instructions that it will ensure that sponsored or advertorial content appears clearly as such.
Those instructions have already been issued and they are there in black and white in the report by Mr. Fraser which the Deputy has in front of him.
To move on, why did the Taoiseach's Department seek to block a series of freedom of information requests made by The Sunday Business Post relating to email correspondence about the strategic communications unit, including changing the reason for the Taoiseach objecting to the request?
I do not object. I do not have a role in deciding what is released under freedom of information legislation. The way that it works is that there is a designated official in each Department who decides whether or not something is released. If it is not released, the person seeking the information can appeal to the Information Commissioner, and occasionally they do. I do not sign off on freedom of information requests; it is not set up like that.
Was the Taoiseach aware of freedom of information requests from The Sunday Business Post in respect of the strategic communications unit?
I was aware that there was an inordinate number of freedom of information requests about the strategic communications unit from all sorts of different publications. I did not ask to see any of them and would never do that.
Was the Taoiseach aware that the freedom of information requests were being denied by his Department?
No.
I do not think so, it is not the practice. I do not mean it in a diminutive way but I appreciate that the Deputy has never served in government and so does not know how this works. Nobody comes to the Minister to say that a freedom of information request has come in on something. Moreover, no one comes back a few weeks later to say it has been refused and to provide a reason. It is something that is handled by officials, often relatively junior officials.
Is it the case that the Taoiseach was not aware subsequently of why the requests were refused?
I read something about Cabinet confidentiality or something along those lines. Again, it is not something that crosses one's desk as a Minister.
Okay.
I have never had something cross my desk as a Minister asking if I agreed with it being released under freedom of information. There is provision in the legislation where one can give observations.
I could count on one hand, however, the number of times I have been asked for observations. Very often, when something is released under freedom of information, the first I hear of it as Minister is when I read about it in the newspapers. I do not like that and would not mind getting a heads-up.
One of the things which emerged from freedom of information was the Taoiseach's use of his private email for official Taoiseach-related emails. Can the Taoiseach provide an estimate of how many times he has used his private email for purposes related to his role as Taoiseach since taking office?
I suppose it depends on what one defines as the role of "Taoiseach".
I mean in an all-encompassing way. It is not about the Taoiseach deciding where to go for a meal or things relating to his personal life or explicitly to Fine Gael party matters. I refer to things related specifically to his job as Taoiseach.
If one excludes personal and party business, while I could not give a number, it is very rarely.
Is it less than ten in the last year?
I do not want to make up a figure.
Does the Taoiseach accept it is problematic for the Taoiseach to use his personal email for official work and Taoiseach-related business?
It is not my practice but it happens on occasion. I have provided the Deputy with three very obvious instances where it occurred. My Department has an email policy which recognises that on occasion, staff members and officers like me would use personal emails. The policy covers how we ensure those emails become public records. That is either by printing them out and adding them to a file, by forwarding them to a Department address or by ensuring someone in the email thread is there. That is how we ensure it is part of the public record. I guarantee the Deputy that if I wanted to conceal something, I would not put it in any sort of email-----
I will bear that in mind.
-----given the number of people who can read our personal and private emails.
I have two final questions on the information which came out from freedom of information requests. Some of the information included correspondence between the Taoiseach's chief of staff and Mr. John Concannon on the idea of turning "republic of opportunity" from a slogan to a charter. It is obviously a slogan the Taoiseach used in the course of his campaign in Fine Gael to become leader of the party and, subsequently, Taoiseach. It is a slogan which is associated very much with Fine Gael. Does the Taoiseach accept that those emails and the fact that the discussion happened confirms the point about a blurring of the lines between Fine Gael and the Government? Relatedly, other emails which came out include correspondence from the Taoiseach to, I think, Mr. John Concannon talking about how the child care initiative should be a Government initiative as opposed to being seen as a Department of Children and Youth Affairs one. Was that about the Taoiseach's Government, him in particular, or Fine Gael getting the benefit and credit for the initiative as opposed to an Independent Minister, Deputy Zappone?
The short answer to that is "No". It was about the Government getting credit for it rather than a particular Department or agency. The Government is much wider than any political party or even the Independents who are in it. The Government includes Departments and it is a wider concept. My view for a long time has been and remains that Government is too siloised and that Departments and agencies operate very often as independent republics that do their own thing too much. I see part of my role as Taoiseach as being to bring about joined-up Government and to bring together Government policies, implementation and communications. There is a tendency sometimes on the part of Departments and agencies to engage in a lot of self-promotion, quite frankly. From the public's point of view, this is all the Government. The public does not really want to know which Department or agency it is. People want to know what the system is doing for them.
I thought one of the best campaigns co-ordinated by the strategic communications unit related to the self-employed and the rights and benefits we were extending to them, including paternity benefit, treatment benefit and invalidity pension for the first time. When Government is broken up into so many silos and agencies, however, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, for example, only sees people who are self-employed in terms of PRSI S-class contributions. That is how the Department sees it. It thinks of self-employed people as PRSI S-class payers for which they get certain benefits. The Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners only see self-employed people as those who pay self-employed tax and who get certain credits. The Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation only sees people who are self-employed through the prism of entrepreneurship, which leads to a very fragmented message, very fragmented policy-making and poor implementation. Part of my job as Taoiseach and of my Department is to join up Government and to bring together policy, implementation and communications. That is why we did it as a package when we decided to do something for the self-employed. We improved their social benefits, increased their tax credit and improved entrepreneurship supports. We had joined-up policy and implementation and we communicated it as a single campaign on what the Government of Ireland was doing to improve things for the self-employed. The old way was to have three Departments doing three different things without talking to each other or being joined-up at all.
What about the "republic of opportunity" question?
I would have to look at that again as I do not remember in my own mind when I started using "republic of opportunity" as a term. I am not sure if it was during the Fine Gael leadership campaign. It may have been subsequently. I may have been using it before it was integrated as a Fine Gael slogan for a period. A lot of ideas are bounced around as part of the deliberative process. The Deputy will know that "republic of opportunity" was first used by the Labour Party, not by Fine Gael. It is not something I have patented and it does not belong to me. It is a metaphor. I am pretty sure it was never used by the SCU in any way. If anything, that indicates we were careful not to do something like that.
It was considered.
A million things are considered on any given day.
In his opening statement, the Taoiseach mentioned strong relationships in Europe and the world. When he took office, the Taoiseach made an announcement about increasing our footprint or presence globally. Many people agreed that we had and had a significant and widespread presence throughout the globe and that tapping into that and utilising it for even clear economic purposes made a great deal of sense. From what I do, my experience is that we have never been as active in the United States of America and Washington, in particular. I base that on some knowledge of what previous Administrations did when it came to the USA. It is fair to say we have had a stronger presence in Washington over the last eight months.
That is what Deputy Deasy is doing.
I thank the Chairman.
The Deputy deserves promotion.
When I look at the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, I see a Department which, through no one's fault, is somewhat consumed by Brexit and Northern Ireland. Considering that people agreed about the intention to increase that presence globally for very good reasons, what practical steps are being undertaken within the Taoiseach's own Department to make sure it happens outside the obvious constraints of Brexit and Northern Ireland and the internal pressures that leads to?
Brexit creates, in some ways, an impetus for us to increase our presence around the world to become less reliant on UK markets. Even if there were no Brexit, we should be doing it anyway as there is a big world out there, which is much larger than Britain and Europe. We are working across Departments on joined-up policy-making to develop what we are calling "Global Ireland 2025". I have the latest draft in my briefcase but I have not had the time to read the bloody thing yet. Hopefully, I will get around to that over the Easter break. In essence, our plan over the next seven years to 2025 is to increase very substantially our presence around the world by beefing up existing diplomatic missions, opening new ones and expanding the roles of the IDA, Enterprise Ireland and Bord Bia. It also means doing things in the arts and culture space.
For so many people around the world, their first glimpse of Ireland is through the arts, our literature and language. One of the things I got to do in New York which I was delighted to do was increase our funding for the Irish Arts Centre. I would love to see a number of Irish arts centres around the world. The Deputy will know from working with Mercyhurst University and others the value of education exchanges, of which I would like to see more. It is part of the philosophy I am trying to bring to government, of taking the objective first - to increase our footprint around the world - and then building our policy behind it, not with just one Department but with several Departments and agencies implementing it, and communicating it in a singular way.
I have a few questions for the Taoiseach. I know that he is running against time, but I ask him to bear with me. How many staff, if any, outside of the 15 in the strategic communications unit, are on contract?
None of the staff is on contract. They are all public and civil servants.
Was Mr. Concannon-----
He was seconded from Fáilte Ireland. I do not want to talk about any individual.
That is okay.
He is not on a contract.
No one is on a contract.
He is a public servant.
An article in The Sunday Business Post made reference to the spend of €178 million in 2016 by various Departments. What would the strategic communications unit have achieved with that spend or was it completely separate from it? Was its intention to streamline the spend of the Government? In every Department there is a budget for public relations and a PR section, to which a number of people are attached. They are all separate. Was this a completely separate unit or had it something to do with modernising all of what was happening in the various Departments?
If we look at the baseline research, it was about a number of issues, including streamlining communications. Work will continue to streamline communications across government. It was never about centralising everything in the Department because the figure of €178 million includes bodies such as An Post which is a State-owned enterprise. It should be doing its stuff totally separately. The same applies to other semi-State bodies. Certainly, it is about co-ordinating and streamlining communications to deliver savings over time. I mentioned national campaigns such as that relating to the self-employed. There is also the issue of capacity building.
Is the Taoiseach saying that in the future the strategy will be that this type of campaign will be run by or through the strategic communications unit and that over time savings would have been achieved by way of a reduction in PR units in various Departments? Where would the money have been saved?
What would have been run from the strategic communications unit would have been national campaigns. I gave the classic example of the self-employed when in ordinary circumstances we might have had three Departments running three campaigns that would have affected the self-employed in three ways. Would it not make much more sense, from the point of view of the customer, the person, not the Department in the silo?
The Taoiseach said in part of his answer to some of the questions asked that taking the safe route, which essentially would have meant no change and maintaining the status quo, might have been the better option. Given his years of service here and the fact that he is a young Taoiseach, I ask him not to take the safe route because if that were to happen, we would remain with the status quo and nothing would change. That takes me to other issues such as reform. I am asking this question in the context of reform rather than political point scoring. The place needs to be reformed. The House does not function in the way it should. The committee is prevented from taking Bills because of the money message issue. There is a queue of Bills both here and in every other committee. We would love to be able to do our work well and effectively, but when it comes to legislation of this kind, we simply cannot deal with it. It comes down to the lack of money messages from the Government. Bills on all sorts of issue keep being referred to us, but the system does not function. Yesterday there was a meeting of Chairmen which I could not attend, but there was no resolution. It is very frustrating, not just for this committee but for others also. Is there anything that could be done to break the deadlock?
Yes, I think there is. I think I am correct in saying that since the Dáil was elected approximately five Private Members' Bills have become law, ranging from Deputy Tony McLoughlin's Bill which bans fracking and the legislation which recognises Irish Sign Language to legislation which deals with more mundane matters. It will now be legal as a result of a Private Members' Bill to buy a drink in a pub on Good Friday. Five is a lot more than the number of Bills passed in previous Dáileanna, but it is still not a lot. I would like to see more.
The Taoiseach should not let it be his benchmark.
No, it should not be. It would not be much better if it were ten or 15 a year, rather than five over two years. Let us be honest - we do have a problem. When the Government brings forward legislation, it goes through a particular process. There is permission by the Government to draft a general scheme. The heads of the legislation are brought to the Government and published. Very often they are referred to a committee for scrutiny. The legislation is then drafted, a process which involves the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel. It is then published. Two weeks later it enters the Dáil or the Seanad to be discussed on Second Stage. What we have with a Private Members' Bill from Opposition or Government backbenchers is a Bill that can be written on Monday or Tuesday, published on Wednesday, tabled for debate on Thursday and complete Second Stage the following week. There is a huge amount of legislation coming through and a lot of it is not of good quality. It is something that should have been dealt with by way of a motion rather than legislation. It was probably actually written with a view to getting publicity, rather than being put through.
The total number of Private Members' Bills with this committee is nine and we require money messages for four of them. It might be legislation of poor quality and legislation with which the Taoiseach does not necessarily agree, but why not say that? He is someone who answers directly. Why not just tell the committee that he will not issue a money message instead of having us wonder whether we will receive money messages for the four Bills? Whoever decides on money messages should make a decision. Tell us that the Bills are useless, that they are wrong and that a money message will not be issued. It appears that the House is clogged up with all of these Bills on which no one is making a decision. All I am asking for, without being critical of the Taoiseach or anyone who deals with money messages, is for a decision to be made to say "yes" or "no".
The Oireachtas commissioned Mr. Aidan Dunning, the former Secretary General at the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, to produce a report on this issue. He made suggestions which he made independently as to how we could improve the system by raising the bar for Bills to get to the money message stage, but his proposals were rejected.
His proposals.
They did not receive the support of the Business Committee, which is regrettable. They were good proposals. It was not the Chairman, but a number of Opposition parties, on the one hand, complained that they could not get their Bills through, yet, on the other, would not support these proposals.
This is the interesting thing - the Taoiseach runs the Government. He might not run the Business Committee, but he does run the Government. His Cabinet makes the decision. In the absence of clear decisions on reform, he should call it. With respect, the answer he has just given is the old-style political answer that a report will be produced. If he is honest, he does not like that answer himself.
I had not finished my answer.
What?
I had not finished my answer.
Right.
We have not given up on this. The Ceann Comhairle's office has been in consultation with my office-----
We had a meeting last Christmas-----
-----regarding a solution that would-----
I went to the meeting of chairmen last Christmas. I do not usually go to those meetings because I find the bureaucracy in this place quite painful. I went to the meeting just to see what it was like. It was a complete waste of time. There was another meeting yesterday which also turned out to be a complete waste of time. The only way to break the logjam is by the Government taking the initiative. I will just say that much.
Does Mr. Fraser want to answer that?
On the tribunals-----
Would Mr. Fraser like to have a say? He is closer to this than me.
Mr. Martin Fraser
Seeing as I have been asked, and not to avoid the question, the Dunning report was done by the Oireachtas and not by the Government. I think it contains good proposals and we have been trying to talk to the Oireachtas. If we can get progress on the quality of Bills and-----
Make the decision. Do not tell me it is easier said than done.
Mr. Martin Fraser
It is not for me to talk about how Ministers would or would not treat Private Members' legislation.
I know. That is why-----
Is it fair or right to expect me to adjudicate on the quality of Bills? There should be a system that would ensure the Bills would not get through.
No. Do not comment on the process, make a decision. That is all I am asking. Can I just say-----
Can I say something on that?
If it is short.
It is very short. The quality of Bills has been mentioned. We have a Bill before this committee which the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, asked me at the time not to bring on Committee Stage until the summer of last year. I agreed because his Department was under pressure. The Bill was drafted by the Law Reform Commission. There is no issue in respect of the quality of the Bill. However, the Taoiseach's Government is holding that Bill up. This is simple but important legislation which the Government actually supports.
Which Bill is that?
It is the Consumer Insurance Contracts Bill. I have another Bill that would facility bankers being jailed if they lie to the Central Bank. It was drafted by the office that provides legal assistance to Oireachtas Members. There is no issue around the quality of those Bills. The Government has taken a one-size-fits-all approach. Important legislation that is coming from the Opposition has been stalled simply because it is coming from the Opposition.
We have at least five Private Members' Bills that have become law now so it is not, by any means, a blanket ban on Opposition legislation. I will check on that first one. There are approximately 200. That one has yet to appear in my in-box in the context of either requesting a money message or refusing one.
Perhaps the Taoiseach will examine it then.
I want to come back to something the Taoiseach said about tribunals. I refer to his statement to the effect that he encourages all parties to keep in mind the cost of tribunals. That is okay with me. However, we have to look at the reasons for some of the tribunals. The total failure of the State to deal with particular problems is the reason for some of them. Some of these have come from whistleblowers and the Taoiseach has been very supportive of them. By all means control the cost of tribunals but someone needs to examine the functions of Government and bring about the reforms that are necessary whereby we can learn from our mistakes. I refer to where we attempt to put in place processes and procedures that eliminate such mistakes as much as is possible. There will always be mistakes. As long as we have humans, we are going to have mistakes. However, at least minimise them. It is almost depressing to see, every single week, the Committee of Public Accounts or this committee dealing with some failure of the State that has happened in some other guise down through the years. It just trundles on relentlessly. There is no change. There is the usual spoof from some Departments in respect of their responses to particular issues but no real gain for the State out of it. I ask the Taoiseach to look at that as well.
In that context, I want to come to the work of this committee. Permanent TSB and AIB are proposing to sell a huge tranche of mortgages. The Permanent TSB sale involves home loans, split mortgages and all sorts of things. AIB is centred on businesses, including small businesses, farms and that kind of thing. Something has to be done about that. I appeal to the Taoiseach to find a mechanism to prevent these fire sales to vulture funds because they will create massive social problems in the future relative to housing and families. I have seen, at first hand through the courts, the type of trauma and difficulties caused. I am not talking about those who will not pay or have it and will not pay. I am talking about those who are caught in a bind with the banks.
The banks will say that they work with the customers. They do not; at lease not effectively. There is one bank that certainly has drilled down, worked with every single customer and has said it will not sell to vulture funds. That is Bank of Ireland. However, the others seem to be preparing a sale which I believe the Government should stop. I am making that point because, while we deal with the banks here, the vulture funds have refused to come before us. They are not regulated. The agents that are regulated, who are as bad as the vulture funds, will not come before us either. They will not participate in the democratic process of being transparent and honest with the people we represent. It is deeply frustrating and annoying to see these people, who are in difficulty and cannot sort out their problems, coming to us while the vulture funds are giving us the two fingers. They will not come near us. It is not right.
The national housing co-operative and fair mortgage bill is with the Ceann Comhairle's office and the Bill's Office at the moment. Mr. Edmund Honohan has been highlighting it. Again, this is an issue in respect of which the Taoiseach and the Cabinet, for example, could take an initiative whereby ethical funds - and they are there - rather than the vultures would be the preferred buyers of these loans. There is no place for vulture funds in Ireland now. It is a point I am bringing to the Taoiseach's attention. If he wants to comment on it, fair enough. I ask him to consider it. Perhaps he could send some message to the vulture funds and their agents that this is where they are made accountable and this is where they should come. A strong word from the Taoiseach would certainly change the mindset of these people who are blackguarding innocent individuals throughout the country. They are refusing to deal with those to whom I refer.
People and bodies corporate invited to testify before the Oireachtas should do so. I know the banks have done that and I do not see any reason why investment funds would not or should not do so. The Government is willing to accept the legislation brought forward by Deputy Michael McGrath on the regulation of vulture funds. I am not up to date on the engagement between the Deputy and the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohue. I believe we are making progress towards enacting that legislation. That may change the market and change the picture. I agree with the Chairman that we need to make a big distinction between people who can pay and will not and those who will never be able to pay. I am, to be honest, a bit sceptical that there is an ethically funded co-operative out there with billions of euro willing to buy loans that will never be repaid.
No, these are not loans that will never be repaid. They are performing loans that involve agreements with the banks - perhaps on a split-mortgage basis - and that are now going to be sold to the vulture funds. We have investigated this. I cannot go into detail now but in the context of Deputy Michael McGrath's Bill-----
It is the non-performing loans that are the problem though, not the performing ones.
However, the ones they are selling, according to the Single Supervisory Mechanism, SSM, are the ones that are split mortgages. AIB has decided that these split mortgages are okay. They can be retained and worked out. However, Permanent TSB has taken a different view. It believes they have to be sold. It is another discussion. I am just making the point. I am not defending those that will not pay. However, I am defending the ones that-----
If we can find a means to separate the split mortgage loans and treat them differently, I think that would be good.
If I could just mention the money message again. The Consumer Protection (Regulation of Credit Servicing Firms) (Amendment) Bill 2018 is Deputy Michael McGrath's Bill. We are still waiting for notification from the Ceann Comhairle with regard to a money message for that Bill. There are examples of solutions that are being held up by the system itself.
The Taoiseach talked about health. FreeStyle Libre is a treatment for diabetes. A second treatment is Vimizim. Is there no resolution to what are now long-standing issues in terms of new treatments the Department of Health can bring forward? The Taoiseach mentioned the cost of the various health services and the new remedies and treatments in his opening statement. I am bringing to his attention the fact that those are issues that affect the lives of young people and I would like to see a resolution in those areas.
On social housing, we have county councils all over the country that have established their housing lists. In Kilkenny, if one counts everything it is 3,500. They were the housing authorities of the past and they are now working as housing authorities, and in conjunction with the voluntary sector, but there is such a blockage there that it is another area where reform is necessary. I suggest to the Taoiseach that it is the fact that councils are not doing the work that they should be doing, in conjunction with the Department and the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, that is causing some of the logjam. One is faced with a further question about reform in the system in order to deliver what citizens are looking for. It is amazing to think that in the 1950s and 1960s massive amounts of local authority houses were built. Wonderful communities were created and large families were reared yet here we are now, with much more than we ever had in the 1950s and 1960s, and the numbers cannot be delivered. I suggest again that it is because of the bureaucratic nightmare that exists all around those issues now and having to have many things cleared by the Departments. I am asking the Taoiseach those questions in terms of reform but also the future of the confidence and supply agreement. Would he like to comment on that? Does he have any views on that? I believe he does not want it to drop dead after the budget.
I am not sure I do want to comment on it. The confidence and supply agreement is in place and I intend to honour it. I guess I should have any conversation about that with the leader of Fianna Fáil rather than members of the committee, notwithstanding that the Chairman and Deputy Michael McGrath are both prominent members of that party.
All right. Does the Taoiseach like the idea of the confidence and supply agreement?
In what sense?
Does it work for the Taoiseach?
It enables the Government to govern. Notwithstanding the many problems the country faces-----
Are there any shortcomings to it?
-----I think we are getting a lot done. Obviously it would be easier to govern if we had a majority as a Government, but we do not so one has to respect the outcome of elections.
Has the Taoiseach started negotiations yet on the second part of the agreement?
No.
When is he likely to do that?
Ask Micheál.
He does not talk to me.
I think we all know that. That is why you are asking the Taoiseach.
I think I should have that discussion with the leader of the Opposition rather than anyone else first.
I just thought I might get the Taoiseach's view on it.
I think he would be rightly annoyed if I were to have that conversation in public.
All right, they are the issues anyway. He does talk to me actually. I had better correct the record. I thank the Taoiseach for answering the questions and for attending this morning. I also thank his officials for being present. We will continue with questions to the Minister of State, Deputy Joe McHugh. I welcome him to the meeting and invite him to make his opening statement.
Go raibh maith agat, a Chathaoirligh, agus go raibh maith agat fá choinne an cuireadh go dtí an coiste arís. Ar dtús báire ba mhaith liom ráiteas a dhéanamh. The Central Statistics Office, CSO, is responsible for the collection, processing and publication of official statistics on economic, social and general conditions in Ireland. Alongside satisfying the statistical requirements of the Government, the information published by the CSO is also used by an extensive variety of public bodies, businesses, universities, research institutes and the general public.
There is a significant international dimension to the work of the CSO. The EU institutions, the IMF, the OECD and other international bodies are all important users of official statistics. Those bodies also have a significant role in defining and monitoring standards for the compilation of comparable information; and the CSO subscribes to the standards set out in the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and the European statistics code of practice.
The net allocation for 2018 is €48.746 million which compares with €48.584 million in 2017. The allocation provides funding for core outputs and for some additional work including preparatory work for the 2021 census of population.
The CSO is also implementing a long-term programme of change in how it organises household surveys so that it can meet future information needs as efficiently as possible. The first public output in this regard, the labour force survey quarter 3 of 2017, was published on 16 January 2018.
During 2018 the CSO will publish about 300 releases and publications. All of these statistics are published online. Members of the public are increasingly aware of, and able to access, statistics and indicators on the social, economic and environmental issues which affect their daily lives and the online channel is the office's primary publication method.
The CSO's Statement of Strategy 2017 to 2019 gives priority to delivering the core statistics needed for policy, while keeping a strong focus on cost management. The office continues to meet all of its commitments under the public service reform programme and is implementing a programme of reform and continuous business process improvement in the collection and processing of statistics. The report from the economic statistics review group convened by the CSO was published, along with the CSO's response, on 3 February 2017. The recommendations in the group's report focus on how best to provide insight for users into domestic activity given the highly globalised Irish economy. The CSO has been implementing the recommendations incrementally from mid-2017 and that will continue during 2018.
The CSO is leading the development of the Irish statistical system, ISS, by working closely with other Departments and the wider public sector that are involved in the collection, processing, compilation or dissemination of official statistics, to promote a more coherent approach to meeting data needs. It has developed a code of practice for the Irish statistical system, under which the first body is expected to be certified very shortly. It is also strongly promoting the development of a national data infrastructure, NDI, which will provide for better co-ordination and greater exploitation of the varied data sources available across the Irish public sector. It will also lead to greater understanding of the importance of data in supporting policy and decision-making and delivering efficiencies in public service provision.
Making better use of data throughout the public sector is an important part of public service reform and will contribute to more evidence-informed decision-making and better measurement of policy outcomes. Better co-ordination and greater use of administrative data also contributes to reducing the burden on data providers. Since 2008, the CSO has continued to reduce the response burden of its non-agricultural business surveys, as measured through the response burden barometer. A decrease of 38.6% was measured between 2008 and 2016, exceeding the target reduction of 25% over this timeframe.
The CSO Vote for 2018 provides for a total of 801 staff. This represents an increase from 755 in 2017 and reflects the cyclical nature of the work of the office, in particular the census. The CSO makes an important contribution to Ireland's public policy, by providing a high quality and, most important, an independent statistical service.
I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Joe McHugh, and his officials. I have just a couple of questions.
Looking at page 4 of the pack we have, the total for the 2018 Revised Estimate is €50.3 million. Is that correct? The Revised Estimate for 2017 was €49.972 but the outturn was €46.43 million. Was there a particular reason the outturn was some €3.6 million less than the projected amount for 2017?
Yes. There were retention and recruitment difficulties.
There must have been quite significant difficulties to result in an underspend of that nature. Was the Central Statistics Office, CSO, carrying a high vacancy rate throughout the year or is it to do with certain key positions?
I was interested in the consultancy fee breakdown. I was surprised to see a minimal outsourcing of work from the CSO for consultancy services. That points to a high skill set in-house. To answer the Deputy's question, there was a specific challenge in terms of employing statisticians. Even across the board, without mentioning any private sector company - we all know the particular company that would be interested in statisticians - there has been a demand in the private sector for statisticians. Hiring people with the required skill set, that is, statisticians was one of the weaknesses.
I should commend the CSO as an organisation with its headquarters in my constituency in Cork. It does superb work and provides very valuable employment in Cork.
I would be very open to decentralisation to my constituency-----
We are very happy with where it is now.
I wish to raise one issue I would like the CSO to examine, that is, the compilation of statistics for business insurance premiums. The CSO produces motor insurance premium changes on a monthly basis. That is very useful in terms of informing public policy decisions and has fed into the cost of insurance working group and so on but we do not have comparable data for the cost of insurance, not just to businesses but to voluntary bodies, sporting clubs and community organisations. It is an area I would like the CSO to examine to ascertain whether it could start compiling statistics on the cost of insurance. It may well compile such data on an aggregate basis but I mean in a way whereby it could be broken down in order that we could see the anecdotal evidence we are hearing from businesses about public liability and employment liability. Is that coming through by way of the overall statistics? I do not expect an answer here and now from the Minister of State but if the CSO could examine that to see if it was possible to start compiling and reporting that on a monthly basis, it would be very useful in terms of public policy.
That will be relayed back to the officials in the CSO. Something that was emphasised by officials in the CSO at my very first meeting was the independent nature of it but that does not preclude people from making observations or meeting CSO officials. If people have ideas, there is an openness within the CSO in that regard. A Private Members' motion was tabled that looked at conduits through the Oireachtas but having learned a good deal about it and looking at the way the CSO works, that independence is critical. However, there are opportunities to meet with stakeholders.
The CSO might send a note to the committee on that particular issue to see if it can be examined.
Yes. I will organise that.
I wish to indicate my support for the request Deputy Michael McGrath has made, which is worthwhile. If there are no further questions, I will bring this part of the meeting to an end. I thank the Minister of State and his staff for attending.