Cian O'Callaghan
Ceist:10. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [16726/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraTuesday, 25 April 2023
Ceisteanna (10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
Peadar Tóibín
Ceist:11. Deputy Peadar Tóibín asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [17706/23]
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Ruairí Ó Murchú
Ceist:12. Deputy Ruairí Ó Murchú asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will meet next. [18117/23]
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Mary Lou McDonald
Ceist:13. Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [18127/23]
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Richard Boyd Barrett
Ceist:14. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will meet next. [18278/23]
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Paul Murphy
Ceist:15. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will meet next. [18281/23]
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Bríd Smith
Ceist:16. Deputy Bríd Smith asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will meet next. [18284/23]
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Mick Barry
Ceist:17. Deputy Mick Barry asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will meet next. [19145/23]
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Christopher O'Sullivan
Ceist:18. Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [19218/23]
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Robert Troy
Ceist:19. Deputy Robert Troy asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [19219/23]
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Ivana Bacik
Ceist:20. Deputy Ivana Bacik asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [19239/23]
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Gary Gannon
Ceist:21. Deputy Gary Gannon asked the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will meet next. [19315/23]
Amharc ar fhreagraFreagraí ó Béal (24 píosaí cainte)
I propose to take Questions Nos. 10 to 21, inclusive, together.
The Cabinet Committee on the economy and investment was re-established in January 2023 and is due to meet on 25 May. The committee has a function similar to that of the Cabinet committee on economic recovery and investment, which met six times during the course of 2022. Membership of the committee comprises the Taoiseach; the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and for Defence; the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications and for Transport; the Minister for Finance; the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform; the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment; and the Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Other Ministers or Ministers of State will be invited to participate as required, as is the case with officials and advisers. The committee will oversee the implementation of programme for Government commitments aimed at sustainable economic recovery, investment and job creation, including through the implementation of Harnessing Digital, our national digital strategy. As with all policy areas, economic issues are regularly discussed at full Government meetings, where all formal decisions are made.
In 2006, the solicitor representing Deputy Niall Collins's wife wrote to the council seeking to purchase land. A month later, the Deputy was one of seven councillors who voted in favour of the selling of that land. Freedom of information documents released to The Ditch show Mrs. Collins was the only person to inquire about the purchasing of that land prior to the vote. She made an offer on the property in March 2007, when her husband was still a sitting councillor. According to The Ditch, Mrs. Collins is currently in negotiation with the council to sell the property back to it, with houses built on it. These are astounding events but unfortunately they are not unique. I know of cases in which Government politicians have voted on the sale or zoning of land in circumstances in which family members have been the beneficiaries. Elected representatives should not use their power to materially benefit themselves or their families. Will there be any consequences for the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins? Will the Taoiseach call for his resignation?
I spoke to the Taoiseach previously about the tech sector. Obviously, there have been a number of difficulties owing to job losses. Is the Taoiseach still assured that the sector is absolutely strong, given the State's significant reliance on it?
Could I raise an issue I brought up previously, namely the difficulty whereby remote workers are not allowed to work for employers across the Border? This has meant that 120 or possibly more PayPal workers who had been working in the South had to be transferred to what is called PayPal UK because of the closure of the PayPal premises. Has there been any interaction between the Revenue Commissioners and HM Revenue and Customs and even beyond that, at governmental level, to do a deal to get over this issue, which is a big one in Border areas?
It is predicted that we will see a surplus of €10 billion this year, €16 billion next year and as much as €21 billion in 2026. Obviously, Sinn Féin and everyone must appreciate the volatility of our corporation tax receipts, which outlines the need for careful management of the public finances; however, even if we leave corporate tax receipts aside, we can still expect to see surpluses of more than €4 billion in the years to come. That makes it clear that the State has additional capacity to address crises in housing and health, and also to make the necessary investment in climate action measures without penalising ordinary workers and families. Of course, nobody is opposed to setting aside revenue for the purpose of addressing future challenges, but how this is managed remains an open question and requires further discussion. Will the Taoiseach outline whether he intends to use the available capacity to address the crises in health and housing and to ensure the necessary funding is put towards climate action measures?
The decision to waive levies for developers is a disgraceful recycling of an already failed policy.
Does the Taoiseach not remember LIHAF, which involved subsidies to developers to build infrastructure and was supposed to deliver affordable housing? Within weeks of LIHAF being introduced, the requirement to get 40% back in affordable housing was dropped and we got virtually nothing in terms of affordable housing but millions went into paying for the infrastructure from which developers profited and they are going to profit again.
Instead of giving it away to developers, what the Government could do with these big budget surpluses is buy up the newly completed developments out there where currently we are only going to get 10% or in a few cases 20% and the rest will be rented or sold at astronomical prices. If the State used the revenues it has on a once-off basis to buy those properties, we could rent and sell them at affordable levels and get the revenue back in the long run from the rental income we would get. That would be a sound use of the additional funding we have available and we could introduce "use it or lose it" measures for developers and speculators sitting on planning permissions that they are drip feeding.
I wish to raise the disgraceful behaviour of Workhuman, a major so-called tech unicorn with a turnover of $1 billion per year. Last year, it issued $90 million in dividends to investors, partners and board directors yet - perhaps ironically given its name - it is treating its workers in a very inhumane manner. It is attempting to lay off 60 of its 600 staff employed in Ireland and is offering a relatively meagre redundancy package of three months pay and then only two weeks per year of service, which is below what is being offered at other tech companies. The company has even refused to contribute €250 per employee for the legal fees incurred by staff as part of the process. Perhaps worst of all, the company appears to be in breach of the Protection of Employment Act 1977, which says it is an offence for an employer to issue notice of redundancy to any employee during the 30-day period of consultation with employee representatives when it did precisely that.
In a similar vein, we have been receiving emails regarding a company called Indeed. Indeed.com uses paid-for job ads on its website to make its money. It has announced redundancies and is allegedly in consultation with its workers. Has the Minister been notified by this company and is it complying with the terms of the Redundancy Payment Act because there is suspicion and it appears to us from the emails we received that there have been breaches of the Act? Both cases need to be put in the context of the profits made by both companies. Indeed.com bounced back from pre-tax losses of €15 million in 2020 to profits of €268 million in 2021. This is an incredible turnaround for the company yet it is giving a miserly redundancy offer to its workers. There seems to be a pattern here about which we and the Taoiseach should be concerned given the attraction of tech companies to this State.
Murphy International is part of the giant Murphy group of companies that operates throughout Ireland, the UK and Canada generating €1.5 billion in revenues. It benefits from big State contracts here from local authorities, Irish Water etc. Last year, a group of workers in Limerick were sacked by Murphy International. They were members of Unite and one was a shop steward. Unite believes they were victimised for their trade union activity. These workers were engineering and construction contractors at Aughinish Alumina Ltd., which is owned by RUSAL International, whose majority shareholder is the Russian billionaire and Putin supporter Oleg Deripaska.
The Government was very vocal when Mr. Deripaska faced sanctions but its silence has been deafening on workers' rights at this company. I put it to the Taoiseach that the State should not be giving contracts to companies that engage in union busting and there should be no more State contracts for Murphy International until these workers are reinstated.
The economy is doing very well with unemployment at only 4%. Many sectors are booming but for many rural areas, tourism and hospitality is key and is the largest employer. A concerning report recently suggested that visitor numbers for the first three months of this year were down 16%. Many believe this is down to an issue with hotel accommodation capacity and the fact that the British market, one of the markets on which we are most reliant, is down. What is being done to increase hotel accommodation capacity, improve visitor numbers from the UK and ensure we increase the rate of critical skills visas being issued for chefs in particular?
The Government is expected to run a surplus of €10 billion this year and what is forecast for next year is a surplus of €16.2 billion. My question is simple. When are normal people, many of whom are struggling through this devastating cost of living crisis, going to see the surplus invested in their lives be that through housing, climate, education, childcare, arts or culture? We can stand here and talk about good financial management but at the same time, year on year, the Society of St Vincent de Paul and organisations that work with older people highlight the level of poverty and deprivation being experienced in very real people's homes. When will people see the benefit of that surplus?
Given the limited time available to me, I will focus in my reply on matters relating to the economy and investment. There were some questions about the tech sector. The assessment I gave many months ago was that I thought the tech sector was down-sizing or re-sizing by about 10% or 15%. This is not too far off the mark. It comes after a period of rapid expansion. Tech companies that expanded rapidly over the past three years are now re-sizing or down-sizing by about 10% or 15%. In the medium to long term, this is a sector where we will see phenomenal new growth in terms of jobs and investment because the future is digital. It is AI, robotics, VR, AR and the metaverse so any jobs that have been lost will be recovered in the years ahead. It is reassuring to see that the vast majority of people who have lost jobs in the tech sector have got good redundancy packages and have been able to find employment in other parts of the economy, which is now close to full employment. I do not have any update on PayPal since I last corresponded with the Deputy but I am certainly aware of the issues that have been raised.
Deputy Carthy and a number of others mentioned the surplus. I would argue that we used the surplus last year both to pay down debt and to set aside for the inevitable fall off in revenues that will occur in the future through the strategic reserve fund. We also gave back to people. The last budget package was pretty huge - €10 billion or €12 billion in additional spending, welfare and tax reductions - so people have already seen the benefits of the surplus in their lives. Anyone paying less for childcare this year will know that as will anyone paying less for public transport, any family that received free school books in September or anyone who received a SUSI grant he or she did not have before so we have already used the surplus to help people with the very real problems they have while still paying down the debt and setting aside money in that anti-austerity fund to make sure we do not have to be faced ever with the kind of decisions we were faced with when the crash occurred 12 years ago.
Deputy Carthy is right about one point. The surplus does mean that we have additional firepower to help solve some of the problems we face as a country and it does mean that we can spend more and save more. However, I think, as I hope is increasingly clear to people, that money is not the constraint that it used to be in terms of solving our problems. We have a lot of money and we are spending a lot of money. I hear people talking about under-investment in public infrastructure. When I was first appointed to Government in 2011, the public capital budget was about €3 billion or €4 billion. It will be €14 billion this year. We have increased threefold or fourfold the amount of money we invest in public infrastructure in Ireland. We now invest well above the EU average in public infrastructure and are well above the countries we often compare ourselves with when it comes to investment in public capital such as the Netherlands and Denmark.
If there was a decade of underinvestment in infrastructure in Ireland after the crash, and there was, that decade ended a long time ago. It ended probably around 2018 or 2019. Since then we have had phenomenal public capital investment under this Government and under the previous one, which I had the privilege to lead. That continues, but there are consequences to that. The housing budget is now so big - €4.5 billion a year - that sometimes it can be difficult to spend it. That is one of the reasons we made the decision today to allocate some money to reducing the cost of construction.
In the education budget, we allocated an extra €300 million only a few weeks ago. It is not for more schools but just because the cost of building schools went up. Sometimes the more money we pump in does not mean higher output, just higher costs. We are seeing that as a real issue at the moment. In the past two or three years in the health service, something has happened that would have been unimaginable ten or 15 years ago where the health service has not been able to hire all the staff it has been allocated money for. Collectively, we in this Chamber, for the benefit of the public and for everyone, need to move away from the simplistic idea that just allocating more money will necessarily solve these problems. It will not; we have other constraints. The constraints are around availability of labour, skills and materials. You can be on a waiting list for steel now, for example. We need to be a bit more upfront and honest with people about that. It is not just a case of spending the surplus and solving all our problems. We are already allocating massive amounts of public spending. Public spending could hit €100 billion in the next couple of years. Could anyone have imagined that a few years ago? It is not just about writing cheques and solving problems. It would be very easy if that was all that was involved.
Deputy Boyd Barrett asked about buying housing from developers for social and affordable housing. That is something we are doing. Project Tosaigh is exactly that, where the Land Development Agency, LDA, is purchasing developments for social housing. We are going to do more of that. Then there is the tenant in situ scheme, where we have allocated funding to local authorities to buy 1,500 properties from landlords who are selling up. We have said very clearly to local authorities that if they meet that target of 1,500, we will provide additional funding for that scheme.
Deputies mentioned a number of individual companies. I do not know enough about them to get into giving detailed answers. They do seem to be employment law matters and industrial relations matters. I do not have the information the Deputies seek but I will alert the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment to the fact it was raised here and perhaps he might come back with better answers.
Deputy O’Sullivan asked about tourism. He is right that the visitor numbers from the early part of the year are behind where they were in 2019. That is what we compare with, obviously, because it was before the pandemic. We do not know what the summer is going to look like. From talking to people who work in the industry and in tourism, they are pretty optimistic that the summer will be a good one and, whatever about the British, the Americans appear to be back and they tend to spend more than other visitors. I do not know of any particular schemes the Government has in place to encourage hotel building. While I can understand why people in the tourism industry would like us to build more hotels so that we can have more tourists, when the construction sector is facing capacity constraints, I would not like to see us build more hotels, unfortunately. I would rather see the focus on housing and other things. Those are the decisions we just have to make. The Deputy is spot on about work permits and critical skills. We have issued about 40,000 work permits in the past year.
The Taoiseach again has failed to answer the question. If the Taoiseach does not see a link between corruption and the economy, there is a serious problem in this regard.
Sorry, Deputy Tóibín. We are moving on to the next slot.
Corruption is a threat to investment. It is a threat to business and it is a threat to society.
Deputy Tóibín, we are moving on to the next lot of questions. Take your seat.
The fact that so many within the Government parties have been silent on the issues of corruption in the past has given licence to it. All I am asking is whether the Taoiseach, accepting what happened in this potential case of corruption, thinks it is good enough that we have this system continue?
Thanks, Deputy Tóibín. We are moving on to the next lot of questions.
I want an answer to the question.
The next lot of questions is on the European Council meeting. Sorry, Deputy. I have overindulged you. We have gone three minutes over.
A Chathaoirligh, it is unbelievable that the Taoiseach will not answer a question on this.
Excuse me. We have gone three minutes over. There are other people waiting here for the next lot of questions. We have definite time. We need to move on.
Do you not think, a Chathaoirligh, that it is unfair for the Taoiseach to ignore this question and not give an answer, given the gravity of the question and the public interest in it and given the clear link between corruption in the history of the State and the distortion of society and unfairness?
We are moving on to the next lot of questions .
For the record, I answered questions earlier on the Minister of State, Deputy Niall Collins. That last lot of questions was supposed to be on the Cabinet committee on economy and investment. I think the Deputy is abusing the procedures of the House and is abusing privilege.