Richard O'Donoghue: Urgent plea over UHL beds and stalled projects

I come in here every time I come in and I look across the benches and I just see where we can't get delivery. And then I look at communities that any time there's anything wanted and somebody's in trouble in their communities, people say what can we do to help, even if they haven't got it themselves. And yesterday I was actually in Limerick. And it's a tradition in Limerick that Foster Circus come to Limerick. And Foster Circus do a charity night every time they come to Limerick for people just to go and see a circus. They offer a full night and offer to me to give out tickets to agencies that want to go and see a circus. I'll go to different communities then and they offer the same. But when it comes to governance, the same thing is not awarded. We have a Crescent Banog that's waiting for a letter from Iske Ayrn. The funding is there to build it. To support the local school. Support local families that are working in the area. Is there. And a letter from Iske Ayrn to say that we are now going to be upgrading the system. That's all it's wanted for the local authority to give to go ahead. It's going to round in circles for three months and they want to start. For the betterment of a community. We talk about how our tax is going. People talk about the minimum wage. And I have no problem with a wage increase. I really don't. But if it doesn't make a difference in the pockets of the people that are getting it, I do have a problem with it. So we look at even today that the minimum wage is of 30 and 50 and it's going to be increased to 40 and 15. Which gives a person an increase of 26 euros but it's not an increase of 26 euros. Because the tax ban, when you lower the USE charge, you never move the tax ban so they are actually going to pay more tax on it. So when you break it down, you then take off the 1.5% auto enrolment that is starting in January as well. You break it down again. You keep breaking it down. The person that is going to get the minimum wage increase is not getting an increase. But what it does, it drives inflation. On the other side, because people on the other side have to put up their costs. People said to me, Richard, the hospitality sector, they are after getting a reduction in the VAT. And how is that? The hospitality sector is one of the cases where the minimum wage will come in. They have got four wage increases come this January, in the short term. You take that onto a knock-on process of all the different wage increases across the sector, and the 4% decrease they have got will not add ascent to inflation. I have just come out of the Budget Oversight Committee, which I chair, and I asked people in the fiscal to know would it create an inflation cost. It did not. Because what it does, it absorbs in the costs they have got in the last three years to stop them increasing the cost of food, beverages, everything within their sector. So to me it was the right thing to do, and that I thank you for eventually doing it, because otherwise it is a circular economy. It comes back around to the people that after getting the same wage increase are going to pay more for the same product. We then look at every person that is paying PRSI and PAYE, pay in then to the National Training Fund. When it does not actually go out to fund National Training, it actually goes around, and now it was voted on there recently that they wanted to use it for buying up properties. It is taken for a fund for training people, and that money has been sitting in accounts for years building up, and it could never be touched. But now they want it to go into something that is not based on training. We have a lot of very, very good projects that could be built, and we talked about UHL today as well, and I thank the Minister for saying that AB, and she is looking at all sectors of it, and I thank her for that. But the delivery of this is what we were talking about, next year they will deliver 36 beds, and before 2030 they are hoping to increase it to 178 beds. And they are talking about the sensitivity of getting extra lands, commercial sensitivity of getting extra lands. We have also talked about developers saying that they will build it and do the same system as a mortgage system, that they will build it and give it back to them, and it will cost them a euro, and if they have not got the funding to deliver it now, they will deliver the project within two years to help people save lives. How many more people's lives is it going to take before you actually listen to business people and let them deliver the infrastructure for you, deliver the buildings for you, so you can actually invest then in the healthcare that needs to go into these buildings? How many more people are going to die until we do it? We are at a time of Christmas, and I have seen people, and there was a funeral during the week, and the one person turned around to me after she buried her mother, and she says please, please, please Richard, if you do anything, will you please sort out UHL? We now have a new CEO coming in place, and I hope and I pray that they have the capability of bringing people with them to get the adequate staff that that hospital needs. One A&E for 45,000 people. One. Downgraded hospitals without thinking of the impact of increasing population. That is recklessness. And people are dying needlessly while they are waiting for care. And on the other side of that then, is people don't want to be employed by the hospital, because of the stigma that was attached to it. Something radical needs to change. And the management that were put in place at the moment were trying to change this. And I can't, and have been in contact with us all there trying to change this. But unless they get the proper staffing and the proper people employed there, they can't do that. So it goes back to the question, how many more people have to die before you listen to people that can deliver you infrastructure. I have been talking here as well, and Minister, I know you have looked at certain parts of it, and I'll give you praise for what you do. And you've listened to us talking about delivery of public versus private. Looking at budgets for delivery of public buildings, privately built, and then the public take it over. We're looking at infrastructure, on delivery of infrastructure, and then we'll give it over to the likes of Ischgairn, when we were built on time, on budget, making money travel further. We get delivery faster. That's what it's about. We see young people now, and they're moved in with their parents, trying to get on the ladder. And then we see under the laws that are there, even if they have a modular unit out the back at the moment, they're now being penalised by the local authority, because this bill hasn't gone through the house yet, for people trying to move home, to try and even save, to get on the housing ladder. We're then going to introduce the modular unit in the back of the house, which is hopefully going to come early next year, and you've only allowed an extra five square metres to the planning guidelines. When a two-bed apartment is 63 square metres, we've asked you to bring it up to 63 square metres, to allow for a living accommodation, so even if there was elderly people that wanted to move in with their family, they said they went to the modular unit and let the family move into their house, it won't be big enough to accommodate that either. Because you're having the foresight to allow for a two-bedroom unit to be built on site, which is 63 square metres. You're now looking at 45. Will you not look and see what happens if one of the persons are living that get sick and somebody has to move in to take care of them? What happens if there was a carer that was coming in to take care of an elderly parent that you're bringing in to your own household to look after them? It's simple legislation. Listen to the people that know about it. Our budgets have to be costed from now on against the public, people that can deliver on time, on delivery, that pay taxes and make profits. You have to be costed in your department against your department's delivery of the same type of infrastructure of whether it is housing or any development going forward. Costings have to be evenly based across the board to make sure your department are accountable, which means you can deliver more for less. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy.