DÁIL ÉIREANN AN ROGHCHOISTE UM FHORMHAOIRSIÚ BUISÉID COMMITTEE ON BUDGETARY OVERSIGHT Déardaoin, 1 Deireadh Fómhair 2020 Thursday, 1 October 2020 Tháinig an Roghchoiste le chéile ag 1 p.m. The Select Committee met at 1 p.m. Comhaltaí a bhí i láthair / Members present: Teachtaí Dála / Deputies Richard Boyd Barrett, Seán Canney, Bernard J. Durkan, Neasa Hourigan, John Lahart, Brian Leddin, Ged Nash, Kieran O’Donnell, Eoin Ó Broin,* Patricia Ryan. * In éagmais / In the absence of Deputy Pearse Doherty. Teachta / Deputy Mairéad Farrell sa Chathaoir / in the Chair. 1 SBO Business of Select Committee Chairman: Apologies have been received from Deputies Pearse Doherty and Aindrias Moynihan. Before we begin, I remind members and witnesses to turn off their mobile tele- phones as interference will affect sound quality. Pre-budget Engagement: Minister for Finance Chairman: I welcome the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe and thank him for making himself available to meet the committee at its first public meeting. The first pre-budget session with the Minister is a welcome opportunity for the committee to discuss budgetary strategy and the important budgetary decisions being made against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic and the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Before we commence formal proceedings, I wish to advise that any witnesses giving evi- dence from a location outside of the parliamentary precincts to note that the constitutional protections afforded to witnesses attending to give evidence before committees may not extend to them. There is no clear guidance on whether or to what extent the evidence given is covered by absolute privilege of a statutory nature. Persons giving evidence from another jurisdiction should also be mindful of their domestic statutory regime. If witnesses are directed by the com- mittee to cease giving evidence on a particular matter they must respect that direction. I would also like to remind members that the meeting is limited to two hours due to the current Covid-19 guidelines. This is to ensure the safety of members, witnesses and secretarial staff. We have agreed on speaking slots and times and I ask members to remain within these agreed times. I also remind members that other committee members will be attending this room. I ask them to vacate their seats at a reasonable time and use the available wipes to clean their seating area. This will allow the next set of committee members to arrive and take a seat. Minister for Finance (Deputy Paschal Donohoe): Before giving my opening statement, I wish to indicate to my colleagues that I can only see myself on this monitor. It would be great to see committee members as I address them and deal with their questions. I am thankful for the invitation to address the committee today in advance of budget 2021, which I will present to Dáil Éireann alongside my Cabinet colleague, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, on Tuesday, 13 October. I would like to begin by congratulating Deputy Hourigan on her appointment as Chair of this committee and Deputy Mairéad Farrell on her appointment as Vice Chair. I wish both Deputies well in their new roles. I understand the committee would like to discuss a range of topics, including budget fore- casts and priorities, debt sustainability, Brexit, pandemic-related support from the EU----- Chairman: My apologies to the Minister. The sound quality is poor. I am going to see if we can rectify the situation. Sitting suspended at 1.10 p.m. and resumed at 1.20 p.m. Chairman: In light of the suspension of the meeting, I will not make any introductory re- marks. I invite the Minister to make his opening statement. 2 1 OCTOBER 2020 Deputy Paschal Donohoe: I thank the Chair and apologise for that technical difficulty. I issued my statement to the committee yesterday and in light of what has just happened, I do not wish to take up the committee’s time. I am quite happy to move to questions and answers if that is acceptable to the Chair. Chairman: Is that agreed? Agreed. Deputy John Lahart: I read the Minister’s script twice. I thank him for coming to the committee in person. We have a lot of work to catch up on. I know from previous membership of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight that the Minister has always made himself available, and he has not let us down today. I hope the technical issues can be cleared up as time goes by. The Minister’s statement mentioned the level of unemployment, which has thankfully fall- en, although I believe it has risen a little in the last week. It would be useful if the Minister could present figures for youth unemployment to the committee. We received briefings from the independent Parliamentary Budget Office earlier this week. The Minister’s statement men- tioned that support disbursed by the State amounts to €24.5 billion to date. As the Minister says, this is a colossal sum, amounting to 14% of national income. The transitional Govern- ment which held office between the previous Government and the formation of the present one bolstered particularly vulnerable sectors of the economy at a time of great national need, and in that sense fulfilled the unwritten social contract that exists between the State and its citizens. As a member of the Committee on Budgetary Oversight, I would like to flag the fact that most of this went unaudited, unsupervised and unquestioned. There was general quiescence from the Opposition regarding this expenditure. It is a huge sum of money, and other committee mem- bers and I would like to review that spending in detail. We owe that to taxpayers. I hope I am not misquoting the Parliamentary Budget Office, which indicated that digging down into these figures was difficult. Any assistance the Minister’s Department and the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform could give in that regard would be very welcome. Several medical measures pertaining to GPs, medical cards and other issues were outstand- ing from budget 2020. They were meant to have been put into effect in July and were not. The Minister might be able to report on them. I accept that these were micro-issues. I was very taken with the pre-budget submission of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC. It is a conservative group. When Mr. Seamus Coffey was the chairman he used to remind us that the purpose of IFAC was to institutionalise the memory of the crash. We tend to think of that in terms of what went wrong. Today I am minded to think of the impact of the crash on vulnerable people and the pain it caused. As a committee, we should listen to IFAC. If we are to institutionalise the memory of the crash, we should also institutionalise the memory of austerity. I warmly welcome the general thrust of IFAC’s submission, which essentially coun- sels against penny-pinching at this time. The submission refers to three phases and advises the Government to keep those supports going at least until the second phase, when the pandemic begins to disappear, please God. I know that tax and income figures are good and there has been an unexpected bounce. I have a couple of questions concerning the budget. I received a text from a publican in the city today. It cost him €80,000 a month to remain shut. He has laid off 25 people. The Chawke Group, which includes the Old Orchard Inn and is run by Mr. Charlie Chawke and his son Mr. David Chawke, laid off 300 people yesterday. Delays to Covid-19 payments to staff were a big issue. Some 300 people will now be depending on social protection payments for a period. These delays are not good enough. The publican to whom I referred contacted me this morning 3 SBO to say he was thinking of investing in weather proofing for the outside of his premises to accom- modate a marquee type of set-up. This would cost him €10,000 and he wanted to know whether I thought it was worth doing or if the option to provide an outdoor service would be shut down. The second issue I want to raise is the fact that Dublin city is dying. The convention centre, where the Dáil sits on some days, is beside the headquarters of PricewaterhouseCoopers. I spoke to someone there recently who told me there used to be 1,500 staff working at their desks in that building but now there are only 100. The Minister will appreciate that the impact of what is happening on local sandwich bars, restaurants and coffee shops is absolutely phenom- enal. There were packages of supports from the Government for businesses in counties Laois, Kildare and Offaly but there does not seem to have been any such package for Dublin, particu- larly for the city centre. I acknowledge the efforts of Dublin City Council in trying to facilitate people coming into the city. This leads me to the issue of remote working. The Government said something about it during the week and I ask the Minister to flesh out what is proposed to be done to get people back into work. Leinster House has functioned through the crisis. There are 400 or 500 people working here, although some are probably still working remotely. Surely there is a cohort of Dublin city workers who could come back to work safely while others continue to work remote- ly? What incentives does the Minister intend to offer in that regard to help bolster the economy in the city next year? I make no apologies for trying to champion the cause of the city, because it is dying.