Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Yesterday at the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform framed their speeches in the context of the global pandemic. While Covid is still very much with us, the development of vaccines and the vaccination programme has thankfully dramatically changed things for the better. During the first lockdown, it became all too obvious who our essential workers were. It also became obvious what the shortfalls were in our public services. Our healthcare workers were battling the pandemic with a system that was functioning on a knife edge. We could see better resourced healthcare systems overwhelmed by Covid. It became crystal clear just how exposed we were and how important it is to reform our health system.

The failure of our healthcare was all too obvious yesterday when Adam Terry, a ten-year-old boy with scoliosis, was interviewed on RTÉ radio. The pre-pandemic promise that no child would need to wait more than four months for surgery was just that - a promise. Adam has been waiting four years for surgery and said that he felt like he was at the bottom of the barrel. He also said:

Nobody is coming out to find me in the lost and found. To be honest, sometimes I feel like I’m crying myself to sleep because it’s so unfair. It just makes me angry and frustrated and sad.

Adam is enduring torture in which our healthcare system is complicit. What does it say about our society and our priorities when a child endures suffering like that for so long? Adam is one of many. In May, 200 children with scoliosis were awaiting surgery. Approximately 90,000 children are on waiting lists, with a third of them waiting more than 18 months for different procedures.

The Government described this budget as a "recover, restore and renew" budget, but in truth it was a bits and pieces budget. It did not tackle any of the big issues. It is out of step with people's desire to re-evaluate our national priorities. This is not an ambitious transitional budget. There is no real sense that the Government means to move the country in a different direction. Some important facts need to be emphasised. Ireland is the second most expensive country in Europe to live, with the cost of living 36% above the EU average; our housing costs are the highest in the EU; the price of goods and services the second highest in the EU; and fuel costs are the fourth highest in the EU - and that was prior to the most recent price shock. The cost of living is skyrocketing and when prices go up, they rarely go down. We are hoping the fuel shock will be temporary and one where oversight is brought to bear. With the exorbitant housing and rental costs, there is no sign that they are doing anything but going up.

It is a budget of bits and pieces, all of which are soaked up with inflation. The current inflation rate is 3.7%, which is the highest it has been in 13 years. We are hopeful it will not stay high but there is no guarantee of that. Oil and gas prices are rising dramatically and the Government's plan to offset those costs was to increase the fuel allowance by €5 for those who currently get it, although there is a narrow scope in who gets it. That increase will not even match the rate of inflation.

This budget provides €520 million in what we would describe as a regressive tax change. Single people and those on low to middle incomes, or between €25,000 and €35,000, will get approximately €2 per week, a quarter of what somebody on €100,000 of income per year will get. It equates to €1 per week if a person is on €25,000 per year and €9 if that person is on €100,000. It is even worse if a person is self-employed as such people need to earn approximately €50,000 to get any benefit.

Some of what we described as "essential" workers during the pandemic worked in our shops. Ireland has one of the highest costs of living in the EU but the third highest number of low-paid workers in the EU. The minimum wage was increased by a paltry 30 cent to €10.50, which barely covers inflation. The living wage recently increased by 60 cent to €12.90, and this is the bare minimum seen as needed to live with dignity in this country. For example, housing costs in Dublin account for 64.7% of a living wage net salary but a person seeking a mortgage would have a threshold of 35% of salary after which the loan would be regarded as unsustainable. Let us imagine what that is like for people trying to put food on the table and heat their homes. Very often the building energy rating on rental properties is poor and we only have to look at what is on offer on the likes of daft.ieto see that. People find themselves in an impossible position.

As we emerge from the pandemic, people are re-evaluating their lives and asking themselves what is important. Unfortunately, after the 19 months we have all had, many of our front-line workers are leaving their professions in our dysfunctional health system. It is a similar story with childcare workers, many of whom are just walking away from their hard-earned qualifications. They do not see a future for themselves or their skills valued. What they see is a piecemeal response when a step change is needed. When children returned to the classroom, for example, the comparison between our class sizes and those in other EU countries was obvious where it was not obvious previously. This was not just from the educational perspective but from the view of having healthy spaces where children could learn. We have the largest class sizes in Europe and while it is welcome that the pupil-teacher ratio has reduced by one, this process is painfully slow and there was an expectation that more would be done.

Working parents, many of whom were working from home during the pandemic, continued to do their full-time jobs and were full-time childminders while having to homeschool their children. In particular, women felt that burden more acutely and still feel a disproportionate burden. The country's childcare policy needs a step change, according to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, and one of the Government's proposals is to extend the national childcare scheme to children under 15 from September next year. When that change is to take place it will nearly be time for the next budget. We have been told this will benefit 40,000 children, albeit 11 months from now, and the funding provided is €5 million. If that is divided among the 40,000 children, it is a tiny amount per child.

We have the highest rate of reliance on private childcare services in the OECD; the OECD average is 34% and the EU average is 27%. The rate of Government funding in the childcare sector is the second-lowest in the OECD. Parents have been picking up this bill for decades and Covid-19 exposed the weaknesses of not having a public system. The penny has dropped with the employer organisations as well, and they can see just how exposed we were during the pandemic.

I was struck by a line the Minister for Finance uttered towards the end of his speech. He stated, "For those worried about whether they can own a home or afford their rent, this budget will support you". It is a breathtaking statement. The Minister is gaslighting the nation. We have the most expensive housing in Europe and we keep being told that we cannot build houses overnight. We have been told that consistently every year since 2014. Budget 2022 ignored the obvious and provided more of the same, compounding the failures of past budgets.

A so-called rent freeze is tied to the CPI at a time of rising inflation; the Minister could not have picked a worse time for the measure. It is disingenuous to say this amounts to a rent freeze. People are not fools and they can see that. Budget 2022 was an opportunity ignored to address the benefits in place for REITs over renters. Reliefs continue to be provided for landlords but not for tenants. Global investment funds are profiting at the expense of our locked out generation.

At this point, the 3% tax on zoned land almost seems an incentive to hoard land. If land is not being used, there is always the option to dezone it. I do not understand why that does not happen because it is so expensive to service land. If somebody sits on it for five or ten years, action could be taken. I do not understand why the Minister suggests introducing something at a modest level and then postpones it for a couple of years. Immediate action could be taken with a review of all the county plans, with all the land serviced at great cost to the State not being used being dezoned. We might be surprised at how quickly people might move if that kind of penalty was put in place. We are talking about people who benefit hugely from zoning in the first place. I do not understand why the budget measure could not be introduced with this year's finance Bill in any case and why it must be postponed.

Writing in today's Irish Examiner, Dr. Rory Hearne stated the number of new social housing units planned for 2022 is lower than last year, at 11,820 versus 12,750. We are going backwards in this respect. The delivery target of 2,000 cost-rental homes per year has now been kicked to 2025, and that target could be in the hands of a new Administration because there simply was not ambition in this Administration.

There is €194 million to be spent in tackling homelessness, which will be largely given to for-profit service providers. Nothing has been provided for new prevention measures. There are 2,189 children who are currently homeless in the State. The cost of homelessness cannot just be measured in monetary terms, as we know, but this is an expensive way to deliver an appalling service.

We need to deal with housing in a much more meaningful way. In 2022, twice the amount of social housing will come from the private market through landlords, developers, investors via HAP and social housing leasing rather than new builds. We have been told long leasing will be phased out during the lifetime of this Government but why not end it now? It makes no economic sense to continue with what is the most expensive way of delivering social housing, with no asset at the end. I have been saying it for months but much attention was paid when Mr. Dermot Desmond made the point at the weekend. If the Government does not listen to the likes of us, it should listen to the likes of him.

It just does not make any sense. This year, we will spend nearly €1 billion on measures like the housing assistance payment, HAP. Other rental supports are also upped this year. People who qualify for HAP have to be on the housing waiting list. A three-adult or four-child family household has to be on an income between €30,000 and €42,000, depending on where they live. These are low-incomes households. Many people do not qualify for any supports and some of them are on relatively modest incomes.

I listened to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, talk about capital spending, how important it is, that it is where our focus of attention is and that we have to be prudent on the current spending side. Where do we get the resources to transform childcare if a step change is needed? Where do we get the resources to address capacity issues in the context of the review of capacities on disabilities? How do we deal with the cancer care issue where, for example, parking charges were identified in the programme for Government as something that needed to be addressed? How do we address the issue of our shortfall in the way we compete now that our corporate tax rate will be changed? We need big investments and a bigger State. There needs to be an income for that and this budget contained bits and pieces rather than anything you could point to as very substantial.

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