John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Like many who worked through the budget last night, I mulled over the extra €5 per month for parents paying more for child care than they do on their mortgages and considered the €100 in water charges relief for those vulnerable people who have had most of the safety nets designed to protect them undermined in recent years. What I saw was a Government clearly at ease with spending public monies in what is unquestionably an attempt to buy votes with the €7 billion it will borrow to run the country this year. Not many voters will thank the Government for borrowing in their name while allowing them a bit of loose change in return.

Ordinary, struggling people are all too aware of the consequences of repaying the debt over the last six years. I accept that to a large degree it is not the responsibility of the current Government. However, we do not have enough teachers in our classrooms or beds in our hospitals. Waiting lists are increasing for critical health services and thousands of children with disabilities are waiting years for assessments and supports. No matter how much Government officials attempt to massage the figures, we have one of the most expensive child-care systems in the world. St. Vincent de Paul and Combat Poverty will announce shortly that more than 750,000 of our people, including more than 200,000 children, are living in poverty. Of our population, 10% experience food poverty and we have very stark income-related health inequalities. Calls for assistance to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul have increased by 100% since 2009 and the organisation is spending almost €80 million per annum helping individuals and families in need. Parents are daily waving goodbye to children who cannot find work here and indigenous SMEs owned by brave entrepreneurs who should be given every support possible are on their knees.

The story presented yesterday by the Government - I use the term “story” because there was an enormous amount of embellishing details - was that this budget was a clap on the back to the good people of Ireland for all their efforts in poverty and deprivation of recent years. We were told we had good news on the universal social charge, USC. When USC was introduced, it was called an emergency measure because "we were in crisis". According to the Government now, the crisis is over. Why is this so-called temporary measure not abolished then? May I remind the Labour Party that in its manifesto it said it would abolish USC when it got into power?

Why are the measures introduced so unevenly distributed? Many have commented on how a worker on a €70,000 salary will be €746 better off while a low-paid worker struggling to make ends meet on €15,000 a year will have just €115 more in their pockets. Why should we on our salaries be better off because of this budget than those hundreds of thousands of people in poverty who elected us? The fact we have done well out of this budget does not sit comfortably with many Members. I believe it is reprehensible.

I referred earlier to those brave entrepreneurs who put their necks on the line by setting up their own business in a time of crisis. I am horrified at the way the Government has discriminated against them within the tax system. The increase in their USC contributions is scandalous. If someone takes a chance, goes out on their own and probably creates jobs, to have them paying over more tax is ridiculous. We should be encouraging these people, not driving them out of Ireland.

I am especially disappointed with the level of investment in early childhood care and child care provision. This could have been a game-changer in facilitating people back into the labour market with incentives like tax credits to parents against child care costs. The back-to-work family dividend is not much use without proper child care options. The average working parent will pay 20% of their take home salary on full-time child care. Some parents even pay more for child care than they do on their mortgages. An additional €5 extra a month in the children's allowance will mean nothing to them.

Add to this the fact that by next July, 60,000 families will be hit by changes to the one-parent family payment which has effectively encouraged many to leave the workforce due to the high cost of child care. The Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection promised back in April 2012 that the new rules would not be implemented unless there was a "system of safe affordable and accessible child care in place". I had hoped some provision towards this would have been made in budget 2015 but am disappointed this has not transpired.

I am also disappointed the Government failed to address the inequity brought about last year by the single parent restriction. This effectively boiled down to a penalty against single fathers, most of whom would already be paying maintenance. The process as it currently exists is a very unfair one and needs to be rethought by the Government.

The Government abandoned people with disabilities a long time ago, so perhaps it was naive of many of us to expect a turnaround in policy on this front. Nonetheless, after cuts to the mobility allowance, housing adaptation grant and the medical card review, not to mention barriers put in place to activation measures, I had hoped some meaningful measure would have been introduced to tackle poverty and deprivation among the disabled. None has been.

Judging from the number of e-mails I have received on the water charge tax credit, the Government is completely out of touch on this. I have much time for the Minister of State opposite, Deputy Aodhán Ó Ríordáin, but I cannot see why he does not understand this. The Government needs to see the effect of these charges on a family on social welfare, low or middle income. Come next year, two bills will land on them, namely the household charge and a water bill, coming to an average of €600. The Government can dress this up anyway it likes, claiming it is only €2 a week. Where are people on social welfare, low or middle income expected to get this? I am not coming at this from an ideological perspective but from a practical point of view. On Leaders' Questions this morning, Deputy Adams, who is ideologically opposed to it and rightly so, put it aside to make the simple point of how are people going to pay these charges. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul said it will need €100 million this year. Up to 750,000 people have gone into poverty with many on the minimum wage and low incomes. The Minister of State must look into his heart and ask himself how the Government can ask someone to pay when they have nothing. These ordinary decent people will have their water supply cut off or reduced to a trickle and be brought before the courts. These are people who will not want to be put in such circumstances but will have been because they really cannot pay their water charges. If the Labour Party were in opposition, irrespective of how it thought the economy was going, there is no way it would have ever tolerated the imposition of such an unfair and unjust tax as this. Neither would it have allowed the company, Irish Water, introduce this tax, in conjunction with the Government, to treat people the way it has. The Government must ask Social Justice Ireland, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and other groups which deal with poverty and one-parent families what they think. The answer they will give is that it is not a case that people will not pay. It is a case they will not be able to pay.

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