Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

The groups most savagely and disproportionately hit by austerity are the low paid, women - who tend to be in the former category - and single parents. None of them has been compensated by yesterday’s budget.

None of the cuts made by the Government in rent allowance over the past three years has been reversed. I will take the example of a family in Dublin renting and who are on a local authority housing waiting list.

I will use Dublin as an example as rents have gone up the furthest there. In the second quarter of this year, rents had risen by nearly 20% compared to the same quarter in 2010. On top of this, rent supplement limits have been cut by 12%. As an example, a family that will suffer even more since the budget is one with two children renting a home. They would have been paying rent of €1,110 in 2010 and receiving a maximum of €1,086 a month rent supplement. Today, the same couple is paying €1,300 in rent and receiving €935 in rent supplement. The family is €365 a month, or €85 a week, worse off. Nothing has been done for people like that and there are 100,000 families waiting on housing. They cannot afford to buy and they have been abandoned by the Government. The Government did nothing to reverse those costs.

One of the two Ministers speaking on the radio this morning said that this was the most significant social housing programme ever. It is not. In 1975, 8,500 council houses were built. Next year, the Government is proposing to build 2,500 houses in the midst of the greatest housing crisis in the history of the State. In the 1970s, there was a response to the housing crisis of the 1960s. A house building programme was undertaken through local authorities but there seems to be an ideological aversion to such a programme in this Government and the previous one. The programme will deliver 10,000 houses by 2018, over four years. It amounts to 10% of the current waiting list. Why is it so slow and why take such a softly softly approach? During the Celtic tiger years, 80,000 to 100,000 houses were built every year. The idea that we must wait ten years to solve the housing crisis is not the case. We could go back to funding councils and letting them build houses; instead, more money was thrown at landlords, developers and land speculators through a cut in the windfall tax instead of helping people who in danger of becoming homeless every day and who have no prospect of a home for many years if things carry on as they are.

Another group badly hit by the budget is workers. Those on the minimum wage gain €174 whereas the top 10% gain €736. What sort of response is that to six years of austerity? The Minister could have made tax changes and imposed an emergency 5% tax on millionaires and any income of €1 million, which would have brought in €3.3 billion. Instead, the Government decided to give them even more money. It could have given an increase in the effective income tax rate on the top 10% and this would have brought in €2.6 billion. The Government could have chosen the sacred cow, the 12.5% rate of corporation tax, and increased it to the average of the EU-27. This would bring in over €5 billion from multinational corporations. A financial transactions tax would bring in, depending on its level, a sum between €400 million and €600 million. The elephant in the room this year is that for every €5 collected in taxation, €1 will go to the bondholders. We are crippled by debt that should have been repudiated. Some €8 billion will be paid in interest and the same sum could solve the housing crisis by building 45,000 homes and putting 45,000 people back to work in real jobs, not through JobsPlus or JobBridge. People need real jobs to stimulate the economy and provide social and affordable housing.

The other group left out is the working poor. Through the Central Bank system, it was decided to make a 20% deposit a requirement to buy a house, which basically means only rich kids will be able to get a mortgage because they have Mammies and Daddies who will help them out. Other people stuck in the rental sector, where prices are rocketing, will be unable to save anything. Far from the Government solving its election prospects for next year, water charges overshadowed everything it has introduced such as any concessions on the universal social charge. The latter was a tax introduced to pay for the bailout. If we are in recovery, why was it not abolished? Why should any worker on €12,000 have to pay a universal social charge in the first place? The Government has continued and maintained a tax introduced to pay for the bondholders debt. It is a shame on the Government and it will not get it out of the crisis it is facing. From the by-elections and the 100,000 people who took to the streets, the Government should have seen that these people will not be assuaged by what was done yesterday.

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