Dáil debates

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

4:35 pm

Photo of Mary Lou McDonaldMary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The pattern of utter contempt for struggling families is unmistakable. What makes it worse is that the parties almost wear it as a badge of honour. People's inability to pay these taxes is trumped only by the Government's inability to listen and a more fundamental inability or unwillingness to understand the realities of people's lives.

We are in the grip of a housing crisis, but one would certainly not guess it from the spring economic statement. We have no real indication of the Government getting to grips with the huge levels of homelessness, housing waiting lists and mortgage distress. We have no promise of rent controls and no real measures to bring the banks to heel to ensure that struggling mortgage holders will not lose the roofs over their heads. It is not sufficient to say that the Minister for Finance will call in the bankers for a chat. None of us believes it would be anything more than a chat with those individuals. Four years into government, Fine Gael and Labour have spectacularly failed to assert the interests of citizens against the banks that those same citizens bailed out. The veto contained in the legislation of 2012 must be removed. Why did the Minister for Finance not make a commitment today to revisit that legislation and balance the relationship between mortgage holders and bankers?

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform made one reference to health and it seemed to be a statement that indicates more of the same. There is a holding position in respect of health. One would never guess that our health services were stretched and under pressure. With the shortage of hospital staff and the crisis in accident and emergency, there are currently 405,000 people on waiting lists to be seen in outpatient clinics. The Government has failed to make headway in reducing waiting lists and waiting times. January 2015 saw record numbers of people on trolleys in our hospitals, standing at one stage at over 600 for the first time. Despite promises to end the scandal of patients on trolleys, there is no sign of this problem being resolved. On the Government's watch, our public health system's workforce has shrunk by 11,000 whole time equivalent staff. According to Dr. Stephen Thomas of TCD's Centre of Health Policy and Management, the State had seen the "biggest proportionate drop in healthcare across Europe". He says we have lost almost 20% of our funding and 11% to 12% of staff.

What is the Government's response and what indications do we glean from today's statement? It is precious little bar a muted response. There is a commitment, if one can classify it as such, to do no more than continue what has gone before. It is disappointing and worrying. There was no reference to prescription charges and one would never imagine there was an issue with them. Do the Ministers remember promising to abolish prescription charges for medical card holders? Far from being abolished, the charges increased from 50 cent per item to a staggering €2.50 per item, which hurt the poorest and sickest of our citizens and caused real hardship for senior citizens in particular. The gentlemen opposite may smirk, but these are the issues and measures against which citizens will judge whether or not there is a recovery in the air and whether they are to be invited to the table to participate in it. It would have matched the gentlemen better rather than smirking at me to have given some consideration to that fact and to the expectation they created through the media among the general public that today we would hear and establish what the Government's version of the recovery might look like.

There was nothing of any great import said by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform on education. Our primary school classrooms are among the most overcrowded in the EU. More than 125,000 pupils are in classes of 30 or more, which is a very large class size.

The Minister's cuts in special education and the utterly disgraceful 15% cut to resource teaching hours for children with special needs - does the Minister remember that cut? - have really damaged the educational opportunities for so many of our young children.

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