Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak about the budget. It makes me very angry, but even more than that, it makes me very sad to hear a Labour Party Minister gloat yet again about the brutal treatment of the Greek people by the European Central Bank, ECB, and the European Commission. The last thing Greece needed was an even more brutal prescription of increased austerity. Everyone knows, from the European Commission to the ECB and, above all, the IMF, that increased austerity has not worked and will not work. Increased austerity was imposed on Greece as political punishment for electing a left-wing government and how people who claim to represent the Labour Party tradition can gloat about this is beyond me. The Government is doing this to try to justify its claim that its policies have worked, but that is not true. The factors that led to recovery in the economy and a successful exit from the bailout were all beyond its control. In other words, it happened despite its policies, not because of them.

These factors were a fall in oil prices and quantitative easing by the European Central Bank, ECB, which devalued the euro against the US dollar and sterling by over 20%. This gave a huge and welcome boost to exports and tourism. The outright monetary transactions policy announced by the ECB to stop Italy and Spain from being forced out of the bond markets was the key to Ireland being able to accept cheap loans and exit the bailout. Those of us who argued for growth, not austerity, have been shown to have been right, not wrong.

This budget is a cynical exercise to buy votes, with a little bit here and little bit there. It is all based on the premise, dictated by focus group researchers, that the more one earns, the more one gains. Austerity has not ended; in fact, it will probably become more embedded. Over 20% of young people under 25 years of age are unemployed. They have suffered the most savage cuts in welfare payments. Unemployment is at just under 10%. Restoring social welfare rates to 2009 levels, taking account of inflation, would require an increase of €27 a week for a single person and €40 a week for a couple. This budget, however, does nothing. It should have outlined a strategy to restore these rates over time.

The increase in the minimum wage is minimal. It should have been increased by at least €1, with a strategy to bring it to the level of the living wage within three years. One third of people and one third of children live in deprivation. Rather than income tax cuts aimed at winning a general election, the Government should have used available resources to prioritise bringing that situation to an end. This would have meant raising welfare rates and the wages of those in work in line with the living wage, while outlawing low-hour contracts. These could have been important first steps in this budget.

By their very nature, cuts in income tax only benefit higher earners. This budget is no different. A single income family with no children on €25,000 a year will have an income increase of €227 over the year. A similar couple on €45,000 a year will have an increase of €400 a year. However, a couple on €70,000 will have an increase of €900 to €1,000 a year.

In the past five years the provision for Traveller accommodation has been cut by 90% or €35 million. Large numbers of Traveller families are at risk, as we saw in the tragic event in south Dublin over the weekend. However, we do not see anything in the budget to direct moneys towards the maintenance and upgrading of halting sites. In the past five years there have been numerous attempts to upgrade the Labre Park halting site in Ballyfermot but to no avail. The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government recently turned down proposed plans, supported by the Clúid Housing Association, for this halting site.

To stop the tide into homelessness, we need rent controls and an increase in the rent supplement, as well as a change in legislation to keep people in their homes and to stop landlords from being able to use the excuse of selling their homes to force people out of them. There are significant areas with which the budget did not deal. It is a crying shame the Government did not use the opportunity to start a real comeback.

See this speech in context