Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This budget is really a cynical bag of pre-election tricks without any substance whatsoever. It will do nothing to deal with the emergency in housing and homelessness, the disaster in public hospitals, or the gaping and growing inequality and poverty in society. I even have to disagree with some of my Opposition colleagues who are calling this a giveaway budget. It is not. A few miserable crumbs are being given to people who have had their incomes and services savaged for the past six years. The only giveaway is to the multinational corporations and NAMA, National Asset Management Agency, developers.

This makes an absolute mockery of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan's claim today that this is the end of boom-bust politics. Boom-bust politics happened because we gave massive tax breaks and backing to corporate vultures and developers. Now, we are going to do it again. It is unbelievable. In a way, this budget is a magician's trick. The Government tried to hypnotise the media, which it has done largely successfully today, and then tried to hypnotise the public, but it will not be so successful with it, with the few crumbs it is throwing to ordinary people. The real business is being done with the new tax avoidance scheme being put in place by the Government to allow the multinationals to evade billions of euro in tax when the international community is screaming for action to be taken to prevent this very type of tax avoidance. The knowledge box is nothing other than a scheme to insulate the multinationals in this country from the international push to make them pay their fair share of taxes. The new corporation tax rate for research and development of 6.25% - exactly half of the 12.5% rate; as if it is not low enough - happens to be the actual rate they are paying under the double-Irish tax arrangements, if one looks at the EUROSTAT figures. The Government is insulating the multinationals from the moves to reform the corporate tax system internationally. It is a disgrace.

Unbelievably, the Government is going to put NAMA developers back in business to make profits from the housing crisis that it wilfully fails to address by not introducing rent controls or building social housing. Instead, it is going to get NAMA developers to profit from the misery of the housing crisis while people are dying on the streets. It is shameful. The game was given away this morning by the Taoiseach when he was asked why there were no rent controls. He said such controls would interfere with the market. That is the agenda - nothing must interfere with the market. That is what the Government cares about and what it is protecting. That is what this budget is about.

What has the Government given ordinary people? There is the insult of €3 for the pensioner after four years of an income freeze. Nothing has been given to raise the basic income of lone parents, carers or jobseekers. The shameful half-rate jobseeker’s allowance for those under 25 years which has driven 250,000 young people out of the country is an utter disgrace. Somebody on average earnings of €35,000 a year will receive €7 a week. It is a joke and it will be less if one is on €25,000 a year.

Faced with the absolute catastrophe in the health service of 69,000 people on hospital waiting lists and 7,000 patients on hospital trolleys last month, the Government has not put enough extra money into the service, even when the most conservative standstill scenario indicates it needs €300 million just to stay where it is. The more serious standstill scenario indicates we need €600 million, which suggests the crisis is going to get worse next year based on these figures. The reality is we need several billion euro to undo the damage by the cuts imposed since 2006. The hospital crisis will be worse at the end of next year.

The Government has cut capital expenditure in the education sector, with fewer school buildings. It has given nothing to the poor, the numbers of whom have grown under the Government. For the homeless, the budget is an utter disaster. The multinationals and the developers, however, have done very well out of it, thanks to the Government.

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