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

Budgets are all about political choices. They are also about the interests that a government seeks to represent. Budget 2016 shows once again that Fine Gael and, to its very great shame, the Labour Party, represent the interests of the privileged few in Irish society. Following the calamity of the economic crash under the last Fianna Fáil-led Government, Fine Gael and Labour assumed office with a huge mandate for political change. However, as citizens have learned to their cost, nothing has changed. Nowhere is this more obvious than in yesterday's budget.

Budget 2016 is an election budget, focused entirely on the short term, without strategic considerations for the longer term or for the public good. In its budget, the Government mimics exactly the boom-bust approach of Fianna Fáil. It is as brazen in playing for electoral advantage as any Fianna Fáil Government. Its budget is a cynical ploy to throw crumbs to specific interest groups in an effort to secure re-election in the months ahead. Sin é. Ach níl muintir na tíre seo chomh dúr sin. Cé go síleann an Rialtas seo gur amadáin iad, le blianta beaga anuas tá ciall cheannaithe ag go leor saoránach.

Since entering Government, Fine Gael and Labour have picked up where Fianna Fáil left off, targeting average families and vulnerable citizens for cruel cuts and unfair taxes like water charges and the family home tax. The Government likes to talk about a recovery but average families have not seen much evidence of this recovery. It is true that things have got better for some but, for the vast majority, little has changed. Tá an téarnamh seo, mar dhea, mí-chóir agus mí-chothrom.

The Government has unnecessarily prolonged the recession for the vast majority of our people. It has also caused huge damage to our public services and local communities, and its budget does not wipe that slate clean. The adverse social consequences of eight years of austerity budgets, first by Fianna Fáil and subsequently by Fine Gael and Labour, will take years to resolve. In successive budgets, Fine Gael and Labour have attacked the most vulnerable. I will give a snapshot of their high achievement. They indiscriminately imposed a blanket water tax and family home tax and they abolished the €300 cost of education allowance. They cut jobseeker's allowance and were only short of packing the bags of young people and driving them to the airport to encourage them to leave. They cut child benefit despite promises to the contrary, cut the back to school allowance, cut the fuel allowance by six weeks, or €120, and cut the respite care grant by €325. They introduced a tax on maternity benefit and abolished the bereavement grant. They cut invalidity pension for 65 year olds by €36.80 per week, cut rent supplement and cut the household benefits package. In total, in its first three budgets the Government slashed the education budget by €500 million and the health budget by €2.5 billion. That is some record.

Budget 2016 is a progression of the Government's socially delinquent approach, this time motivated by electoral considerations rather than done under the cover of the troika. It introduced more tax cuts that favour higher earners, and there has been more starving of public services and badly needed investment. The current crises in health and housing are not accidental but are a direct result of the policies of Fine Gael and Labour in government. Let us not forget that those people who lie on trolleys in accident and emergency wards are our own family members, our neighbours and our friends. They did not drop from outer space - they are us. Those households in mortgage distress and the citizens who find themselves homeless - they too are us. So too the 500,000 citizens scattered across the globe as a result of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour emigration policy. The Government has a duty to protect and defend the rights and entitlements of citizens; that is its first call. Instead, the Government has repeatedly attacked those rights and entitlements.

As a result of five years of Fine Gael-Labour Government, our society has become ever more polarised and unequal. This should be a matter of deep shame for the Tánaiste and the Labour Party. Budget 2016 again sees Fine Gael and Labour perpetuating a lie that it is possible to reduce the overall tax take, possible to stand off high earners and wealth, while at the same time maintaining and building front-line services. It is a lie.

Budget 2016 makes high earners the winners while average families and those citizens most dependent on public services lose out yet again. For all of the Government's fine talk, here are the figures. The budget gives to a person earning €25,000, in or around the norm in the economy, €227 per annum, just over €4 a week. However, for individuals earning over €70,000, it puts over €900 back into their pockets, three times more. Yet the Government talks about fairness and equity. By reducing capital gains tax by 13% and reducing tax on wealth, the Government is again dismantling the tax base. Its tax reduction measures will reduce the money available to the State by €882 million. At the same time, it puts €181.9 million of tax back into the pockets of the top 14% of earners and talks about equity and recovery.

How does any of this help the average family, the people who have borne the brunt of the economic and financial crash? Income inequality has deepened on the Government's watch, under the Fine Gael and Labour Party Government. The Labour Party has shamelessly abandoned average workers and the vulnerable. It has refused to take action on low hour contracts or on the unacceptably high levels of low paid and insecure jobs. We now live in an increasingly low pay and poverty wage economy. The Labour Party leader and Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, has cruelly targeted lone parents and unemployed young people for vicious cuts. She seems to hold a special kind of disdain for those particular groups of citizens.

This State's taxation system is deeply inequitable. We speak about progressivity in income tax, but taken in the round, the system is inequitable. Budget 2016 benefits the top 14% of earners. The Government cannot say that is equitable. For the low paid, budget 2016 gives a meagre increase of 50 cent in the national minimum wage. This will come not from Government coffers, but from employers. The Government will not lead as it should and has nothing to say about the need for a living wage. In real terms, there has been no increase in the minimum wage since 2007. Sinn Féin proposed to increase the minimum wage by €1 per hour, bringing a full-time minimum wage up to €19,572 a year. We would increase employee and employer PRSI bands in line with this increase. We support the introduction of the living wage and believe that as the largest employer, the State should lead the way on this.

I am sorry the Tánaiste has left the Chamber. It may come as news to her that contrary to her assertion earlier, the emergency is not over. The Government has presided over chaos in the health system. Some 7,775 citizens lay on trolleys in our accident and emergency departments last June, the highest recorded level of overcrowding in the month of June since the trolley watch count began 12 years ago. This is shocking. In July, we witnessed a 94% increase in trolley numbers in emergency departments since 2006. Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital, in Drogheda, with 769 patients on trolleys, had the highest levels of overcrowding in the State. Yesterday, as the Budget Statement was announced here, there were 469 citizens on hospital trolleys. There were 47 patients on trolleys in Beaumont and 16 in the Mater in my neighbourhood. This chaos is not accidental but is a result of Government policy and is an indictment of its term in office and of those policies. Budget 2016 does nothing to address the crisis. Listening to both Ministers yesterday, one would never imagine there was an issue of resources or fadhb ar bith in the health service.

Sinn Féin's budget proposals, which I am sorry to hear the Tánaiste had difficulty reading, set out an additional €383 million in health funding. This would provide for additional nursing staff, consultants, dentists, orthodontists, speech therapists and occupational therapists. It would allow increases in funding to disability and mental health services and would increase essential ambulance cover. What did the Government propose? When we go through the data and cut through the spin, we see it has allocated €18 million, a paltry sum, of an additional spend for health. Within that, it proposes to extend free GP cover to children under 12, those between six and 11. This is the most cynical of election stunts.

Many seriously sick and vulnerable citizens, including children and young adults, continue to go without medical cards. As the Taoiseach may recall, we had the unedifying episodes of discretionary medical cards being taken from seriously ill and disabled children. Under the Government's new scheme, very sick children of all ages and their families will still be forced to beg and plead for a full medical card. How revealing is this? How revealing it is that the Government favours a headline grabbing announcement over an initiative that would give cover and care to seriously sick children and children with severe disabilities. So much for this budget being child friendly.

In regard to cost, the budget allocates €10 million to the GP initiative. This is odd, because the costing available to Sinn Féin for such an initiative amounted to €39 million. Riddle us that. I believe that is further evidence of the fact that this is a stunt. It has nothing to do with assisting children who need their medical needs addressed. It has nothing to do with assisting families who go through the horror of caring for a very sick child. Perhaps we should not be surprised, because the Government has previous form in this regard.

The Taoiseach had a lot to say earlier, as did the Tánaiste, about older citizens. They seem to regard themselves as knights riding to the assistance of senior citizens, but nothing could be further from the truth. Yesterday, the Government did nothing in the budget regarding prescription charges. If there is one issue consistently raised by older citizens, it is the issue of prescription charges. Elderly citizens are now being forced to decide which medicines to take because the prescription charge is so high, at €2.50 per item. Where now stands the 2012 promise to abolish prescription charges? Far from abolishing them, the Government has presided over a 400% increase in the charge. This has caused serious hardship and is jeopardising people's health and well-being.

The Government made a drama last week of its plans for capital spending of €27 billion over six years. However, let it be recorded here again that next year, the Government will cut capital spending by more than €50 million. What is the logic for that?

The mind boggles. I suppose the Taoiseach had his outing in the media so now he will go about his actual intentions.

Faoin Rialtas seo, chuaigh géarchéim na tithíochta in olcas go mór. Fine Gael and Labour have abandoned the provision of social housing to the private sector and we can see the disastrous results. We have 130,000 families in need of housing and on social housing lists. Nearly 1,500 children are in emergency accommodation. No matter how often that is said, it is still so shocking.

Rents have gone up by 35% since 2011, outstripping Celtic tiger levels. We need a level of investment to which this Government is simply unwilling to commit, so the crisis will continue. That is the prognosis. From any reading of its announcements yesterday one could arrive at no other conclusion.

The additional €69 million announced by the Government yesterday is less than a quarter of what it cut from the housing budget in 2012. Was the Taoiseach aware of that? Again in 2013 the Government halved funding to local authority housing, and cut another 10% in 2014. We wonder why we have an emergency now. With homeless citizens dying on the streets very close to the Dáil, I really wonder what it will take before this Government acknowledges the scale of this catastrophe. Sinn Féin has provided for an extra €300 million investment for 2016 in social housing delivering almost 1,700 units in addition to existing Government plans.

The Government will not do that because it chooses not to. It also failed to announce rent certainty as part of the budget. Meanwhile many landlords have seen an opportunity in the current crisis and have hiked up rents. As a direct result of their actions and, more importantly, the Government's inaction, children and their families are now homeless.

The Government did nothing about the bank levy, despite all its previous tough talking and shape throwing. There will be no legislation to let the Central Bank set a cap on rip-off mortgage rates. The 300,000 mortgage holders with standard variable rate mortgages have been abandoned by this Government. We see again that this is a Government of the banks and for the banks.

The Government tells us that NAMA will build houses. Many in Sinn Féin have been calling on NAMA to activate and honour its social obligations for many years. Those pleas fell on deaf ears. Let it be said that, if delivered, only a tiny proportion of those houses will come back in the form of social or affordable housing. Again, the Government is relying on private developers making a buck in respect of housing provision.

I would like to know what the Government proposes to do around the funding of Tusla in general, and specifically in respect of the fact that 80% of women fleeing domestic violence were turned away from Dublin refuges in the first three months of this year. Many of those women have children and they were turned away. I want to know where the money is for that, and where the Taoiseach's commitment is. There was no mention of it yesterday although many of these refuge facilities are in imminent danger of closure. It was not worthy of mention in the budget. We know that without these services many women and children will be forced into homelessness or, heaven forbid, worse.

The Government's announcement on child care falls very short of the Scandinavian model benchmark so beloved by the Tánaiste. It is proposed to provide an additional 50 weeks in respect of any individual child between the ages of three and five and a half. Although any advance in child care is welcome, let us be clear that the system as it exists is sessional and therefore very part-time. The capitation rates afforded for the scheme are absolutely inadequate and are causing huge difficulties in terms of staffing. The experience of children with special needs and disabilities has been in many cases one of exclusion from this scheme. The Government has now committed to remedying that position and I hope that it will be true to that commitment when we see the details.

Sinn Féin's budget proposals also provided for an additional six weeks maternity benefit that can be taken by either parent in addition to paternity leave. I am very disappointed that the Government did not do something in that regard.

The only positive move regarding education in the budget is the decrease to the pupil teacher ratio. There was no increase in school capitation grants, which leaves schools in very great difficulties. I heard no mention of increasing funds for DEIS schools or, importantly, of reducing the student contribution fee. The cut of 15% to resource hours across the system has been devastating. The Government's partial announcement does not come close to reversing that cut.

Rural Ireland has been under sustained attack over the past number of years. Fine Gael and Labour have presided over the closure of Garda stations, schools and post offices, the shutting down of hospitals and of other local services. The budget does nothing to reverse this attack on rural Ireland. Our pre-budget submission proposed that farm assist be restored to pre-2013 levels in terms of assessment of means and income deductions in respect of children. We also proposed additional places in the rural social scheme by 20%. None of these measures was introduced by the Government. While some of the measures announced, such as capital gains tax and stamp duty exemptions for young farmers being extended beyond next year, are to be welcomed there is nothing from this Government for struggling small farmers. The USC reduction of 0.5% will apply to most small farmers who earn less than the lower limit, while the bigger farmers will benefit to the tune of 2.5% on incomes up to €70,044.

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