Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I was honoured to be returned to the Dáil in March. The biggest surprise or the thing that has struck me most in the six months since has been the budget. I am privileged to be a member of the budgetary oversight committee, where we are involved in considering the real details of the various choices. I was also involved five or six years ago in the 2011 budget, and the difference in the situation is what amazed me, that is, that we have come out of such a deep crisis and such a deep hole. That is something to be recognised. We can say as a people that we have come through that well and we now have some choices, although they are not huge choices. It was in that frame of mind that listened to the Ministers and various speakers here today. I was very much taken with the end of the speech by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, and of the speech by Deputy Michael McGrath as they both used the same phrase about the centre holding. I said to myself that is exactly what we had to do in 2011, 2012 and 2013. We had to hold and stop the collapse. It was important for our people that we did not collapse. However, now is not the time for the centre to just hold, now is the time for the centre to move, to prepare for a different future, to consider a different economic approach, to use the slight freedom and flexibility we have to make sure we do not go back to the very same conditions that got us into the crisis in the first place. What we have seen in the budget here today is the centre holding to the old economic model, which will get us back, I fear, into the same conditions that caused the crisis in the first place.

It is not all bad. Everyone welcomes the amount of money allocated here and there. It is great for pensioners to get €5. It could be more, but everyone agrees that it is good. It is a kind of one-for-everyone-in-the-audience-type budget. However, when it is such a kind of budget it raises the forensic question, which members of the audience have been left out? Who has not been served by this budget? I want to highlight three sectors which have been left out. Deputy Catherine Murphy asked whether this budget will be remembered as a strategic one. It may be, but for the wrong reasons. The first category of people who are being left out and have been let down are the parents who care for their children at home using a variety of means, such as a relative, a minder or their own caring work. This has been said in the budgetary oversight committee. We are not saying this because it is budget day. We made this point very consistently in the budgetary oversight committee. A series of economists appeared before the committee and said that we must get everyone working. Yes, we must support those parents with children in full-time child care. I fully support that because they are having a difficult time. It is very hard to budget and to cover the cost of everything.

Yes, we should support that form of child care. However, what about the parents at home? What has happened in Fine Gael that they no longer count? I would have thought that the father of the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, would have had a slightly different view. Parents are in the best position to decide what to do. Every family is different and every child is different. A child may have special needs or be shy. Parents have different circumstances. Sometimes it should be the father in the home and sometimes it should be the mother. It depends on the circumstances and sometimes it is best to use child care facilities. However, why is the State insisting it knows what is best for every family and for every child? Why is the Government introducing a major strategic change of policy that from now on there will be a specific approach that the State wants to promote, which is what the Government is doing in the budget measures introduced today.

Some people might call that conservative and say, “What’s he going on about with the real old-fashioned conservative approach?” I see it not as a conservative, but as a radical pro-feminist approach that has been there for decades. In the argument I am presenting I cite Marilyn Waring, the great New Zealand feminist economist, whose book, Counting for Nothing, has not been heeded by the Government today. In Counting for Nothingshe states that the economic system does not value caring work, typically because it tends to be women who are doing it.

Yes, we need to value the work of those young people - usually women - in child care facilities who are on the minimum wage. Those are good centres and they are good people. Those are good small businesses. We need to help them and we need to value that care work. However, we also need to value the caring work done at home. What is more important than how we raise a child? What work deserves to be better paid? If we asked that question in a really honest way, we would end up with a different budget that supports all forms of caring work, which is one of the fundamental changes in how the centre has to move.

Second, I cite the US Senator, Elizabeth Warren, whose book The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents are Going Brokeshows the path we are on. We are heading towards an American-type economic system as ever, wanting to get everyone working. That would push up the price of housing more than anything any else. In my city, in the city of the Minister, Deputy Coveney, and in most cities where a dual-income system is promoted, it forces those without a dual income out of the housing market; they do not have a choice.

There are those who say it is parents’ choice to stay at home. It is, but we are now creating an environment in which we will not have a choice, because favouring one system over another leads us in the direction that Elizabeth Warren warned against. Her evidence indicates it damages and destroys middle class communities. People can have a different view on that. Let us have a debate and look at her argument in some detail but I happen to think she is right. Why are we making that strategic choice today?

The third book I cite in the case I am making is Richard Douthwaite’s great book, The Growth Illusion: How Economic Growth Has Enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet. From where has the Government's policy come? It is coming from an approach of economic growth at all costs. It is coming from the OECD and the EU at whose centre is that economic philosophy. I do not agree with it. I do not believe it measures real progress or quality of life. It is not even accurate. With GDP growth figures of 26% this year - no, it is not; it is 5% - we have a chance to change the way we measure progress and growth. We should start by how we measure how we look after and raise our children, and treasure that before and above everything else. We are not doing that here today.

The second sector left out is our younger people and they know it. It will be one of the stories to come out of this budget. I am sure there were good intentions behind introducing the tax measure to try to help the first-time buyer. However, everyone here and most economists believe those in the building industry are the winners. They are the ones who will pocket the gain. It is a straight cash injection to the developers, which brings us back to 2002 and 2003 budgets. That is not where we need to go.

We had this debate with the Minister, Deputy Noonan, at the Committee on Budgetary Oversight two or three weeks ago; Deputy Donnelly will remember it. The Minister was very succinct in saying that increasing demand increases supply. It does not; it increases price. We should have used the money, that we are about to lose in the tax breaks we have given, to fund a cost-rental social housing model.

I welcome the increase the Minister, Deputy Coveney, has got. It is good and fair play. Let us spend it and use it wisely to build the good-quality social housing we saw the other day. The Minister is absolutely right in what he said the other day. Social housing is going to become a desirable sought-after form of accommodation. However, if we are building that, let us build it at scale. I believe Ronan Lyons said we were forgoing €200 million over a number of years because of this measure. Irrespective of the figure, it is still multi-millions and that could have built social housing using a cost-rental model. As the Minister said, it is borrowed money and the long-term income stream from the rent can pay for the borrowing we do for it. That is what we could have done.

If there is a problem with building industry, I do not think we should be going down on the knee to it. When it claims it is too expensive to build here, we offer tax breaks and land without site value tax. All the advantages are for the building industry. NAMA has the expertise and the land banks. It should bring the expertise, which it has gained in London and other cities in which it has been involved in social housing projects, back here where it can build more cheaply.

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