David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is a Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael blueprint with a few sprinkles from the Independent Alliance. The most underwhelming aspect of this budget is that it lacks ambition. It fails to provide solutions and will not meet the needs of the people.

Let us hear from those at the coalface of this Government's policies. Sometimes the Taoiseach needs a reality check. Sometimes he needs to hear from the people who work on the front line of our health services and other public services and from those who are victims of the housing crisis, the lack of investment and the bad choices that the Government makes.

The following quotes are taken from the group, Support for Nurses, Midwives and Frontline Staff in Ireland. I want the Taoiseach to listen carefully. I want each word to sink in. I want him to truly understand the struggle facing many of the staff who work on the front line in our public services.This is the message these nurses and midwives shared with each other:

Stay strong. Together we can make the health service a much better place for our patients by providing enough nurses and midwives to deliver high quality care and we can make the health service a better place to work for our nurses and midwives! Pay restoration is an absolute must! Together we can do it!

That is the message of the public sector under severe pressure. These people know exactly where the problems lie because they deal with them every day. They see the cuts because they are expected to paper over them. The Government wants to treat every problem with a plaster. It is not enough.

The Taoiseach needs to hear from the people who are working day-in day-out in the system. This is the actual experience of one nurse:

Words cannot express how miserable I was today and have been on so many occasions in the past ... I never got to breakfast or have a proper lunch. I managed to stuff a few crackers ... in my mouth between phone calls which consisted mainly of trying to support people who wanted to self-harm, people who were in distress, people who needed adequate support and care from more than one student nurse who couldn’t cope with running a day hospital on her own sick, tired, hungry and needing [to use the toilet]. I felt faint at one stage.

I hear those stories every day and yet the Government does nothing to solve those problems. Those at the front line know that this is about investment. They know that our health service has been starved of resources. They know that the Government is intent on making nursing a low-pay occupation and we know why they do it; it is because they want our health system to be a bargain basement for private investors.

Last year the Government spent €207 million on agency staff in the health service. In 2011 when the previous Fine Gael-led Government came into office that was just over €100 million. There has been a 100% increase in the amount spent on agency staff. This is more privatisation of our health service. It is obvious what this is about. The Government has not shrunk the wage bill, it has simply outsourced it. I welcome the recruitment of new staff, but what has been announced falls far short of what is required. The Minister’s plan will not address the crisis in health care or move us towards a fair, single-tier health service.

It is incredible that Ministers would come to the House today and stand over the housing crisis and not put the capacity and resources into the issue. Everybody accepts we have a housing emergency. I am amazed that the Minister stood up in this Chamber and said with a straight face that he will see increased demand and that supply will follow. What planet is the Minister on? It is similar to the situation where when a fire is blazing fuel is put on it. The lack of supply will not be addressed through help-to-buy schemes. It can only be fixed by building more houses. The Minister knows that needs to be done.

I want to bring this back to reality to ensure that the Taoiseach understands the extent of the crisis. In July The Irish Timesran a story about some of the 1,000 homeless families who live in single hotel rooms and bed and breakfasts. This is one of those stories:

Karen suffers from anxiety and frets about accidentally breaking the rules ... Everyone is given a list of rules when they arrive.

She has been homeless since early in 2014...

Karen has been told that she could be here [in the hostel] until Christmas. In the meantime she has done her best to make the room as homely as possible [for her and her children]...

The single bed is covered in stuffed toys ... There’s also an engraved glass heart hanging there. Karen’s older son bought for her birthday. It reads: “The best journey always takes us home.”

The problem is that because of the Government’s policies, too many people like Karen and far too many families in the State do not have a place to call home. The Government has done very little about that in today’s budget.

How can this situation be solved through rent-a-room tax reliefs? It is nonsense. The Government is not serious about tackling the housing crisis. It does not care about those who find themselves homeless. This is the reality of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael’s confidence and supply agreement. This is the inequality they want to keep in place while they make excuses for developers and speculators. To actually do what is needed to tackle inequality in Ireland would need a complete change in policy and practice. It would require meaningful investment in public infrastructure, in education, in housing and in health.

This is where we get to the crux of the issue. For Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, austerity was just another way for their friends to get paid. And all that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael see today are opportunities for their friends to make money. The have the tax-avoidance sweetheart deals involving Apple and other multinationals that we know of from the past. We have the tax-avoidance schemes that end up giving us a GDP growth figure that was the laughing stock of the world. We have the vulture funds, buying up Irish mortgages at a pittance, making families homeless and making a fortune in the process. This is putting money in the pockets of people who are buying up people’s distressed mortgages rather than dealing with the problem.

All of this has been done by the Government, through policies Fine Gael designed. The Government and its friends in Fianna Fáil are incapable of seeing the bigger picture. We could have had better access to financial services and credit, but this might upset the banks according to Fine Gael. We could have had better access to health care, but this might upset the privatisation agenda so beloved of the Minister, Deputy Harris. We could have strengthened workers' rights, but this might upset plans to bring back social partnership and blunt the trade union movement. We could have had more direct investment in public infrastructure, but this might upset the plans for public private partnerships that end up costing more.

In order to lower the cost of living through investment we need to take on the vested interests that run deep in our society. However, the biggest bloc protecting those interests is sitting across the Chamber and on both sides of us, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

I believe that we can build a better future. I also believe that we can tackle the issues facing our communities and our economy. We need to tackle years of underinvestment. We need to lower the cost of living. We need to build today the future we want tomorrow. We need to create a just and fair society.

In our alternative budget we set out to show what can be done. Sinn Féin is committed to a sustainable capital investment programme. In our alternative budget we set out €1,266 million for additional funding for capital investment. It is one that sees housing, health, education and transport as essential social and economic pillars. Our plan is equivalent to 2.5% of GDP for 2017. This is the type of plan and vision that we need. It is the type of investment we need. It is not just about the social problems, as important as they are. It is also about investment in jobs, in rural areas, in regional development, in broadband and in flood relief, and investment in ensuring that businesses have the opportunities to grow and flourish. That can only be done if we invest. Today the Minister has proposed an additional €400 million in capital investment. That will not deal with the problems the country has today.

In housing we would deliver an additional 7,000 social units in the first year. We would do this because this crisis cannot be solved through tax breaks and rebates. It can only be addressed by providing the homes through acquisitions and new builds.

We need to invest in social housing so that we can bring a proper balance to the housing sector. That would also have a positive knock-on impact by reducing rent prices in the private sector. For too long Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael produced policies that ignored social housing needs and favoured putting money into the pockets of private landlords. It continues to do so by putting an additional €111 million into the pockets of landlords again, rather than building the homes that people need.

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