Seán Fleming (Laois, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on budget 2017. Earlier this morning, when asked how I would rate this budget, I said I would give it a rating of 5, which I think is a fair assessment. I said it deserves a pass but not an honour and so I settled on a rating of 5. It deserves a pass because of the input of Fianna Fáil by way of the programme for Government. We ensured that all available funding would be spent on a 2:2 basis in terms of the improvement of public services, which have been decimated by Government over the past four or five years. Fianna Fáil's input ensured a €5 increase for pensioners and people of a working age. We also ensured that the targeted USC cuts of 0.5% across the three rates benefited people on low and middle incomes rather than only people on high incomes, as Fine Gael would have wished to do.

I was intrigued by the contributions over the past hour from those whom I would call "the hurlers on the ditch", namely, Sinn Féin who have said they will oppose this budget. Sinn Féin proposes to oppose the €5 increase in the old age pension and the increases in payments for people in receipt of jobseeker's, disability and carer's allowances. I know people would like more. However, I do not understand Sinn Féin's politics. While we would like to give more, a €5 per week increase for 2017 is welcome, yet Sinn Féin proposes to try to block it. I hope the people Sinn Féin represents get the message loud and clear that it is opposing the €5 increase.

The Minister, Deputy Coveney, referred in his contribution to the first-time buyer's grant being only a small part of the housing strategy. He then went on to talk about how many new people will be accommodated under the new housing schemes. The largest group of people who will benefit under the housing strategy are people in receipt of rent supplement, which is paid by community welfare officers. During the course of this year and next year the rent supplement scheme will be replaced by the housing assistance payment, which will be administered by the local authorities, such that people will be moving from one scheme to another. It is simply a change of scheme name. The Minister will then report at the end of next year that the Government has helped 10,000 or some other number of people with their accommodation needs via this new housing assistance programme. However, he will not acknowledge that in effect all he did was change the name of a scheme.

Fianna Fáil got the overall macroeconomic aspects of this budget right, which is why there is a reasonable amount of money available for public services. However, Fianna Fáil did not write the details of the budget. When the Government, particularly Fine Gael, was left alone, things started to go awry. While people welcome some of the aspects of this budget, they are also aware of its shortcomings. As I said earlier, I give this budget a rating of 5 out of ten. Most people will get a €5, €6 or €7 increase in their pay or pensions next year, depending on their level of income.

I would like to refer to a particular group of people that have not been mentioned thus far. There are people under 24 years of age who are in receipt of jobseeker's allowance of €100 per week. This payment will increase to €102.70 per week, which means these people will get an increase not of €5 but €2.70 per week. Even though the document provided states that there will be a €5 increase in all weekly payments, when one reads the small print one finds that people under 24 years of age will only get €2.70. There are people aged 24 who are married, whose spouses or partners will also get an increase of €2.70, which amounts to an increase of €5.40 for a couple. However, in the case of a couple with a child, as can be the case because people in their mid-20s do have children, there is no increase for the qualified child. This means the €5.40 in additional income going into that household equates to €1.80 per person. In the case of a 24 year old who is married or living with another 24 year old person and has two children that €5.40 equates to €1.35 per person per week. This is where this budget has gone off the track. We thought there would be a €5 per week increase across the board.

When Fine Gael got to work on the details after we were no longer involved in discussions, it came up with the idea of a €1.35 increase for people in that category. Those are the facts from the Department of Social Protection. Worse still, the Government has not even said when those people will actually get the payment.

Another shortcoming of the budget is the failure to make adequate efforts to improve the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools. Almost 30% of pupils in County Laois are in classrooms of more than 30 students, which is unacceptable. The extra teachers allocated will only keep pace with the extra pupil numbers and will not improve matters. Hospital waiting lists have not been dealt with at all. The waiting lists for people seeking community services, including child psychology services, orthodontic services and dental treatment, have not been dealt with properly. I received confirmation today from the relevant agency that there are 190 people waiting for home care packages in County Laois but there is little or nothing in terms of home help to be found in the budget today.

While we all support initiatives to get more houses constructed, the first time buyers grant will not achieve that. If the Minister had thought about it a bit more, he would have gone about things in a different way. The idea of giving a tax rebate of up to €20,000 is to confine the scheme to people who have been in well-paid jobs for the last four years. As they have paid a lot of tax, they now qualify for a rebate. People coming home from abroad will not qualify. People who have been out of work during the last four years but who now have a well-paid job will not qualify as they will not have paid enough tax in the preceding four years to get the rebate. People who have to move house or who previously had a house but are now separated will not qualify. Too many people are excluded. The Government has been telling people to save but a condition of the plan is that a person will have to take out a mortgage of at least 80%. That means those who have been prudent and tried to save up 30% of the price of the house will now be penalised. They will not qualify unless they take on additional borrowings. I do not know where that condition came from. The conditions for the scheme require one to be well-off and to have paid a lot of tax over the last four years and force one to take on an excessive mortgage even if one does not need to do so. A slight mistake has been made there and the Minister needs to revisit it.

No adequate preparation is made in respect of Brexit and the sterling exchange rate. I find it unusual that in dealing with European institutions the Government adopts an à la carteapproach. It quotes Europe when it suits and dismisses it when that suits. The Irish Fiscal Council says that the level of spending increases breaches the EU fiscal rules but the Government is going to ignore that. It is going to ignore the EU ruling in relation to the Apple tax case, which is fair enough, but it will then come along and tell everyone in Ireland that we must accept EU directives when it comes to Irish Water. There is no consistency or credibility in the Government picking those bits of European regulation that suit it one day while dismissing other European regulations the next. The Government produced a table yesterday setting out a high risk in terms of currency developments, housing supply pressures and the concentration of income tax from the major corporations. There is also a high risk in regard to the EU budget contribution based on the estimated increase in GDP. The budget does not adequately deal with those issues.

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