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

I am going to talk about some of the details of the budget shortly but I feel the need to respond to some of the debate that has unfolded since Tuesday.

Interestingly enough, I wish to respond in particular to a number of attacks on AAA–PBP by our friends from Fianna Fáil. True to form as birds of a feather who flock together when challenged, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have waxed lyrical about the need to protect the centre in politics and about their great prudence. They have attacked what they describe as the extremes in politics, which they believe are characterised specifically by People Before Profit and the Anti-Austerity Alliance. Apparently, we are extremists. It is important to respond to that quite ridiculous charge. Notwithstanding the theatrics of Fianna Fáil today in distancing itself from some of the increasingly unpopular measures taken by the Government in the budget, particularly the proposed tax break for first-time buyers, both parties banded together to try to attack those on the left and characterise them as extremists.

In a very good book called The Extreme Centre: A Warning, the author, Tariq Ali, rightly seeks to turn on its head the narrative of the centre versus the extremes. I find it very difficult to understand how a party whose policies precipitated the greatest economic collapse in the history of the State and unloaded the cost, €64 billion, onto the backs of working people, the poor, the deprived, women, children and the disabled can talk about being part of a prudent centre. It is laughable in the extreme.

Nothing is more extreme than the economic collapse that Fianna Fáil precipitated in 2008. That was the most extreme event we have had since the foundation of the State. It resulted in an average drop of 20% in the incomes of ordinary people. Some 30,000 public sector workers' jobs were axed. There was a €3 billion cut to the health budget and the social housing building programme was effectively ceased. There were brutal attacks on the disabled, lone parents and public sector workers. Fianna Fáil cut the minimum wage. Levels of poverty and deprivation doubled in some categories. That is extremism. The extremism that led to the crisis was, of course, a product of the extremism characterised by the pampering and supporting of the greediest people in society. I refer to bankers on obscene salaries and to allowing them to dictate policy. I refer also to the private developers and landlords, whose naked greed for profit was supported and championed by the Government at every hand's turn. The cost was an absolutely catastrophic economic crisis. That is what I call extremism.

It is very telling that the very policies Fianna Fáil championed and that led to the crisis of 2008 are now being continued or resurrected by Fine Gael, specifically in this budget, proving once again that there is not a whit of difference between the two parties. Notwithstanding the theatre that we get in here, whereby the two parties jockey for political position and posture in front of the public, their policies are always the same in reality, regardless of which is in government or whether both are in government, as is now the case although one is pretending to be in opposition. Their policies are the same and that is what we got in the budget.

Faced with the worst homelessness and housing crisis in the history of the State resulting from the policies of championing the interests of developers and bankers and the vicious austerity the Government imposed, what is the answer of Fine Gael? Unbelievably, the answer is more tax breaks and subsidies for private landlords and developers. Really, you could not make this stuff up. The truth of the much-trumpeted Coveney housing plan has been exposed in its stark reality in this budget.

How many nonsense figures were circulated by the Minister responsible for housing, Deputy Simon Coveney, and his predecessor, Deputy Alan Kelly? We were told 110,000 social housing units would be delivered, and then we were told it would be 140,000. In the budget, we see the reality. There are not to be 140,000 or 110,000 new social housing units but 1,500, as is evident in black and white in the expenditure report. Not even all the 1,500 units are to be local authority units. The number includes houses of approved housing bodies, acquisitions and the rapid-build things the Government is promoting rather than the bricks and mortar people want. One thousand five hundred houses will not even cater for the new applicants put on the housing list in the space of two or three months. If that is all the Government is proposing to deliver, the housing and homelessness crisis will be worse by the end of the year. The reality of the Government's housing programme is massive handouts to private developers and private landlords.

Some €105 million extra is to be provided for the housing assistance payment scheme. This is money straight into the pockets of private landlords and it does not deliver one new social housing unit. In most cases, the people who will be in the housing assistance payment scheme will be staying exactly where they are, that is, in exactly the same private rented accommodation they are currently in, where they are receiving rent allowance. This rent allowance will just be recategorised as a housing assistance payment. Similarly, €134 million has been allocated for the rental accommodation scheme. Again, this is a direct payment by the State to private landlords, meaning that the housing applicants will stay exactly where they are now, in exactly the same private rented accommodation, thereby costing the public a fortune. Some €200 million is to be made available for infrastructure grants to private developers, incredibly to build on public land private housing from which they will profit. This is absolutely naked, dramatic privatisation of public land, which we will pay for, but the private developers will be the ones who will benefit from it.

Some €15 million has been allocated for the famous help-to-buy scheme. This will simply increase the price of property, through bidding, for buyers, and the money will go straight into the pockets of the private developers. The scheme will not deliver any affordable or social housing. This is the reality. In that regard, it is worth exposing the double counting that is carried out consistently by the Government in respect of housing. The figure of €1.2 billion is big but the expenditure increase that the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government will get is not €1.2 billion but only €400 million over and above the figure for last year.

Included in that figure is a 7%, or €30 million, cut in the money going to local government, which means libraries, local services, the people who clean the roads, cleansing departments and so on will be cut from the local government budget.

Regarding health, again, we have heard fibs from the Government. The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, said proudly on Tuesday that 2017 will see "the highest ever level of health funding in the history of [our] country". This is simply not true. In 2008, the health budget was €15.4 billion. If capital is included, it was €16 billion. The health budget for 2017 is only €14.6 billion. One does not have to be a mathematician to work out that this means we had a higher health spend in 2008 than is provided for in this budget. I hope the Minister will correct the record in that regard. That €14.6 billion, which is less than what was provided in 2008, represents an increase on the Estimate for last year, and again there was much trumpeting of this in the budget speech. However, there is a failure to acknowledge that €500 million of that money is taken up by the cost overrun of the health service from last year and €300 million by the pay increases provided for under the Lansdowne Road agreement. At least €300 million is necessary to stand still in terms of service provision, given the additional demographic pressures of our older population and more demand on the health system. This means the budget will actually have a negative effect - or at best a neutral effect - in terms of service delivery in the health service, and that, as we know, will be a disaster. If there are no real or genuine increases in health expenditure, the suffering of those on waiting lists, those on trolleys in accident and emergency departments and those looking for home care packages; the funding we desperately need for mental health services; and the increased funding we need for the disabled in a whole range of areas cannot be delivered through a budget that has a neutral or possibly negative effect in real terms when all the elements to which I referred are stripped out.

Similarly, regarding education, there was much crowing about a €458 million increase. However, when demographic pressures are stripped out, such as the 10,000 extra students coming into the education system every year and the additional teaching posts the Government proposes, this sum will just about, if even, keep pace. Therefore, is it any surprise that there is no mention of class sizes or pupil-teacher ratios in the budget? In fact, the extra funding will only keep pace with that extra demand.

I heard the Minister for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs responding yesterday to the 16% cut in the arts, a point which I think we were the first to raise on Tuesday. It should be borne in mind that this comes against a background of our having the lowest level of expenditure on arts as a proportion of GDP almost anywhere in Europe. Last year, the Government gave an extra €50 million to the arts for the 1916 centenary and then took it back again. This was at a time when the arts community was saying it would like to reach European averages in arts funding but that it wanted the Government at least to leave the arts with the €50 million extra they received last year. However, the Government took €30 million of that back in a disgusting cut when in fact we need a significant increase in the arts budget.

I will give a shout out to young people. I got a letter from the National Youth Council of Ireland which asked, "[Why has] the Government [in this budget further] widened the gap between the rates for other adult welfare recipients and young welfare recipients [by only giving them €2.70 extra or €3.80 extra, compared to the fiver it has given to everybody else]?" Why has the Government widened this gap? I would like an answer to that.

This is a miserable budget full of falsehoods put forward by the various Ministers in their speeches on Tuesday.

See this speech in context