Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The budget contains no central message other than self-preservation. However, it could not have been otherwise because the Government is afraid to make choices. Beholden to Fianna Fáil, the Government ensured that every sector received a gesture. A former Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance was at the heart of this budget. It was a tribute to Charlie McCreevy in every respect, right down to reductions in income tax being paid for by tax revenue raised on property transactions. However, a person who earns €30,000 a year will now get an extra €2 per week. We have been down this road before and we know how it ends. Last night, the Taoiseach said he would not bring us back to boom and bust but the core message of the budget harked back to the days of McCreevy economics. Like a bad tribute act, the Government will keep pretending that everyone can be given a tax cut and spending on services can be increased at the same time. The myth that one can be all things to all people has been resurrected in this budget.

Let us end the pretence. When it comes to the hard tack of politics and the biggest political event of the year, together, marching hand in hand, go Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Fianna Fáil was yesterday so desperate to have something to say that it resorted to attacking others in opposition, as it has done again today. Fianna Fáil is in coalition with Fine Gael in all but name. It is claiming credit for nearly every measure in the budget and, as I said, the shadow of McCreevy looms large.

The sums in the budget barely add up. Last night, the Taoiseach pledged that sustainable steps will be taken but that is the spin the Opposition has come to expect, as proven by the expenditure of €5 million on a communications unit. As all Members know, budget measures such as stamp duty increases that have a commercial or market-moving impact are introduced on budget night by financial resolution. The Government attempted to imply that the financial resolution on stamp duty was put in place last night to avoid lobbying from the property sector that might undermine the measure. However, if it had not been brought in immediately, hundreds of property deals to the value of millions of euro would have been conducted in advance of its implementation. The more serious issue is the leaking, days in advance of the budget, of the information that stamp duty would be increased. That is commercially-sensitive information of the kind that makes people rush deals through. The Government and the Department of Finance have serious questions to answer about that leak. How many millions of euro in potential revenue was lost? How many options for land were signed on Monday and Tuesday in advance of the financial resolution? What revenue has the State lost out on?

Other serious questions regarding stamp duty that highlight the shadow of McCreevy that looms over this budget have been asked. Will the €376 million it is expected to raise through this measure actually materialise?

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Industry has its doubts. In 2015 and 2016, commercial property stamp duty receipts were inflated. There are serious questions about the fiscal sustainability of how the Minister for Finance funded his budget. If the Opposition parties built a budget on the kinds of measures announced yesterday, it would be laughed out of court. Half of the extra budget revenue is built on a potentially volatile property transaction. It is also based on a growth in GDP of 3% which may or may not materialise. The shadow of Brexit looms large over the potential in that regard. Another €150 million is based on restrictions to corporation tax, which will impact upon intellectual property. It does not get more volatile than that. If an Opposition party said it would raise an extra €100 million on tax compliance, it would be mocked as having made up the numbers. Yesterday, the Government found this money down the proverbial back of the sofa, with €50 million relating to PAYE compliance, €30 million for business compliance and €20 million in respect of tax avoidance. This begs serious questions as to how much revenue is not being collected.

When costing tobacco increases, we were told by the Department of Finance that these measures would be mostly revenue-neutral. However, the Government is relying on €64 million to come in from this year's tax increase. We also seriously question the amount the Government expects to raise on the national training fund levy. Just last week, the Department of Finance told us that a 0.1% increase in the national training fund levy would yield €42.5 million. Yesterday, the Minister for Finance said he expects to get €58 million in 2018 and €63 million in a full year from the same tax increase. I would like to know, on the basis of what the Department told us weeks ago, from where the extra €20 million came.

When one looks at where the Minister is getting his money, it is clear that the sums do not add up. All that matters for now, however, is keeping the show on the road for another year. The Government preaches prudence and no return to boom and bust, but McCreevy economics are again at the heart of this budget. Ten years on from the beginning of the financial crisis, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are taking us back down an unsustainable, imprudent and dangerous path. Funding cuts with volatile tax revenue and padding out the sums to ensure they do not add up. Have we learned nothing?

For those with a family member on a waiting list or people trying to buy or rent a home, there is nothing in the budget to resolve their problems.

On health, only one real policy has been agreed by this so-called do-nothing Dáil. Following months of work, a ten-year fully costed plan to implement publicly-funded child care was published in May with cross-party support. There was no mention of Sláintecare in the budget or of implementing the first year of the programme which, all in all, is quite modest. Yesterday, Fine Gael abandoned Sláintecare. Has it now been abandoned by Fianna Fáil? In its alternative budget, Labour committed to funding the first-year implementation of Sláintecare. What this would mean, in practice, is the removal of inpatient hospital charges and a reduction in prescription charges. It would expand the provision of home care packages and home help hours, increase services for people with disabilities and add an extra €25 million for mental health in the first year. Instead, what this Government did to tackle waiting lists of over 600,000 was to allocate an extra €30 million for the National Treatment Purchase Fund, bringing it to €55 million. This will be welcome for those who will benefit from it but, in reality, it means less funding for public health services and a drop in the ocean in real terms in respect of the waiting list figures. In theory, it is an extra €685 million on top of the amount allocated to health in 2017 but, if one looks at the numbers, it is really only an extra €269 million for services and new measures. The reason for this is that most of the increase will be for staff costs and the €300 million deficit that will be carried over from this year. Families worried about their sick children or ill parents will be able to buy the proverbial cup of coffee while they wait at the accident and emergency department. At the heart of this budget is a lack of ambition to resolve the problems Irish people face by investing in public services.

The sad reality of budget 2018 is that no real extra money is being provided to build new social housing. There is no effort to provide an affordable housing scheme. We heard the question from young people on "Prime Time" last night: what use is an extra €5 a week in a tax cut if they cannot afford to pay their rents or even get on the first step of the housing ladder? The focus should be on public services and addressing the real crises that people face. This budget does nothing to resolve the central problem facing young families across Ireland, but particularly in our cities, and those in work who are trying to get by, who trying to raise families and who are struggling to cope with rocketing rents and rising home prices. There has been no effort to provide affordable homes for sale or rent, no tax on vacant housing and no additional funding for public housing. We have a failed housing market and it is time for action from the State to address it.

The capital allocation on which the Minister for Finance focused yesterday was already provided for under the Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness. The numbers have already been announced many times, including by the Minister's predecessors. Under Rebuilding Ireland, the plan was for 5,900 units to be built or bought under Part V. That is exactly the same number announced yesterday. Labour proposed a costed increase of an additional 5,000 public housing units built on publicly-owned land. We have 700 sites available to do this. This is the crisis that the budget ignores. The following is the breakdown of what the State intends to provide next year: 3,800 homes will be built directly by the State; 1,200 will be Part V builds or rebuilt vacant homes; 900 homes will be delivered through acquisitions; and a further 2,000 homes will be secured through long-term leasing arrangements. That is a total of 7,900. Can anyone tell me from where in the private rental market an extra 2,000 units for social housing will actually come? This is why the Government has tried to massage the numbers of homes provided and hide its failure on housing provision by allocating an extra €31 million, which will be provided for the sheer purpose of renting within the private sphere. This just confirms that the only real extra money is for landlords. There is an extra €149 million for HAP. We have a supply-side crisis and the Government's response is to allocate more money for renting. What is needed is direct State action.

As well as there not being any plans for a national affordable housing scheme, we have also seen a missed opportunity to repurpose NAMA to take the lead on the development of affordable housing for the State through approved housing bodies. Instead, under the newly named Housing Building Finance Ireland, or HBFI, as the Minister called it yesterday, the €750 million being diverted is coming from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, another private finance vehicle for developers, with no assurance that any housing built will actually be affordable, and there is the rub.

We welcome the move to increase the vacant site tax, though we had called for it to be brought forward by a year and we are disappointed that it will not come into force until 2019. There is no mention of a vacant homes tax, despite it being named as one of the main priorities of the new housing Minister on his appointment by the Taoiseach. With more than 100,000 homes lying vacant across the country, this would surely have been an easy political win for the Minister. For those who are homeless, those struggling to rent and those desperate to buy a home for their family, it is tragic that the Government has totally wasted the opportunity to directly fund homes for those who need it.

I ask the Minister of State at the Department of Health, Deputy Finian McGrath, where the extra money for the disability sector is. There is no additional money for emergency respite accommodation or for children awaiting assessments of needs. In the headline figures for the health budget, I see only an additional €15 million for disabilities provision. It states the provision of services and supports for children and young people with a disability throughout their childhood and as they transition to adulthood continues to be a priority and is a key component of the programme for Government. This €15 million is not worth the paper on which it is written in terms of the needs that arise in this sector and it will not facilitate adherence to the Disability Act or meet the Government's legal obligations to ensure people have a timely assessment of needs as and when they need it. Independent Ministers threaten to go out onto the plinth and say they will retire if they do not get funding and I see a lot of posturing over this issue but I see no evidence of the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, having delivered anything in this budget for the disabilities sector. I am sure he will have an opportunity to come into the Chamber and rebut what I am saying but I am looking at the expenditure report for 2018, which is the Government's own document, and I see nothing that speaks to the needs of people waiting for assessments or that will give comfort to the disabilities sector, whose demands are set out in legislation and are there as of right.

I also see nothing on the access to emergency respite for people with intellectual disabilities. As people are growing older we are seeing a growing need for emergency respite care for people with intellectual disabilities but I see no additionality for that particular budget. If I am asked by the people I represent where the additional moneys are for emergency beds, I will have to tell them there is no evidence of them. That is a failure of delivery on the part of a Minister who has said a lot about what he was going to deliver for the sector but has not delivered anything of substance or that will even make a small impact on its needs. The National Federation of Voluntary Bodies could not, by any objective analysis, state that there is anything new for people with disabilities in this budget. This is supposed to be a republic of opportunity, which assists people who get up early, who have their dinner in the middle of the day and who do a hard day's work or whatever glib soundbite du jourone wishes to use but this budget has forgotten people who are still marginalised in society and who deserve more. I stand indicted as a Minister in the last Government when, with the coffers not exactly full, we had to make serious cuts but the current Government is turning a corner, getting 3% growth and giving minimal amounts of money back to people in tax cuts. Consequently, €50 million or €100 million could have made a serious dent in meeting the needs of those people whose voice is not as strong as those of us in this House. This is a missed opportunity and the idea of a republic of opportunity clearly only pertains to some in society. I am very disappointed that the Minister of State with responsibility in this area, Deputy Finian McGrath, has not delivered anything across the disabilities sector, despite his rhetoric. It is shameful.

I acknowledge the work of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, in respect of child care. It would be easy to say there has not been any progress on this issue but a 7% increase in capitation will have a positive impact. There is also €20 million for the early childhood care and education, ECCE, scheme and an extension to two years. These are positive, incremental changes to child care, which I welcome, but we cannot disregard the fact that some people are still paying €1,000 per month for child care, which is not tenable. I agree that there is much to be done to build capacity within the sector and the voice of the sector was very strong in the run-up to the budget, as it lobbied for recognition of the talent at its disposal to provide its services. More could have been done, however, in terms of paying the appropriate wages to the highly-qualified workers in the sector and there is some work to be done by all of us to assist that process. We have to look at the possibility of sectoral employment orders in this regard.

We await the Minister's justification of the €40 million spend allocated to Tusla but we need to build out a child care sector throughout the country, whether one lives in Dublin, Ballydehob, Sligo or north Cork. There needs to be an equivalent standard across the sector and equality in rates of pay and capitation. Much has been made about the living wage for child care workers and we advocate a standard minimum wage, while those with additional skills and qualifications should be paid commensurately.

I would like to know more about how the €40 million for Tusla will be allocated. There is much to be done in regard to how Tusla operates and for many in this House, there remains a lack of transparency about what exactly Tusla does. I am not criticising it but there is work to be done on its part.

Anecdotally, I hear stories of burnout within the social work field. I hear stories about a lack of capacity in certain areas of child protection and within the whole Child and Family Agency umbrella. We need to hear from the Minister exactly what will be achieved through the use of the extra €40 million. This is an overlying budget of €754 million, which is quite a lot of money. We need to see more with regard to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. We need to see exactly what is going to be done on the school completion programme. We need to see what is going to be achieved on mandatory reporting and how the family resource centres are going to be funded. I understand there will be an expansion of the family resource centres but we need to see where those expansions will take place and how they will be able to meet the needs within their communities. There are good elements in this budget but there are still a lot of questions out there as to what exactly the Government has announced. It is worthy of further interrogation.

I shall now turn to the issues facing older people. One of the biggest issues facing us is the ability of the State to have in place a nursing home support scheme that will reflect the fact that Ireland has an ageing population. Families are increasingly under tremendous strain in respect of their loved ones when the time comes to either live independently into their elder years or be facilitated in a nursing home. We must have a proper debate about the National Treatment Purchase Fund, NTPF. There has been an increase of €35 million in the allocation to the NTPF in this budget. Again, I am not sure what impact that will have for people who are waiting for a bed in a nursing home. Increasingly we are hearing that people are incurring additional costs, even when they are in the nursing home, and I do not see anything in the budget that speaks to older people in that regard. We need to ensure that we look after our older people. I do not understand why there is only €32 million allocated for additional care beds. The Government's budget document says that 45 additional home care packages per week will be rolled out during the winter period. I am very hopeful that this is a typographical error. If it amounts to 45 additional home care packages per week, it is an absolutely paltry figure and a derisory sum of money. There are also questions to be asked around this. Perhaps the line Ministers' officials are listening to this debate but to be honest I doubt they are. These are questions to be answered.

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