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

I shall hear the Minister of State's response and I shall do her the courtesy of listening.

I have spoken at length about housing in my last couple of interventions in the budget. I will not repeat the points except to say I really wish the Government would wake up to the new development that is happening. We do not even have hotel accommodation for families who are homeless, never mind emergency accommodation or council houses. The Government would want to get on to this because it has just started to happen in the last few weeks. We are now facing into the winter and it is getting serious. Families who are homeless cannot even get into a hotel now. The Government should wake up to the unfolding disaster.

I will turn now to affordable housing, the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF and the proposed home building finance Ireland vehicle, HBFI. Last year LIHAF received €200 million to give to private developers for infrastructure. The fund is now getting €175 million and HBFI is getting hundreds of millions from the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund.

What is shocking about this is that the premise for the funding was that we, supposedly, would get up to 40% affordable housing in return. I have no doubt that with that subvention developers will, at some point when they can make money, build houses. The issue is that if the State is putting the money in, are the houses going to be affordable? Will they help to address the housing crisis or will they just make money for developers? The Government has no guarantees about their affordability or the proportion that will be affordable and it does not have a fix on what constitutes affordability. Nevertheless, it is still giving them the money.

In Cherrywood, we are giving Hines €15 million - having already given it the entire site at a knock-down price from NAMA - yet we do not even know how much affordable housing we will get. It may be 1% or even less than that. At the same time, Hines is saying that €300,000 is not enough for it to make a profit and is talking more in the region of €400,000. Meanwhile, average house prices in Dún Laoghaire are now €500,000 and it has been stated that what is on offer has to be relevant to market prices. We are giving the developer a massive subvention and we have no guarantee of getting anything back on that site. The same is true everywhere else. We do not know what affordability is or what will be the proportion of affordable housing. Nevertheless, we are dishing out the money to these guys. It is scandalous. The Taoiseach said it was all about first principles. The Government's first instinct and first principle on housing is "Give the private developers money and we will think about the rest and the consequences afterwards". I am afraid to say that this is also Fianna Fáil's instinct.

The position in respect of disabilities is scandalous. The Disability Federation of Ireland, Mr. John Dolan and others from the community affected by disability are outraged. They are outraged that the Government broke its promise to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. That was supposed to happen last year yet there is still no commitment to do it. What did we get for children with disabilities in the health budget? Against a disastrous background, there is €15 million extra and nothing more. Consistent poverty for people with disabilities rose from 14% to 22% in 2015 alone. There is nothing in the budget on personal assistance hours and nothing significant for home supports. There is nothing about the 7,600 people with disabilities who are on the housing list. If all new social housing units the Government says it will build next year were given to people with disabilities, it would not meet half the need. People with disabilities have been completely ignored in the face of an absolute crisis. There is chronic underfunding of assistive technologies for people with disabilities. The list goes on. It is a shocking omission in respect of one of our most vulnerable groups.

There is no mention of Travellers. There was a 90% cut during the austerity years to funding for Traveller accommodation but two years after tears were shed in the House about the shocking, unacceptable deaths in Carrickmines as a result of the disgusting conditions in which Travellers are forced to exist, not 1 cent has been provided. There is nothing for Traveller education, funding for which was also cut during the austerity years. It is shocking.

I turn to child care and I hope the journalists are listening because a little bit of mathematics needs to be done. I do not promise to know all the answers. What was the big-ticket item in the budget last year? There was a great deal of fanfare about it. I refer to the child care scheme of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, which was supposed to provide significant assistance from September 2017 to help parents meet the extortionate cost of child care, which runs at approximately €1,000 per month for working families. Last year, €35 million was allocated for the programme to cover its cost from September 2017 to the end of the year. That is €35 million for one third of the year. This year, the extra allocation is €20 million, which does not add up and which does not cover a full year. If €35 million covered the period from September to the end of the year, the full-year allocation to meet the requirements of the scheme would have to be €105 million. That is unless, of course, the scheme is not working at all or the Government is back-pedalling from it and not really bringing it in. I think the phrase used in the Budget Statement is "We are taking a step towards it". Therefore, we are not introducing it in September 2017, we are taking steps towards it. The reason the allocation may be inadequate could be the Government's reliance on private child care providers that cannot deliver. They do not have the capacity and, in any event, they are not required to supply the places. That is what is happening. It is either a failed scheme or not enough money is being allocated. I suggest it is both.

What about students? Registration fees are now €3,000 while the average cost for a student to go through a year at third level is, according to the Union of Students in Ireland, USI, €11,000. The grant levels have remained unchanged, with the standard grant set at €3,000. This is against costs of €11,000 and registration fees. This is a Government which claims to be composed of the sensible, pragmatic people who want a sustainable economy and to create jobs. Does it think that is possible when students are existing in poverty and when many people are disbarred from education due to the fact that they cannot afford to enter third level or because postgraduate grants to further improve education levels were cut? There has been no restoration of those cuts nor has there been a reduction in apprenticeship charges.

The position in respect of the environment and climate change is a joke. Everybody knows that if we are to meet our targets and deal with runaway climate change, we must massively increase the use of public transport. Where are the measures to do that ? They are not there. How is the Government going to increase the use of public transport and get people out of their cars? The answer is just not there. The level of subvention is pathetically low while fares are prohibitively high and at punitive levels. In fact, some of the Government's policies have actually cut back bus services to towns, villages and suburbs. That is not going to cut it. I will not go over the points about forestry, which I have discussed, except to note the pathetic underperformance in the context of afforestation levels, which are significantly below the 4,000 ha per year level the National Council for Forest Research and Development, COFORD, said was necessary in a serious programme to increase forest cover. There is nothing on that. It is just not happening.

Are those at the pragmatic centre as sensible as they suggest or are they the ideological extremists who just attack the left, give massive tax breaks to the rich, fund developers, let the homeless rot and forget about Travellers and the disabled? Do they think that everything will be fine as long as they look after their rich friends with massive tax breaks and corporate welfare for the wealthiest people in the country? I call that extremism. That there are families with nowhere to go tonight is extremism. We have the temerity to suggest that housing is a human right, but the Government cannot agree with that. We suggest that health care is a human right, but it cannot agree. We suggest that people with disabilities have a human right to be treated equally, but the Government cannot agree with that either. That is extremism. It is apartheid, inequality, discrimination and every other rotten thing which destabilises and which is corrosive to the coherence of our society.

Could we afford all of the things we propose? This is where we disagree with our Sinn Féin comrades and others on the left. We think it is possible to give working people a break and to fund all of those services.

We would look at the money being made in profits by the big corporations, vulture funds and property speculators in enormous tax breaks that were deliberately designed to give massive amounts to them. I mentioned them last night. A total of €9 billion was given in 2016 in tax breaks for intragroup transactions in the big multinationals. Is anybody examining these? Could some of the business correspondents examine this stuff? A total of €23 billion in tax expenditures that mostly go to the big corporations in this country is not talked about. We pretend it does not exist but billions of euro are going into their pockets every year, which could be going into education, health, and housing, and giving struggling workers who have been hammered by the USC and other cuts a bit of a break in their incomes.

See this speech in context