Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----that cost did not appear in the Budget Statement.

Dwelling on this, I wondered why one might need a communications unit. Surely the Dáil is the place from which to send one's message and to outline a proper, just budget. We do not need spin doctors. We do not need €5 million to spin a story. It should be evident from the way that we are providing services.

What I find even more ironic, if that is not a bad use of the word, is that one of the main gentlemen in the spin unit is the chairperson of COPE Galway, which has been left with little hope of housing the homeless. I will put a figure on this. COPE Galway worked with 369 homeless children in 2015 and 512 in 2016. The figure is rising. The Minister of State is familiar with Galway. The main man in the spin unit is the chairperson of COPE Galway, which must resort to fundraising on the streets of Galway and arranging a sleep-out, in which regard it encouraged the manager of Galway City Council to sleep out on the streets, rather than holding the system to account and telling it that this situation is intolerable.

Recently, I attended a funeral mass at which the priest read out a notice encouraging those in the church to give to the most important collection that day, which was COPE Galway. We in Galway are reduced to having a charity, the chairperson of which - he was or may still be, I do not know - is in the spin unit. Actually, let us call it what it is, namely, the strategic communications unit, just in case the Leas-Cheann Comhairle corrects me.

The more I thought about this matter and the more I read, I realised that we had 22 pages of spin. It is insulting to reduce a discussion down to how much we can reduce tax by and a false debate between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael as to whether the reduction will be in the universal social charge, USC, or in tax and how much will go towards spending as opposed to listening to the people of Ireland, who have elected my colleagues and me to the Dáil to represent them. At every stage of my political career, they have asked for services.

Let us take Galway as a microcosm. The money in the budget will not even keep the health service running at a standstill. One must ask what is happening. Deputy Boyd Barrett and his colleagues have referred to the systematic running down of public services in order that money can be given to the private sector and it can be claimed that it will do better.

The message from the 22 pages is that we must not distort the market at any cost. In fact, it is spelled out on one of the pages.

That is when the Minister refers to NAMA having a major role. NAMA, an organisation that had an integral role in the housing crisis, is now being given a role in the solution to the crisis it caused. The Minister talks about avoiding a distortion of the market yet the market is allowed to distort our lives and the lives of the three people who are outside the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine as we stand here in luxury. They were there last night and this morning. They are all over the city. What we are doing here with the housing money is simply putting money in the pockets of the landlords. I have said repeatedly in the Dáil that there is a need for landlords. We need them but to balance the market, not to distort it. To balance the market we need a public housing construction programme. That has not happened and we have absolutely abandoned it. The housing assistance payment, which the Government is now putting nearly €200 million more into, will actively push rental prices up. It was introduced by the Labour Party and Fine Gael before the last election. When that legislation came in, the Government said it was the only game in town for social housing. It twisted language on its head to say putting somebody into private property was social housing. To add insult to injury, one of the main auctioneers in Galway was on "Prime Time" the other night and confirmed there were only 15 new properties available. The city council is building 14 properties this year and in the private market, we have 15. One would imagine that at some stage the Government would say we have a major problem and a major emergency that we need to deal with and that it would acknowledge that helping the private system is just part of it. It should send out a very strong message to the vulture funds and private landlords that the Government will have a major role in this. That has not been done.

The Minister mentioned gender proofing in his speech. It is an absolute insult to the people and families of this country suffering as a result of domestic violence. There is not a mention of it. The SAVI report was carried out in 2002. Various organisations asked for a minimum of €1 million to carry out a review of the SAVI report. That €1 million has never been forthcoming yet we have €5 million for a strategic communications unit.

The increase in the Tusla budget, as I understand it, will barely allow it to stand still. I draw the Minister of State's attention to the economics of domestic violence - I am told the figure of €2.2 billion per year is outdated. In that context, we have 143 safe places for women and children when we should have 446. In 2015, 4,800 people - women and children - were refused safe places. In 2015, 9,712 women turned up at refuges; that is almost 10,000 people. Their children, over 2,000 of them, are not even covered in the homelessness figures. I would like to think we are here in the Dáil to share ideas. Perhaps foolishly and naively, I would like to think we are here as a power house of ideas to deal with these problems. I have been here almost two years giving out the same figures. If they do not affect the Minister of State emotionally or on a psychological level, I am hoping they will affect him on an economic level. It does not make sense not to deal with the domestic violence crisis. We should review it and at the very least come back with €1 million or a little bit more for a review. In addition, we should provide the various organisations with enough money to carry out research. I understand those organisations are talking to the university in Galway about doing research on the effects of domestic violence. There is no money for it yet the Taoiseach can give €5 million to a strategic communications unit.

With regard to disability, 13.5% of the population has a disability of one sort or another, which is 643,131 people. It is a finite number and they asked for a finite increase in the disability allowance in addition to what they are getting now to allow them to live independently and with dignity.

The Government is well aware of the rural, regional and city divide. We have had many presentations on it. I will refer to just one organisation. Comhlachas na gComharchumann agus Comhlachtaí Pobalbhunaithe represents approximately 30 organisations and is looking for a miserly €600,000 a year to keep almost 1,000 people in employment. If one compares that to what the IDA is getting, one can see who is in the ha'penny place here.

There are many other figures I could refer to. The most glaring is corporate taxation. I know I will be stopped very soon. The biggest untruth in this Dáil is about corporate taxation. I cite the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General which says that 13 of the 100 companies with the highest taxable income had an effective rate of less than 1%. What spin is going on in this Chamber when an open and accountable corporation tax is referred to?

On the issue of climate change, how many times do we have to say this is the last Dáil that has any chance of taking effective action? On an economic level, it makes absolute sense to deal with climate change. I will cite people who are far more expert than me. The Climate Change Advisory Council suggests that fines for non-compliance and failure to meet the 2020 and 2030 targets could be between €3 billion and €6 billion. The EPA has told the Government we will not comply with our targets for 2020. The Stern report told us that on an economic level it is 20 times cheaper to prevent climate change than to deal with its aftermath. As recently as 2015 the London School of Economics concluded there are net economic benefits to tackling climate change. None of this has been tackled in the budget. I regret using emotional words but the Government should be ashamed of itself for introducing this budget under the guise of fairness and long-term investment.

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