Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That includes a 60% proposal for income tax and a further 15% to be paid by employers. The difficulty is Sinn Féin does not understand what it takes to create a fair society. One cannot create a fair society without also having a strong and sustainable economy. None of the policies put forward by Sinn Féin would support that. Over its track record, indeed, it has opposed everything that sought to do that. What the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, instead set out to do was, as he said himself, to safeguard our economy. He has restored balance to our books at a time when even Sinn Féin is recognising that we are facing threats. He has made sure that the growth in current spending is in line with the capacity of the economy so we are not repeating the mistakes that occurred in the early 2000s after we joined the eurozone when, year after year, the Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Governments increased spending by 12% per annum consistently for a decade. That simply was not sustainable. People who express surprise that it came tumbling down must examine that. We were trying to expand our economy beyond its sustainable capacity and what is more, we were relying on a property sector that was unsustainable.

I would like to address the issue of fairness. We are all constituency representatives. We all meet people who come into our clinics and who would like to see improvements in health and mental health services. What we are doing is consistently making changes that are sustainable to bring about those changes. In my own area, which is particularly concerned with children, for a second time in three years we have reduced the class size at primary level. In the 18 months I have been in this post, we already have 7,000 extra staff in our schools, 5,000 of whom are teachers and 2,000 of whom are special needs assistants, SNAs. In the year to come, we will put in place another 1,300 teachers and 1,000 SNAs. Nobody on the Sinn Féin benches will recognise that this makes a difference to the very sort of people they are talking about - those who are under pressure. We put in guidance counselling. We expanded the National Educational Psychological Service to help people who are in stress situations. We rolled out for the first time a comprehensive well-being programme at junior cycle level and all schools are now developing a well-being strategy. That is laying down the foundations to deal with the sort of challenges that young people encounter. We have to have strategies to deal with this and I accept that we do. That is exactly what we are doing. We will have 9,500 extra people in our schools in the space of two years to help children to cope in a very challenging environment.

For the first time in as long as I can remember, we have increased the payment to people who are on low incomes, for their children. I cannot remember when that was last done in this House and I have been here a long time. Families on low incomes are entitled to support for their children. We are rolling out a child care support programme, which we never had in this State. Now every child will be able to access some support for child care up to the age of three. It is focused particularly on the lower-paid, who can access support of up to €7,000 per year. That is really significant investment in children for people who are low paid. It is really important that we recognise the progress we are making. We are giving two full years at preschool. That has been expanded repeatedly from what was one year to two years. We are building out the base of a long-term sustainable child care programme that will lead into better impact at primary school and passing on through secondary school. We talk about a republic of opportunity because we are building from the base, helping the families in the least well-off position to support their children. This year, we will again invest in DEIS, the programme for disadvantaged children. We continue to expand support for children with special educational need.

I will not take lectures about how one can change the fairness of our community. We are steadily making things fairer. Low-income pensioners lost the telephone allowance. We have all knocked on doors and seen how people really felt undermined by that. Now we are seeing the telephone allowance come back, as there is an additional allowance of €2.50, as well as the €5 general increase and the €22.50 for the extra week of the fuel scheme. That is a genuine attempt to support low-income pensioners who have suffered in these difficult years. We are repairing the damage that was sustained over a decade but it is not going to be done overnight. It will not be done by introducing a 75% tax burden on the very enterprises we hope will strengthen us against Brexit and other challenges.

We have to future-proof this economy. That is something the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, has done very strongly. In my own area, we will have a 73% increase in our capital budget by 2021. That will allow us to invest in traineeships, apprenticeships, school places and all the things that build for the future in an education sense.

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