Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Michael McGrath was wrong in terms of his facts and figures but we will forgive him for that. The deficit would be 0.4% and indeed the Minister addressed that in his opening speech. On the "significant" risks of overheating, the chair of the IFAC has said the risk of overheating is muted. He has suggested that they are medium risks with medium impact. The Deputy should not create a narrative just for the sake of supporting his own economic vision of not investing in the crisis that we have.

This document is completely out of tune with the reality of life in Ireland in 2018. If we did not know better, we would imagine Deputy Donohoe had not been Minister for Finance for the last number of months. Nowhere in this document is there a credible plan to address the massive problems we face as a State. Nowhere is there at least an intention to reclaim the lost decade of under-investment that was presided over by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Governments. Families and young people at home this evening will not recognise the Ireland painted in this document. Like everyone, they see the signs of recovery but they still see the scars of the wasted potential and of budgetary policies which imposed an extortionate cost of living burden upon them and which this Government is on track to continue.

They also see a Government that has created crisis after crisis.

This statement is an attempt to build on the Fine Gael myth that nothing can or should be done about these crises that it has created in this State. The Minister is telling the families who live in fear of financial distress and who are concerned about one missed wage packet, the car breaking down or the unexpected visit to the doctor that not lifting this burden is "good governance". He is telling the 4,000 children who woke up this morning in emergency accommodation that homelessness is "prudent" because he does not attempt to deal with it using the policy response that is required. He is telling the hundreds of thousands on waiting lists that essential healthcare is beyond their grasp and that they just need to get used to the fact that they are on these lists.

This statement tries to drag the public's gaze away from the hospital trolleys and the social tragedies that all of us, not just those in this city but right across the State, hear about day in and day our in our constituency clinics. It is an attempt to convince the people of Ireland that the burden they feel every day is normal - it is about normalising all of this - and there is nothing that can be done for them. We reject this message. We reject it as a reckless choice of Fine Gael just as we rejected the Government's proposal to abolish the USC, which would have left a €5 billion hole in the public purse, or indeed Fianna Fáil's proposal, which would have left a hole of over €3 billion in the public purse. We completely reject the argument that the Government must stand idly by

as thousands of young families across the island live from week to week and we reject the argument that rural communities must remain isolated with crumbling infrastructure and basic broadband.

For what will soon be three consecutive budgets, Fine Gael, in lockstep with Fianna Fáil, is on course to decide that all of this will continue. That is clear from this summer economic statement. Fianna Fáil, a party that is devoid of a coherent strategy or message, is meekly peddling the same Government line of prudence before people. In addressing the budget last year, the Fianna Fáil spokesperson, Deputy Michael McGrath, said that the budget and, more importantly, the Government will be judged by how they tackle the scourge of homelessness more than any other issue so is it time to judge this Government? What do the 10,000 people who are homeless or the 100,000 people on waiting lists think? What does Fine Gael think of this crisis and indeed what does Fianna Fáil, which supported every single one of the Government's budgets that made sure that available resources were spent on tax cuts that benefitted the well off instead of dealing with these crises, think of it? Sinn Féin hears these citizens who have been failed and ignored by the Government's policies. I believe their verdict is clear. They are the same old parties, the same old choices and the same old failures.

However, there are choices. These are the Minister's choices, these are the results of his choices but other choices can be made. Under our plan, we would use the existing space within the fiscal rules to ensure that there would be a Government surplus by 2021. The difference between our target for a Government surplus and that of the Government is 12 months. By using the available fiscal space for urgent investment, debt to GDP will still fall below 60% in the same period, as has been indicated by the Government. However, the Minister has turned his back on this need for urgent investment to deal with the social crisis we face, the need to invest in our economy and to strengthen the foundations of our economy. The Government has done so with the support of Fianna Fáil.

Of course, it will take longer than any single budget to undo the work that has been done by Fine Gael and the era of social crises. We need to start and this budget should be the start of that undoing. Instead the Minister has repackaged Fianna Fáil's hand-me-down policy of a rainy day fund. Once again, this so-called rainy day fund is presented and packaged as prudence when it is little more than an excuse that the Minister proposes to enshrine in law not to invest at a time of deep crisis in certain sections of Irish society. Let us be honest about this because the Minister's new narrative is that corporation tax receipts will go into the rainy day fund. His heads of Bill make no mention whatsoever of corporate tax. There is no siphoning off of corporation tax into a rainy day fund. Indeed the heads of Bill say that there will be a legal obligation on this State to put €500 million into the rainy day fund even if there is a reduction in corporation tax. Even if there was a year-on-year reduction in corporation tax, there will be a legal obligation to fill that rainy day fund with €500 million. This is policy on the hoof. It is "making it up as we go along" stuff to try and convince the Irish people that the Minister is all about stability when many people look at the reality of their lives and see anything but stability.

In saying that perhaps there is a silver lining. If Fianna Fáil had the chance to introduce a rainy day fund, as outlined in its 2016 manifesto, Deputy Michael McGrath would put €1.8 billion into a rainy day fund next year and I would be asking him what cuts he was going to make and what commitments he would roll back on because unless he is going to row back on his policy, his policy is that every cent above €6.6 billion in corporation tax should be invested in the rainy day fund. Perhaps he will want to tell the public sector workers that this is the commitment he is going to row back on. Perhaps he will not provide for demographics or perhaps Fianna Fáil will return to form in terms of cutting the blind pension or reducing the minimum wage because that is what the policy would have amounted to, leaving aside the fact that he wanted to cut over €3 billion in terms of the USC.

These are all old ideas that are part of an old mindset of how the economy should work but we know these tired and failed ideas have been tried and we have had some of the same results. We have results now in terms of under-investment in public services. We can see this loud and clear. We hear them in the individual stories from those people who come to us. They are the crisis in our public services, mass homelessness and the profoundly unfair and unequal nature of the Fine Gael economic plan. They did not happen by accident. The reason we have a homelessness crisis is because of the Minister's policies when he decided not to invest and because the spokesperson for Fianna Fáil decided to back that budgetary stance. The reason we have 707,000 people on hospital waiting lists and over 400 people on hospital trolleys every day is because of the Minister's budgetary decisions supported by Fianna Fáil. That is the reality. While Fine Gael is in power, there will always be loopholes for tax avoiders, there will always be poverty and exclusion and there will always be crises in our public services.

We say enough is enough. With an international environment that poses threats to our economic stability, we need to act. We need to invest in our public infrastructure to secure long-term, sustainable growth potential. We need to secure our public finances, end the leakages to tax avoiders and strengthen our tax base. By tackling the extortionate costs of childcare, we can boost our economic capacity allowing working women and parents to pursue their ambitions. We need to invest in young people and our public universities so that we can end their slide in world rankings and secure economic potential for the future. These are real socially and economically responsible alternatives that, once again, the Minister has chosen to ignore.

This summer statement is the mark of a Government which is out of ideas and which either cannot see or does not care about the problems we face as a society. This statement and this Government show a staggering lack of vision. It offers no ambition and it lacks the confidence to say to ordinary people that we will stand by the people. It is a dusting down of the old broken record which rings in the ears of families and citizens who are struggling. The message the Minister is sending to them is that we will not and cannot invest but there are choices. There is a different path the Minister could go down. We can either endure the policies of Fine Gael supported by Fianna Fáil and see these crises continue or we can stand foursquare with citizens and deal with these issues by using the resources available to us under the fiscal rules to make the necessary investments.

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