Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the summer economic statement. The document produced by the Minister is absolutely out of touch with reality. It promises more of the same. It balances the books and promises more crises in the health service, a continuation of the emergency in housing and a continuation of the underfunding and under-resourcing in education. It promises to continue the poverty we have in this country. The document is completely at variance with a document that was published just two weeks ago by an organisation with 11,000 volunteers, which took 230,000 calls last year and spent €27 million supporting poor families. The organisation is really in touch with people and with communities and it is really important to put its views on the record. I speak of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which works in this area on a daily and hourly basis. Its document said that, with austerity no longer featuring in news bulletins, it is easy to forget that there are still thousands of people who continue to struggle on limited incomes. It is particularly stark that 70,000 more children are growing up in poverty and are missing out on childhood experiences others take for granted than was the case in 2008. It states that, every week, it meets families caught in a poverty trap and struggling to afford the basics. In 2017, one in three of the 130,000 calls to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul for help were related to food poverty. It states:

Our experience shows that when times are tough, food is typically what families cut back. Rising housing costs mean this is increasingly the case.

The 28-page document is called Paving a Pathway Out of Poverty and it indicates the various issues the society comes across, such as lack of housing, with 10,000 people homeless, 100,000 families on local authority waiting lists and inadequate income. It states that 102,000 people are working poor, with 50% of lone parents experiencing deprivation. On educational disadvantage, it states that 61% of people struggle with education costs and 520,000 adults have very poor literacy skills. In the area of health, there are 700,000 on waiting lists.

It further states that men in disadvantaged areas will die 4.3 years earlier, that poverty increases the risk of depression by three, that 48% went without heating due to cost, and that one in four experience energy poverty. That is the real Ireland, not the Ireland of the summer economic statement, but the Ireland of ordinary families struggling to make ends meet, of the families on the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme who are paying rent to the local authority, paying a top-up to the landlord and not having 2 cent to rub together at the end of the day.

This Government is proposing in the summer economic statement to continue the Ireland that is divided between what has been set out in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul's Paving a Pathway out of Poverty and the fact that this country is the fifth wealthiest country in the world, with huge wealth. Its total net financial assets are now €60 billion above peak boom levels. There is a huge amount of money in the country but there is no wealth tax. It is time the very wealthy in this country, and they are hugely wealthy - we are the fifth wealthiest country in the world - pay their fair share of taxation to ensure people who live in poverty, on the poverty line and those who are the working poor and experience the crisis in housing and health have a reasonable living in this country.

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