Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If ever there was an example of a budget that was preparing for an election, it is probably this one. It is short-term rather than long-term in its outlook. No hard decisions have been made. It lacks foresight. It reminds me of some poetry by Seamus Heaney in which he wrote "And whatever you say, you say nothing." The budget is an example of the idea that whatever you do, do nothing. It is a budget that is essentially about making sure it does not upset people, particularly people who are perceived to be the core Fine Gael voters. It is an election budget. I warn the Minister that he has completely messed up. He has messed up on many fronts. On one particular front it is seismic and it will follow the Minister. That is the area of climate change. I know the Minister is worried about it. I will accentuate those worries.

We have had a huge amount of social change in the last number of years. Social change has been brought about because the people are ahead of politicians and many people in this House on many issues. The people are ahead of the people in this House when it comes to climate change. As the father of young children, I assure the Minister there is an intergenerational thing going on here as regards education and the fact we need to maintain our planet. We need to maintain it for future generations, including my children and the Minister of State's children. The Minister has let them down today through his lack of foresight and measures. He has let them down and it will have consequences for our country on a scale that has not been seen before. It will have consequence for our children. Politically and electorally it will have consequences for the Minister, Fine Gael and its colleagues in government. We are one of the few countries that has climate change legislation. The failure to kick on from that and bring about measures to change behaviour will not go down well with the public because it is ahead of us on the need to change. It is around us. We will face it this Friday with another storm coming. We have seen the changes in our weather patterns over the past number of years. The public is up for this. If one was to be directly political about this, the public is conditioned for it but some of the Fine Gael lobbyists and vested interests are not. The can is being kicked down the road until we will be at a detrimental stage. It will have consequences for the Minister. He has totally underestimated the sentiments of people on this issue. Working people will have to pay fairly significant fines in future as a result of the Minister's lack of foresight. The Minister for Finance spoke absolute garbage in his few words about putting in place plans and assessments on the implementation of this. To the naked political eye, anyone looking at this can see the Minister did not have the capacity or political will to take on the most significant issue facing every generation after us, which is climate change, a couple of days after the most detrimental UN report on this issue ever. Our modern country, which is a country of perceived wealth, has ignored it. They are the facts. It is an indictment of the Minister and his colleagues at the Cabinet table.

Workers will pay huge fines into the future. There was a lack of foresight of measures that could have been brought forward. The Minister for trying to be everything else except the Minister for what he is, namely, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, did not have any foresight of climate change measures in his own Department, apart from some changes for electric vehicles, which are to be welcomed but are actually limited if one looks at the costs implied. Although they are necessary, there are no measures for the changeover to rail for the transport of freight across this country. I look at other lobby groups, for haulage and everything else, who hang around Fine Gael at this time, and I wonder why climate change measures are not being brought about.

There is a total lack of investment in what is required for water and waste. Why do I say that? Not everyone may be aware that water and waste are major user of energy, which need to be modernised. The scale of investment here will not do it. The whole issue of retrofitting is not at the scale required.

There are so many companies in this country that are innovative with new technologies in the clean technology and green energy sector. I support Lisheen mine, which is making great progress in becoming a hub for green technologies as a bio-economy campus. The measures today, however, are not detailed enough to support these companies to address our climate change issues. As my colleague, Deputy Sherlock, has advocated on numerous occasions, the Government could have brought forward taxation measures for single-use plastics, but it chose not to.

As another colleague of mine, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, tweeted earlier, a fitting adage for the Government in this regard is "Lord, make me good, but not just yet." Why is that? It is because the Government would not make the hard decisions because it cannot bear to think of the possible consequences, but it is wrong. Fine Gael also likes to say it is being responsible in this budget and, therefore, I would like to nail this point. Having a rainy day fund when it is raining outside is not responsible, and when there are so many issues, such as health and housing, as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have stated publicly. The Government is also being fiscally irresponsible because it is borrowing from next year's fiscal space for welfare measures and tax cuts. When one digs into the detail, that is exactly what the Government is doing, and it is not what the people expected. The Government is borrowing on the basis of the space next year. While it talks about balancing the books, it will not borrow for the much-needed investment, much of which I have spoken about.

I wish to explain the new figures from the changes to income tax and USC. A worker on the minimum wage, that is, the new rate of €9.80 per hour, who works full time at 39 hours per week, will earn approximately €19,500 annually. He or she will gain €7.82 from the USC changes but nothing from the income tax changes, which is the equivalent of 15 cent per week. That is what people on the minimum wage are being given. Let me repeat that to everyone in this House: people on the minimum wage will get 15 cent a week. Does the Government understand that? It is two slices of Brennan's bread a week, and this is a "fair and balanced" budget. I ask the Minister of State, Deputy Kehoe, to stop using his phone.

A worker on the living wage of €11.90 who works a 39-hour week will earn approximately €24,500 annually. He or she will gain €20.32 from the USC changes but nothing from income tax, which is the equivalent to 39 cent per week or five slices of Brennan's bread. Fair play to the Government; it is giving five slices of Brennan's bread to anybody who is on the living wage. A worker on an annual income of €35,000 is just under the threshold to pay the higher rate of income tax. He or she will gain €136.57 a year from the USC changes but nothing from income tax. This is the equivalent of €2.62 per week or the price of a cup of coffee, as I referenced here last year. A worker on an annual income of €45,000 will gain €221.57, the equivalent of €4.26 per week. A worker on an annual income of €70,500, who is a high earner, will gain €284.18, or an equivalent of €5.47 per week. Does the Minister of State see how skewed it is from the person on the minimum wage to the person earning €70,500? That is why this is not a fair budget and is not balanced. The Comptroller and Auditor General published a good report recently about how the richest residents in the State pay less tax than those on the industrial wage. That is accentuated here by the measures introduced in this budget. People on low incomes or on the average industrial wage deserve better, and they deserve fair taxation. Work must pay, but these people are not being treated fairly by the Government.

On health, as my colleague, Deputy Burton, said earlier, we all fell over last week when the Minister of Finance stumbled across €1 billion, which just happened to fall out of the couch and which no one knew about. I was, therefore, expecting significant progress on a whole range of areas in the health service. As a State and a country, we have a situation where the funding which must be provided now, together with the €700 million of extra funding that must be found for the current budget, means that approximately €1.9 billion has had to be found for health spending. This cannot go on. There must be accountability for budgetary management in health. It is never-ending. It is not the case that we expect an overspend on health. Rather, it is about how many hundred million euro will be needed as a supplementary each year. The administration of the health service at the highest levels is the worst I have ever seen. The overspend even went as far as its new home, as we found out in the past week.

The allocations for Sláintecare, about which I helped to draft a cross-party report, are simply not anywhere near enough. On capital and the area of acute services, we all know we need bed provision and new wings in South Tipperary General Hospital, University Hospital Limerick, Drogheda hospital and everywhere else. We all know it needs to be timely. I have a deep concern, however, that the projections put forward will not be built in the timeframes offered, and that we are running out of time on the important national maternity strategy. If one breaks down the figures, there does not seem to be the provision for the level of investment required.

I welcome the support being given for HPV testing for cervical cancer and CervicalCheck. I wish to remember Ms Emma Mhic Mhathúna today. I also welcome the moves for section 39 workers on pay restoration, which we support. To be clear, however, I do not see how this budget will deal with the issues of primary care. Geographical coverage of primary care simply does not exist. There is a crisis in the provision of staff across the health sector, in the development of community intervention themes, and in the provision of occupational therapists, physiotherapists and psychotherapists. There are also real issues about how the backlog of assessments will be dealt with.

There is provision in this budget to deal, somehow, with the backlog of assessments, particularly for children who have needs. I do not see how the staff are going to be provided to be able to even do that. That is not being addressed. We have a provision of €55 million for mental health. That is welcome but again it is not pushing forward A Vision for Change at the pace expected a number of years ago. For example, in my county of Tipperary there is not one mental health bed. The Minister completely underestimated where he is going with the GP contract. Negotiations have, belatedly, supposedly started. The provisions here for the GP contract are far more than what is being budgeted for.

I also have a concern with the provision of funding on disabilities. There is little specific detail on how it is going to be used. Are we just going to throw it out to the section 38 and 39 organisations and let them pull at it and use it as they see fit, or is it going to target the needs of the people we all know are there across a whole range of areas? I am exasperated pushing the need for further investment in home care and home care packages for the last number of years. I welcome the additional budgetary measures but they do not go far enough. There is common sense to this. The more people we can keep in their homes through these packages, the less costly will be nursing home care and acute care. We need to ensure these packages are targeted. We are also going to hit the old chestnut of not being able to provide the staff to deliver these packages.

I know a couple over the road. They have 30 hours a week care but they can only get ten hours because the staff are not available. That is a real issue. I welcome the provisions in respect of e-health. However, it is not enough. We need to ensure the issues we are facing, particularly on the acute side because of the lack of good technology, are been addressed at a speed commensurate with the problems we have. Extra funding for the NTPF is a bailout for the fact that our health services are not working. It is a bailout being given to private healthcare because our public health system is in such a mess. It is nothing else. It is short-termism and it is repeated year after year. Here it is again.

I will move on to childcare. I welcome the proposals to increase the thresholds for the affordable childcare scheme. However, it needs greater clarification to understand what one has to do to qualify. Does the family have to be in receipt of a payment from the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection? More importantly, the changes being brought about do very little for a working couple who have childcare needs and who will go over these thresholds. It does little to nothing for them. The real issue with childcare, which my colleague, Deputy Sherlock, has referred to numerous times, is to ensure that childcare workers are paid enough. Paying a living wage of €11.90 for all staff in the sector would have been a good move. It has been ignored again. In the whole area of childcare, the issue of parental leave, and how it has been dealt with in this budget, is something that is unusual. The two weeks of paid parental leave are actually coming in after the next budget, so-----

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