Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We know that there are 10,000 other Amandas out there. For them budget day is like "Groundhog Day". The question people ask is why they should trust that anything will change in budget 2019. Will anything be different? Will we be standing in this Chamber again next year, talking about Amanda or another Amanda? The answer to that is probably "Yes". That is because despite all the numbers the Minister threw out on the floor of the House today, the additional capital investment the Minister has provided to the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government is a paltry €80 million. That is €80 million in the face of a social crisis that this State has never seen before. Deputy Michael McGrath has the cheek to stand up and say that this is a housing budget. Some €800 million was available, plus another €700 million in additional tax revenues. That is a discretionary €1.5 billion available for this budget and the Minister has allocated an additional €80 million in capital. Shame on him. It is a betrayal of the people who are in emergency accommodation. It is a betrayal of those who cannot afford the rents that are being charged in this State and the adults who have to live at home because they cannot afford a house. Deputy Michael McGrath says this is a housing budget but it is far from it.

We did not get here overnight. No event in the last ten years has shaped the values or attitudes of the people of this island more than the bankers' crash of 2008. It shook this island, every family and every community to the core. Out of the ashes emerged a type of bargain that was foisted on the Irish people, forged in the crisis boardrooms of the political and financial classes. With the economy on its knees, with fear and worry lingering over families in the State, a great scandal was invented. It was the long scam. It was a story saying that somehow the Irish people were to blame for the greed and negligence of the privileged and untouchable few. The story said that we all partied and we all must pay. It was written mostly by the pens of those nameless bankers in white collars, the architects of the economic chaos, men who had accumulated obscene wealth at the expense of the livelihood, trust and the dignity of the Irish people. It is a story absorbed and dispensed by the political class, by the Minister's party and the party opposite. It was a story with a single-minded purpose; to deflect blame from those who caused the crisis. All of a sudden it became the creed of those who should have felt the force of the anger. As a society we have splurged, went the mantra, and as a society we must pay. The people paid, they suffered and they endured. This day, budget day, became a practice of heaping blame and scorn on the Irish people. It was a grim litany of one of the greatest frauds and ideological scandals ever concocted by the leaders of this State. However, it was endured. It was endured because the story only worked when it rested on the other part of the bargain. Again and again the Irish people were told to pay the costs now and reap the rewards later. All the while, the Minister's Government and others dangled that hope for a better future in front of them.

So the people waited in the isolated rural communities I, and many others, come from. They watched as their way of life collapsed around them. Entire generations of our best and youngest were forced to emigrate and countless families watched as their incomes disappeared and the costs of living became simply unaffordable. However, the story and the bargain of suffer now and enjoy later continued.

There is no doubt the Minister presented this budget to the House with a looming election in mind. He could have convinced the Irish people that the story was at an end, but now it is time to be honest. Níl aon bhaint ag an bhuiséad seo nó ag an aon cheann roimhe leis an bhob a bhí á bhualadh ag an Rialtas ar dhaoine le deich mbliana anuas. Ní raibh sé seo déanta ach ar mhaithe le beartais déine a chur i gcrích nó le nithe deise a thabhairt amach ag an am ceart. Níorbh botún sealadach, dosheachanta ab ea an cruatan a bhí curtha ar mhuintir na hÉireann le dornán blianta anuas.

Every step the Minister and his Government have taken has been a deliberate one. It has been a journey of the political class that was calculated and very clearly deliberate. Choices were taken that, like choices the Minister has proposed today, were grounded in the ideas advanced by people who saw their moment in a time of crisis. The dividends following the years of hardship endured by Irish people are not being shared fairly by Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil in this budget. Austerity was the excuse in the past, stability is the excuse now and when the time is right another excuse will be found.

This budget is the latest step towards a vision for Ireland. It is a vision that sees Ireland as a land divided between the elites and the struggling. It sets two sets of rules - one for those who must prosper always and one for those who will always struggle. It is a vision that fans the embers of the culture of greed that corrupted this State in the last decade. It breathed life into the rotten culture of banks and the wealthiest in society. It is a "Don't worry, your day will come" again one.

These are the families who suffered and played their part in the bargain. The question to the Minister is this. Where is the reward? Will budget 2019 give them a health service they can rely on? Will they have a place to call home? Will it result in shared prosperity? Will it check the excessive wealth and power at the top? The answer to all of those questions, unfortunately, is "No".

The Government has presented a budget that attempts to buy the silence of the Irish people and sell them the status quo, that offends their sense of decency and which they know is wrong. They have watched as this Minister of Finance and the one before him presented budget after budget, simply blind to the human suffering that is all around us.

The Minister and I know that the people of this island were brought up on a set of values that said that the treatment of those most in need is the real measure of a person. Indeed, it is the only true measure of a meaningful society. Yet 100,000 workers, people who go to work early in the morning and do their day's work, return home to a life of poverty because their wages cannot cover the cost of living.

One in five citizens in this State is on a waiting list for basic medical care, in one of the richest countries in the world. Almost a quarter of Irish workers are low paid by international standards. All this is happening on the Minister's watch. Too many parents, predominantly women, must give up on their career ambitions because they are beggared by the cost of childcare. Countless others are heartbroken in work while their children are being minded by others because the high cost of living demands that two wages come into the house, simply to keep it going.

Too many families have no rainy day fund of their own. They are doing fine now, just getting by, but they are only ever a few pay cheques away from difficulty. A kitchen appliance failing; the car breaking down; an illness striking or any number of things could quickly become a game-changer for them and their families.

The dividends of recent growth could and should have been shared fairly and more effectively. That would mean targeting spending in the right way. Budget 2019 should have focused on reducing the costs of necessities so that people's incomes could go further at the end of the week and ordinary people could live a good life now without fear of the future.

However, budget 2019 has fallen short in this regard. Booming banks and vulture funds have more backing from the Government than the renters whose wages continue to fill the bulging pockets of landlords. As the Minister presents this budget, this is the real story of Irish society and the people who will not have the benefit of what the Minister has announced today. Seo de bharr an cleas a bhí á imirt ag Fine Gael agus ag na haicmí polaitíochta agus é fós atá á imirt acu. Most citizens know this story only too well. We have a cost of living crisis that has made it impossible for countless families to make ends meet or plan for their future. I can only deduce that this is simply because the Government does not understand. It has had seven budgets over seven years, with three in lockstep with Fianna Fáil. What has changed for young people and those without a stake in society? Young people today still cannot aspire to have what their parents had before them. They tell us all the time the rental pressures are taking every last disposable penny from them. They tell us they can never aspire to own their own homes in the capital but there are no significant measures in the budget to address this section of society.

Cha dtuigeann tú an anró atá ag baint leis an rogha atá le déanamh ag daoine agus iad idir dhá chomhairle faoi cé acu an íocfaidh siad as an chuairt doctúra nó an íocfaidh siad as na hearraí grósaera don seachtain. Ní thuigeann tú an imní atá ar daoine nuair atá an carr le tabhairt don mheicneoir nó nuair atá an éide scoile le deisiú. This is the problem. The Government rules as a minority for a minority and this is their budget. It is an insult to the struggling majority, who see little in today's budget for themselves.

It is a budget for landlords and there is no doubt about that. The Minister has ticked that box and I am sure Fianna Fáil had its fingerprints all over it. It is a budget for banks. They will keep their tax holiday and will not pay a penny tax for the next 20 years. It is a budget for the status quo, which has outright failed the people of Ireland. No further proof is needed than the minimum wage proposal presented today. Irish workers get up early and put in a hard day's graft for wages that should cover the basic cost of living day to day. This is a very simple proposal but despite the fact these are the wealth creators in society the Minister has given them nothing to lift their worry and help them pay their bills. There has been an increase of 25 cent in the minimum wage. These workers deserve at least three times what Government is proposing. They should have been looking forward to a pay rise of about €1,500 next year under Sinn Féin's proposals. Instead, what they face next year is financial hardship every bit as stifling as it was the year before.

Civil Service and public sector workers will also have to wait for a living wage, which the Government still has not delivered for them. People in our public services provide the services on which people depend and they are still not provided with a living wage. They are also waiting for the right to basic pay equality. The Government continues to stand over a reprehensible policy of paying public sector workers less for the exact same work as their colleagues. Perhaps the Minister will tell me why some of these public sector workers will have to wait until 2025 to have this basic right recognised, while he and his Fine Gael colleagues will enjoy a cosy pay rise over the coming weeks.

Over the past four budgets, the Minister has taken more than €2 billion out of the income tax base while creating crisis after crisis in our public services. He removed €2 billion from USC and income taxes at a time when we have 707,000 people on hospital waiting lists, hundreds of patients on hospital trolleys needing medical care, who were admitted to a hospital where there is no bed for them to lie in, and 10,000 people, including 4,000 children, in emergency accommodation.

Today, the Minister announced cuts of another €284 million, compared to the €80 million of resources additional to the national development plan for housing. This sums up the priority of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Perhaps Deputy Michael McGrath might tell us how this is a housing budget. How can this be a housing budget when only €80 million is provided while the 18% of highest income earners in the State get a €130 million tax deduction. These are the bankrupt policies of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. No matter what way it is dressed up the people are not fools. They see through it. The Government will deliver just over 400 additional social houses in 2019. It is pathetic in terms of the scale of the crisis we have in housing at present. The Minister's job is to keep the base happy, tick the boxes to try to buy silence and hope people will turn a blind eye to the crises unfolding before them, whether in housing, the cost of living or the health sector. Token tax cuts will not lower the cost of living for the overwhelming majority of families today. They will not make it cheaper to rent or buy a home. They will not give peace of mind when sending their children to childcare, which now costs a second mortgage.

We have been here before. A clamber for tax cuts driven by certain sectors left us exposed and vulnerable in the past. The Minister thinks we can afford it because corporation tax receipts are increasing. Replace corporation tax with stamp duty and we are back to 2007. No matter how many times the Minister says this is prudent, responsible and not whittling out the tax base what he is doing is crazy. It is absolutely daft that he is repeating the mistakes Charlie McCreevy made during the boom. He should not be whittling out the most sustainable tax we have and instead basing the budget on fleeting corporation tax receipts.

Promising tax cuts to the base to keep it happy, undermining our public finances, and running our public services into the ground are the mantras. The Minister and his party have long been spreading fear about tax in our society, taxes on which society itself depends. This is fear mongering and Sinn Féin rejects it out of hand. The Minister is incapable of taking on the issue of high wealth individuals and their tax responsibilities. There are more millionaires and billionaires in the State than ever before while more and more people continue to suffer from week to week. The recent report by the Comptroller and Auditor General made clear just how easy it is to avoid tax in Ireland if people have the wealth to do so. The Comptroller and Auditor General stated that the 140 high net worth individuals, who have assets in excess of €50 million, had taxable income of less than €125,000. It gets worse. Of these, 83 had taxable income of less than the average industrial wage. They were paying more to their tax advisers than to the Revenue Commissioners. They pay a lower rate than somebody working in a supermarket or hairdressers. It is an absolute scandal and there was not a dicky bird today from the Minister to deal with the fact this is happening under his watch. It is the Minister's job to make these people pay their fair share but he does not seem interested in doing so.

Tá bród orm mar Úrlabhraí Airgeadais Shinn Féin agus ar mo pháirtí, gur thig linn a rá go léireodh muid dea-rialachas ó thaobh beartais cánachais, agus go gcuirfeadh muid deireadh leis an ionsaí atá á dhéanamh ag an rialtas seo ar seirbhísí poiblí. Sinn Féin, and I as its finance spokesperson, are proud to be a party that says we will tax fairly and sensibly and bring this Government’s attack on public services to an end. The Government cannot have it both ways. It cannot have a low tax economy while at the same time have decent public services. We have made it very clear that 99% of the population will not see an increase in their tax rates. The budget means a 45% tax on income of more than €140,000. This is the tax on the 1%. Yes, it includes the Minister but there is no reason income cannot be generated from this source of revenue to deal with some of the crises the State is facing.

The other revenue raising measures introduced or updated today, including VAT changes and gambling duty, are fundamentally needed and are to be welcomed. I will sound a point of caution on some of these. They are needed because the Government has increasingly allowed our tax base to be built on sand. This cycle repeats itself every budget time. The increase of 2% proposed by the Minister on betting tax is the worst move possible in my view.

I have studied this at great length and we have argued consistently that betting taxes needed to be introduced. By introducing it at 2%, the big operators like Paddy Power will absorb the cost and the high street betting offices will be put to the wall, with job losses and more closures in rural communities and towns. There should have been a 3% rate of betting duty to be paid by the punter. That would ensure the big operators could not have absorbed the increase and would leave the other firms continuing to operate in our society. We will deal with that in the finance Bill.

Fair taxes must also be stable and have a clear and transparent intent. The decision to lower the VAT rate to 9% on hotels was broadly welcomed and reflected the difficulties facing the tourism industry at the time. It should have ended before now and today's decision to reverse the rate drop was long overdue. I understand the concern felt by many in the sector, particularly in the regions, about the rate reverting to 13.5%. However, we must acknowledge that the beneficiaries in recent years have been large international investors who were pocketing hundreds of millions of euro in subsidies through Dublin, Cork and Galway hotels. The hotel argument is over and the facts speak for themselves. It has been clear for the past number of years that average room occupancy rates and prices no longer justify the subsidy available both in our capital city and elsewhere. I do not agree with the full restoration of the 13.5% rate in respect of restaurant and pub services. That case has not been made, and particularly in the face of Brexit, an incremental step to bring the rate to 11% should have been taken first. It is something my party and I will revisit in the finance Bill.

Tá a fhios againn uilig go bhfuil cáin iontach tábhachtach. Braitheann seirbhísí sláinte agus seirbhísí poiblí ar an cháin a tagann isteach. With each passing year, more and more corporation tax flows into the State coffers. Given the most recent boon, the State will collect €9.5 billion in corporation tax this year. We know it will not be there forever. Sinn Féin has long made the case that it is the responsibility of the Government to shore up and stabilise our public finances. This budget fails in this regard. With respect to corporation tax paid, the Minister for Finance has failed to ease the concentration of where it is collected. This is clearly a threat to our economic stability and it must be addressed. However, it must also be seen as a temporary opportunity while revenues flow to try to undo the utter neglect this Government has shown, particularly in the area of capital investment. There is an opportunity to use this moment to do what should have been done years ago, which is to build houses, upgrade and invest in infrastructure. The Government has gone to great lengths to lecture the nation about prudence over the past year but building our health funding on sand in a time of crisis is negligence of the highest order. It is absolutely stunning that the Government is funding healthcare with increased corporation taxes when everybody and their dog knows it should not happen. As Sinn Féin advocates, those receipts should be used to address the deficits we had over the past ten years, not least in the building of social and affordable houses.

Our tax base needs stability and our health service deserves the same. This budget is not an opportunity for accounting tricks and short cuts. Mr. Seamus Coffey in his report on Ireland’s corporation tax system argued for the end of the 100% rule that allowed huge multinationals write off intangible assets onshored here to be written off against profit at a rate of 100%. It is still impossible to understand why the former Minister, Deputy Noonan, introduced the rule in the first place but when he limited it to 80% last year, the current Minister excluded those assets already onshored. Taxing these assets going forward would bring in €750 million per year. It is something argued for not only by Sinn Féin but by the expert which the Department asked to draft the recommendations. That €750 million would be nearly ten times the announced additional investment made in social housing. We know that funding would not last forever but it could be used to invest in our capital infrastructure, especially housing for our people.

This is the third budget that this Government and Fianna Fáil have shamelessly called a "housing budget". The Minister stood in this Chamber two years ago and told us how the budget would transform housing. The Fianna Fáil finance spokesperson stood in this Chamber last year and said the budget would be judged on its record in respect of housing above all else. With 10,000 people homeless as they present another "housing" budget today, their third on the trot, the people of Ireland are casting judgment once and for all. They are demanding that the Government brings its disgraceful housing and homelessness crisis to an end or move aside for someone who will the job for it.

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