Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The budget yesterday needed to be the budget that addressed, in a real, substantial and comprehensive way, the housing and homelessness crisis. The Government has had plenty of warning. The crisis has been under way for several years and the warning signs were there for many years. This summer saw people's anger reach boiling point against the background of a mother and her children ending up on the hard benches of a Garda station. If, however, we were looking for the budget to solve the housing crisis, or to go some distance in that direction, that is not what we got.

The Government has favoured the landlord over the tenant and the vulture fund over the homeless. The commitment provided is far short of what is needed. Only an extra €80 million in capital has been provided for house building at a time when 10,000 people are homeless. We needed, and Sinn Féin proposed, an increase of €496 million for social housing, as well as an increase of €495 million for 4,600 affordable homes that would include cost rental and affordable sale. These are large sums of money, certainly, but that kind of commitment, scale and ambition is required to tackle what is one of the greatest infrastructural and social challenges in the history of the State. That is because we are dealing with something momentous, significant and extremely adverse. We are living in a time when there are not enough houses, especially ones people can afford, to house all of our people.

No effort should be spared to try to address that. We cannot afford modest efforts, such as we have here. They are modest because there is an attempt to serve all sorts of agendas at the one time and to do a little bit here and a little bit there. Misguided and difficult to comprehend decisions have been made to favour landlords with 100% tax reliefs that are ill thought out and, ultimately, could provide incentives for landlords to evict more people as a pretext for refurbishment. Many people will be particularly disappointed by the failure to deliver a significant package for affordable housing.

Every day I hear from families and individuals who do not qualify for social housing, but for whom a mortgage is an absolute pipe dream. Some of these people might have been on a social housing list at one time, before finding themselves over the limit. The difference or tipping scale can be quite slight at times. This a frustrating time for people in that category. They are scrambling around to find anything that offers security and permanence, or even semi-permanence. It is a wide category of people reaching across society. Many of them are young families and younger people who are, essentially, a locked out generation when it comes to the housing market.

Fianna Fáil has returned to the table, having made a big play of this issue ahead of negotiations, with what is essentially just €14 million in new money. This is also in the context of there not having been one single affordable house delivered under any affordable scheme since Deputy Eoghan Murphy became the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government. This new commitment will not be remotely enough to address properly the enormous and growing need in this area. Many families do not feel as if there are any realistic options for them and feel that all options are temporary. Minister after Minister comes in here saying the housing crisis cannot be solved overnight. That is true. It is also true that a crisis was building up under the surface from 2010 or so. Fianna Fáil allowed lists to rise and it shares part of the blame. Fine Gael, however, has had nearly eight years. The crisis was allowed to get worse and worse, and even now, when it is the number one social issue and the political issue the public wants to see resolved, there is not the urgency in terms of dealing with it.

Bhí diomá orm freisin faoin maoiniú a cuireadh ar fáil don Ghaeilge agus don Ghaeltacht, ó thaobh pleánáil teanga, ó thaobh caiteachas caipitiúil don údarás, agus ó thaobh maoiniú don bhforas. Bhí gá le thart ar €9 milliún ar a laghad, ach is i bhfad níos lú an méadú maoinithe atá faighte. Is deacair a rá go bhfuil an Rialtas dáiríre faoin Ghaeilge i gcomhthéacs Bliain na Gaeilge.

In terms of justice, there are some things to be welcomed and some disappointments. It is difficult to fathom the cut in the overtime budget of €3.5 million given the fact that An Garda Síochána is so significantly over budget already this year. I am sure many superintendents and sergeants will be trying to figure out how they can stretch their budgets this year in order to keep their commitments.

There has been some movement in the area of childcare in recent years, but not enough. The reality is that childcare amounts to a second mortgage for many families. There is a lack of vision in this area. We cannot build a sector as essential as early years education on the back of an increasing subsidy or on low-wage labour. If we are serious about a quality early years sector, we need to treat it as a public service, paid for by the public, with staff who are paid good wages, not poverty wages.

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