Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, is being praised in the mainstream media for his prudent budget. The reality, however, is that it is a blatant class-biased budget that is using the Brexit and climate crisis to hit workers and the poor, in the main.

I will examine a few things he is up to in the budget as he looks after his own. The Central Bank has predicted that tens of thousands of jobs will be lost if there is a no-deal Brexit but instead of taking measures to create jobs, the Minister has used the crisis to benefit his rich friends. Some €80 million in a full year will be given to support small businesses and agriculture but instead of tying any grant to a guarantee that jobs will be defended and retained, the Minister is giving handouts to company executives. Disgracefully, he is using the cover of Brexit to extend the notorious special assignee relief scheme, SARP, that allows company executives who earn more than €75,000 a year to cut their tax bill by 30% when they earn over that figure. This scheme was due to be phased out but now has been extended until 2022, thereby costing us €28 million annually in tax foregone.

He is giving more tax breaks to companies that pay their executives in share options through a key employee engagement programme. He is giving tax reliefs to high-flyers who travel back and forth to countries such as China. Just 144 people availed of this scheme in 2014, gaining them a tax break of up to €35,000 each. He is giving tax relief to bookies in order that they get €50,000 in relief through not paying a betting duty. Yet he is also hitting workers and the poor. In a disgusting move, the Minister has stopped the 30 cent increase on the minimum wage. He is making the workers who get just €9.80 an hour pay for the cost of the Brexit crisis. A group of expert economists has calculated that to provide the minimum essential living standard requires a living wage of €12.30 an hour, which is a far cry from €9.80. Nevertheless, the Minister has stopped a 30 cent per hour increase. This will hit in particular lone parents and their children, who are already locked into poverty.

A no-deal Brexit is going to lead to higher prices, which we all accept, and therefore any Government which cared for its people would have given tax relief to workers. However, the Minister has not given a penny to PAYE workers. PAYE workers are paying €8 billion more in taxes than they did before the economic crash because of the introduction of the USC and the reduction in tax allowances. The Minister could have put money back in workers' pockets to enable them deal with higher prices and to help keep the economy going. Instead, he chose to look after his wealthy friends.

Pensioners in Ireland are often in dire poverty and many had hoped they could get an extra €5 a week to help them. Again, they got nothing. There is nothing for carers or people with disabilities, even though waiting times for assessments are notorious and even though this is against the law.

The outrageous discrimination against those under 24 years has not ended. It has only changed for those who can live independently and are on a payment like RAS or HAP. Thousands of young people under 24 years - bearing in mind that youth employment is much higher than the national average at 11 % - who live with their parents or who find themselves newly unemployed and live with their family, will still get just €112 per week.

The climate change hypocrisy is breath taking. The Government's only answer has been to slap a €6 on every tonne of carbon. This means a 2 cent per litre increase on the price of petrol and home heating oil. The Minister made it clear that this is only the start of carbon tax hikes that will continue until 2030. By the time he has finished, many will pay an extra €500 to €1,000 a year in carbon tax. He claims this will be an incentive to change behaviour but there already is a carbon tax on petrol and still the numbers of cars on Irish roads has doubled. Ireland is one of the most car dependent societies in the world because investment in public transport is so low. It was very interesting to hear the Minister answer a question on “Today with Seán O’Rourke” earlier on why carbon taxes had not reduced emissions. His answer was that they were not high enough. In other words, we have not penalised people sufficiently to change their behaviour, What incentive, however, has he given to help people change their behaviour? There has been no improvement in public transport and very little support for retrofitting, while continuing the same mantras over climate change. Dublin has one of the highest bus fares in Europe, which is double the EU average. There are not enough buses because 300 buses were cut from the fleet by the last Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government. Those cuts have not been fully restored. In rural Ireland, public transport is almost non-existent outside the main towns. At the same time, Fine Gael's gross hypocrisy on climate change is shown by the fact that it refused to put a tax on aviation fuel or on the profits of companies like Ryanair. Such a tax could have yielded €900 million annually and could have provided resources to move to free and full public transport.

Furthermore, they continue to block all measures that would leave fossil fuels in the ground. In the same week, the Government announced its support for building a liquid nitrogen gas terminal at Shannon for imported fracked gas from the US. It is breathtaking in its hypocrisy.

As for Bord na Móna, a paltry €6 million has been allocated for workers and communities. This is disgraceful and I believe we will see uproar in the midlands because of this. Compare this to northern Spain, where the coal industry was wound down and where €250 million was pumped into those communities, which had roughly the same number of workers, to facilitate a just transition. Compared to what has been done for the business community and the multinational executives, it is disgraceful how workers have been treated. The €20 million that was announced for retrofitting homes in the midlands was part of an announcement made in a commitment to retrofit the nation's social housing stock. How many times must the Government re-announce the same projects under different guises to hide the level of inaction on climate? Just like on Brexit, the Government’s aim is to make the poor pay for the crisis.

In the face of Brexit and the climate crisis, we needed a radical change of policy to create the tens of thousands of green jobs which are needed. As Irish homes are among the least energy efficient in Europe, we need a massive State-run retrofitting programme. As our electricity is far too dependent on fossil fuels, we need public investment in renewable energy that could create thousands of jobs. This Parliament could begin by publishing the legislation to allow the production of offshore wind energy that has been promised to the House for the last three years. We are yet to see ink on the paper.

The country faces a massive housing crisis. As Members from many parties here have noted, thousands of jobs could be created if a publicly-owned building company was set up to construct the social and affordable housing we need. There is plenty of money available to fund programmes like these if only we had a Government that was not beholden to the rich. We could stop spending millions on legal fees to defend the Apple tax and could take back the €14 billion, for example. We could stop the banks we bailed out getting away with tax-free profits. If we closed the loopholes they gained from past losses, we could raise an extra €900 million. We could introduce a wealth tax on higher incomes for those earning over €80,000 a year. All of these measures would provide real answers to the twin crises of Brexit and climate change. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, however, prefers to use these as excuse to pursue his blatant class agenda to make the poor and workers pay for the twin crises we face. This budget is a disgrace.

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