Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to start my maiden speech by thanking most sincerely the people of Wexford, 11,849 of whom voted for me, first preference or otherwise. I thank my campaign team and express the admiration I have for each and every one of them. They came out to canvass in their hundreds, in most cases after a long day's work, which was a big honour for me. I hope the attainment of a seat in the Thirty-third Dáil is in turn testament to their hard work and belief in me.

Being elected by the people of Wexford as the first Independent female candidate to take a seat, and only the second woman after Avril Doyle to hold a seat in the constituency, represents change in itself. I intend to execute that mandate for change in full. The quest for change saw Sinn Féin and Independents garner 40% of the first preference vote in Wexford. This was reflected across Ireland. The national media and the Government were shocked. Why did people vote for change? Since 2007, many people's lives have changed immeasurably and though they have been continually lectured by the Government on the huge strides that have been made in mending the public finances and saving them from oblivion, to many, their lifestyles remain where they were in 2011.

I refer to rents spiralling, negative equity, high taxes, unaffordable childcare, free GP care with no GPs, no mental health services, no mortgages and no homes. They had expectations that the recession would not last forever, that the wage cuts were necessary,that the increased taxes were temporary and that the bank rescue and the troika were the only show in town. There was no way out. NAMA was to save the day. Socialism for banks and vulture and cuckoo funds but capitalism for everybody else has been the reality. These entities prosper in an environment of low or, in many cases, no taxes, while all the time middle income Ireland is screwed. The reason people voted for change is because they now realise that corporate Ireland prospered on the backs of Joe and Mary. An expectation to own their own home was shattered by the reality that the home offering will be an apartment or a duplex-style unit in a high-density development in a rural constituency like Wexford that they neither want nor can afford. That is why people voted for change.

If the economy is stronger and employment levels so high, how could things be so bad? Why are there no houses? Why are rents at an all-time high? Why are there long hospital waiting lists? Why are farmers on the breadline? Why are fishermen destitute? Why can parents not afford to send their children to college? Why are children in their 30s living with their parents? The answer lies in the fact that the politicians have failed to deal with solutions that do not accommodate their notion of the optics. For example, NAMA was initially sold to the public as a system that would warehouse loans and ease the impact of the crash. Instead, the position changed midstream and the loans were sold to vulture funds. This resulted in the utter collapse and devastation of the housing market in Ireland. The main adviser to the Government on these loan sales ended up being the main purchaser of the loans. The decision to sell Irish loans to international funds had the following effects: it collapsed the Irish home-building industry; it created a home rental crisis; it created negative equity for the majority of homeowners in Ireland; and it created the greatest homeless crisis in the history of the State. Somebody had to be blamed for the bust and builders were an easy target. NAMA pursued them with vigour. Meanwhile, the banks and corporate Ireland got a bailout.

When the Government realised that there was nobody left to build houses and that the skilled workforce had left for greener pastures never to return, it had to employ new policies to cover its mistakes. What did it do? It introduced tax breaks for cuckoo funds to purchase properties. It introduced ministerial guidelines to increase densities in order to bring volumes to the market faster, albeit it was advised that this was not viable outside the M50. It never meaningfully consulted the building industry. Whatever the spin doctors say about builders, and they may have been part of the collapse, as were the Government and its agencies, the main cause of the collapse was the oversupply of credit presided over by a regulator who could only be described as being asleep at the wheel. Builders are part of the solution. They are the ones who will build houses. They need to be brought inside the circle. Politicians and civil servants alike need to listen to them.

The main people now facilitating the building of properties are the cuckoo funds which, as we know, pay no taxes but the optics are that we are building. We will never be able to break free of the rental limbo this Government has put us in nor will the affordability crisis ever be over unless we change how we do things. That means taking decisive action that works. It is not about the optics. I hope the lesson has been learned. Change means policies that work. It means strong leadership, standing up and being counted when faced with officials that will not listen.

In Wexford, people earning the average industrial wage cannot purchase the average three-bedroom property being sold on the market, without the site costs included, for €230,000 because they only qualify for a mortgage of €170,000. Change means looking at and introducing current macro-prudential rules, not applying rules of another era. Can we consider a mortgage interest rate cap? As we hear every day, banks are making excessive profits. Can we simply legislate to equate multiples of borrowing to the current interest rates, not ten year old interest rates?

We must not forget that for every new build the Government takes in 33% in taxes yet Irish Water does not have a guaranteed funding structure. The Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, is refusing to change the ministerial guidelines to accommodate the housing requirements of rural areas, which is endorsed by the Planning Regulator, Niall Cussen, or vice versa, all of which requires change if we are ever to truly solve the housing crisis. Change most definitely meant that the people did not want the pension age to rise to 67. It should remain at 65.

Most of all, we need to recognise that Ireland is not Dublin and that life exists beyond the M50. While the voters recognised this, it appears the Government did not, introducing Dublin-centric policies that devastated the very essence of rural towns and villages. If one were to examine the IDA Ireland policy, one would think that, particularly in the context of my constituency of Wexford, motorways were being provided to go only one way. There were only three visits to Wexford in 2019 but there were 269 visits to Dublin. Legislation introduced such as zero-tolerance drink-driving laws that were overbearing and ill-thought-out when implemented in rural Ireland served only to devastate rural areas and businesses and create social isolation when all that was required was a rural transport infrastructure because in urban areas there are buses and taxis on every street.

Rural Ireland depends on rural industries - farming, fishing, haulage and tourism. With too many businesses such as tourism operating on a seasonal basis, they do not have the footfall of urban businesses. That is why the VAT increase should never have been applied across the board in the hospitality sector. It should have been a city tax. That is a prime example of the urban-rural disconnect. In farming and haulage, the lack of labour, the green agenda and overregulation are all serving to erode the bottom line and are making many smallholdings and businesses that raised families in the past unviable. The EU budget is currently under discussion. Due to Brexit, the budget is reduced, which means that, in turn, the CAP budget is being revised and reduced. It is time we stated our case for farmers and hauliers. As a country, Ireland is not just geographically disadvantaged, it is also competitively disadvantaged as a result of Brexit. We should call on the EU to institute the support it promised so vocally in the hope that it might overturn Brexit, or was that more optics?

Rosslare Europort must be upgraded to its operational potential. We have to start to walk the walk if we are ever to alleviate the congestion in Dublin Port that causes the increase in carbon emissions, which is the very thing we are being penalised for through carbon taxes. When hauliers' productivity is halved due to congestion and lack of space, they are being asked to pay more. Why is it impossible to join the dots and see the benefits of change?

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