Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We have known deadly disease on our island before. In the 1800s, the Great Hunger saw millions emigrate or die of famine, diphtheria, cholera, fever and smallpox. In the last century, TB or consumption destroyed thousands of lives. It may be folk memory now, but its legacy lingers on. It took the vision of a socialist, Deputy Noël Browne, to deliver the infrastructure and the drive that tackled that insidious disease, but the vision of a social public health system was blocked by vested interests. It has yet to be realised. We must not repeat the same mistake that was made then, the mistake of not finishing his job. This emergency tells us we need to build an Irish national health service of which we can all be proud.

That work should have started today. Instead, we are again papering over the cracks. In times of crisis we turn to the State. We still have some way to go before we can end our two-tier health system. Today I am just as concerned about our two-tier economy. This Government promised a shared future. When he was campaigning against Fine Gael the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, promised us an Ireland for all. Instead we have two Irelands. Billions of euro have been committed in supports for businesses while there are cuts for workers on the Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment. There is absolutely no shame about it. We were told there would be no cuts, but a form of austerity is back for those who can least afford it.

The time has come to reimagine this State. That is why the Labour Party has proposed a package of measures worth much more than €11 billion in capital and current spending to plug the gaps in our services and to do whatever it takes to save jobs and lives. Our focus is unapologetically on the interests of working people. Right when we needed a radical response, a different approach, a shared national effort, the dividing lines have been drawn. After four years of the difficult on-again, off-again engagement that was the confidence and supply agreement, the wedding ceremony finally came in June. Today the marriage was consummated, but the wedding speeches did not live up to expectations. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have now become one, for better or for worse. For the sake of the country I hope that the next few months beat their disastrous honeymoon period of self-inflicted cock-ups, exploding clown cars and comical games of one-upmanship. We do not need to do a deep dive through departmental records to uncover any major policy differences between the two Ministers present. If we did, we simply would not be able to find them, because there are none. They are so tight policy-wise that by the time this Government is over we will be wondering which Minister is which. Fianna Fáil has been subsumed by Fine Gael. The merger is complete and Fianna Fáil's long-cherished identity is gone.

All of that being said, it would be churlish of me and my party colleagues not to recognise that there is much to welcome in this package. Who does not want to see extra resources targeted at health, housing, education and wage supports? Will it be enough, however, to stave off the twin threats of Covid-19 and the prospect of a no trade deal Brexit?

The national credit card has been maxed out, but where is the money going? There is no shortage of cash, but the Labour Party knows the Government will come up short on implementation. Will the proposed package be sufficient to insulate the economy against future shocks and reshape our society and economy into one that is fairer and more resilient?

The pandemic has exposed massive gaps in the health services. Some months ago, a chronic lack of ICU and acute beds meant the State had to go cap in hand to the private sector to get access to beds because it feared the health service would be overrun. An extra 60 or so new ICU beds does not a national health service make. If the current situation does not force the House and the Government into a radical rethink of our priorities as a country, then I worry for our future.

Last March, it was not Michael O'Leary and the captains of industry who rode to our rescue. He was too busy flying people to Cheltenham in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Rather, it was doctors, nurses, healthcare assistants, hospital porters, home helps, shop workers, bus drivers and teachers teaching children via Zoom who battled to keep us well and our society and economy moving. It was the State to which people turned for protection and to keep them out of harm's way. Only the State has the authority, skills and resources to respond to the scale of the unprecedented emergency we faced and will continue to face into 2021. It was to the State that private business turned for a lifeline and to support enterprises and jobs in a way that would have been unthinkable at the start of the year. In so doing, we avoided collectively turning a crisis into a catastrophe.

The pandemic should be an inflection point, a turning point for the country. It should be the point at which we state there should be no going back to poor levels of investment in public services compared with our EU peers; to a model of low pay, precarious work and the precarity of being a missed shift or two away from eviction from one's home; or to reliance on the private sector to provide education for toddlers and to care for our parents and grandparents. It is time for a new social contract for the Irish people. It goes to show how things have changed that even IBEC stated the future is one where the State is bigger and does more and where those costs will have to be met. Recent months have shone a light on some uncomfortable truths. We have a health service that struggles despite the best efforts of health workers, weaknesses in our private model of early years education, and massive overdependence on the private housing and rental market to put a roof over the heads of low-paid workers. Will budget 2021 mark an important milestone on the way to a better, fairer and more sustainable Ireland? It should, but I doubt it will. On today's evidence, it seems to me that it may very well be back to business as usual for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael once we get over this hump.

International conditions have never been more favourable in terms of borrowing in order that we can invest. I implore the Ministers to shed their conservative instincts, pull out all the stops and invest multiples of the capital allocations they announced today on housing, health and education. They should do so now. As Chris Johns wrote in an article published in The Irish Times yesterday, it is time to show truly radical solidarity with those who, through no fault of their own, are suffering the most.

Every journalist to whom I spoke in the weeks leading up to budget 2021 asked me how the State would pay for all the things I have stated it should do. Like any prudent and sensible business or household, it should borrow now to build back better for tomorrow. We have all been seared by the experience of the previous crash, a crisis that was caused by lax regulation of banks and property and a credit orgy of a kind not seen anywhere else in the world. The response to the previous crash from the international community and lenders of last resort meant the 2008 crisis lasted much longer than it ought to have. Of course, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party signed us up to a programme of tough medicine. Lessons from the international response to that crisis should be learned and applied today.

The actions of the European Central Bank mean that just last week Ireland could borrow €1.5 billion at negative interest rates on a ten-year bond. Covid-19 has very few silver linings, but one saving grace is the cheap long-term borrowing that is available to the State. Even the International Monetary Fund is telling us to invest in capital projects now. However, we cannot fight this war with old weapons from the previous war. In the words of John Maynard Keynes, the difficulty lies not in the new ideas but in escaping from the old ones. I note that the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and McGrath, were agonising already in the context of their budget speeches about how we will get the deficit down.

The Government must be ambitious for Ireland and invest in building homes, schools, hospitals, colleges, metro links and other important infrastructure. That is the prudent and sensible thing to do right now. Let us do whatever it takes to maintain jobs and incomes. However, in my view and based on what the House has heard today, the Government is doing as little as it can get away with doing. On capital programmes, I note it is likely only to spend approximately €600 million on top of what it had already proposed, rather than the €2 billion extra expenditure suggested by the Labour Party.

In the view of the Labour Party, this budget should be the first step on the road to a new social contract forged between citizens and the State. The budget will be judged on three bases: does it do enough to protect workers, families and communities in their hour of need; will it fulfil the key role of the State in looking after the health and well-being of our citizens; and does it usher in a new era, a new social contract and a definitive move away from the tired Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil offering of tax cuts and poor delivery on housing, health and other social services?

Hundreds of thousands of families are watching these proceedings for signs of hope for the future. Some of them may be watching as they work from home. They may work for one of the successful multinational corporations which, thankfully, are doing very well. Their performance has been a saving grace for the economy and that advantage must be protected and built upon. Others who are watching may have worked in a pub or restaurant all their lives. Many of them used to work at this time of the day in a job they loved but have lost through no fault of their own or of the business that employed them. They need our support. They are the victims of the two-tier economy. The best way we can provide certainty to workers and businesses at this anxious time is to provide them with security that wages will be paid. There must be no cliff edge when the wage subsidy scheme expires in March. The Ministers signalled that they will provide support for wages and challenged businesses beyond next April. That is welcome, but we need to do far more. We can use such investment in enterprise and workers to drive change, improve business models, upskill workers and enhance pay and the performance of our economy more generally.

This is the time to do radical things and spend money correctly to keep people at work. It is easier to maintain a job than to create a new one, and that is why the Labour Party has proposed a new wage subsidy and short-time work scheme entitled Obair Gearr. It is based on the German Kurzarbeitmodel that saved half a million jobs in Germany during the previous recession. The Government should use the money allocated to the employment wage subsidy scheme and add on €2.7 billion from the Brexit and Covid contingency funds to fund such a lifeline for businesses and workers. Of course, as the Minister, Deputy McGrath, pointed out, the European support to mitigate unemployment risks in an emergency, SURE, scheme is available to assist the State in the required spending in the next couple of years to keep people at work and to upskill and retrain workers. This all can be done and should become a permanent feature of our labour market. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, admitted to me two weeks ago at the Committee on Budgetary Oversight that if such a scheme were in place when the crisis took hold, we could have saved hundreds, if not thousands, more businesses and jobs. There is a need to attach conditions to the businesses that benefit from these kinds of schemes. These should be fair conditions that drive the agenda of decent work and ensure those who benefit from State largesse in the coming period do not lay off their workers.

I understand the plans the Ministers announced to cut the VAT rate for hospitality. I get that those plans may be politically popular, but experience tells us the initiative will not do what the Ministers seem to think it will. This is not 2008 or 2011. Hospitality does not have a demand problem. Rather, it has a confidence and public health problem. An additional €7 billion has been saved in Irish bank accounts by those who are at work. The State should keep hospitality alive with business grants and various reliefs and incentives, the likes of which form part of today's package, as well as a wage subsidy scheme of the kind proposed by the Labour Party. The money is there to help those businesses when they can reopen again. However, at this time, the conditions to spend it are not there. Unfortunately, the proposed VAT cut runs the risk of becoming another deadweight policy involving a couple of billion euro being spent here or there to promote economic activity that would have happened anyway. The Labour Party agrees the hospitality sector requires support. It provides jobs in towns and villages throughout Ireland and those businesses are entitled to our support.

However, it is worth recalling the last time the VAT rate was cut for that industry that did not improve the experience of customers in terms of cost and it did not improve the experience of workers in terms of their pay packets. If the Minister is determined to do this, he should make the cut contingent on engagement by the sector in the joint labour committee it continues to veto. This is how an activist state drives change and positive outcomes for the common good. It baffles me that we can spend billions of euro on State support for businesses and pay no interest whatsoever to changing the lives of those who work in those industries for the better. Look at the €50 million a week new business support scheme that is proposed today. This is the equivalent of a full €350 a week PUP payment for 150,000 laid off workers - the payment that this Government refuses to restore. Almost uniquely in Europe, this Government and its predecessor has chosen to pump limited amounts of cash into the business sector without any conditions whatsoever around improving the lives of workers.

Forty per cent of young people who are not in education or training are now unemployed and given the pressure under which the sectors they work are, there are few options available to them. We know to our cost in this country the scarring effect that unemployment has on young people. The experience stays with them forever. They cannot emigrate. They currently have few opportunities here. This Government needs to give them hope for a better future. It should not leave them behind. We must declare war on youth unemployment. We may have to accept the reality that many jobs that were lost will not come back. We say invest now in almost 30,000 new jobs and training places in green technology, tech, retrofitting engineering etc. and deepen and broaden the spectrum and availability of apprenticeships, traineeships and education places today.

Young people today should be given the same kind of chance that I had in the 1990s - the chance to be the first member of my extended family to attend a university - thanks to the reforms and free fees brought in by the former Minister for Education, Ms Niamh Bhreathnach, of the Labour Party. We proposed this year spending €80 million knocking €1,000 off the student contribution charge. The Minister with responsibility for further and higher education and research, innovation and science should do the same on the way to a fully-publicly funded third level system.

It is deeply distressing that this Government has chosen to deprive workers of the full rate of the pandemic unemployment payment. If €350 was the floor of decency in March, it should be the floor of decency now too. The Government has told us that the pandemic unemployment payment will be available for arts workers and those who are self-employed operating in the arts and entertainment sectors and other exposed sectors. We will give the Minister's scheme a cautious welcome but the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. If we do not get this right, we are in serious danger of losing an entire generation of artists and technicians, and infrastructure build up over decades, and we will live to regret that. The reality of life, for example, for a sound technician or a lighting technician, is that he or she might get a gig worth approximately €1,000 for a night, two days or whatever the case might be. In this climate, this might be the only work that they end up getting for an entire month. Will they be allowed to average this out over a period of weeks to enable them to stay within the eligibility criteria? That is unclear to me. Furthermore, on the pandemic unemployment payment, will this Government decide to pay it to anyone who has lost his or her job and is on the pandemic unemployment payment this Christmas? Can we also please drop the term "Christmas bonus"? It is patronising. It is offensive. It suggests that someone who depends on the State for his or her income should be grateful for an extra week's payment at a challenging time of the year. There is much talk about flattening the debt curve, but what about the poverty curve?

This budget will not go down well with continuity Fianna Fáil. One of that party's many former agriculture Ministers wants the PUP to go back up. His retreat to the backbenches has coincided with a new-found concern for the jobless. It is a pity he could not find his voice when the Cabinet, of which he was a member, agreed to slash the payment in July. I agree with Deputy O'Dea when he said that one cannot cultivate social solidarity if one is implementing cuts to people on already low incomes. These fine words from the keepers of the Fianna Fáil flame who are self-isolating on the backbenches will not pay the rent for the 25,000 young people on the €203 lower rate of the PUP, for example.

Turning to this Government's approach to social welfare, it seems that it believes that there are two categories of citizens on social welfare - the deserving and the undeserving. I agree that those who are living alone require enhanced support but all of those who are on fixed incomes do too. Unlike Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and even Sinn Féin, we believe that all of those on weekly social welfare payments should see a rise of €5 per week, and that includes pensioners. We know that Sinn Féin is good at rewriting history, but today that party wanted to rewrite its alternative budget proposals. Last Friday, they did not propose an additional €5 a week on each weekly social welfare payment; merely €3. We propose this €5 rate because of the threat of rising food and utility costs as a result of the prospect of a no-trade deal Brexit and the impact of this on the ability of a welfare recipient to make ends meet should be clear to everybody.

This Government has, yet again, failed to address the real needs of carers in this society. The rather tokenistic changes that will be made around income credits and the small addition to the respite grant do not cut the mustard. It is time we started showing the unsung heroes who keep their loved ones at home and care for them night and day 365 days a year the love and respect that they need by recognising the work they do. This year was the year we should have gone to town on the income disregard and provided the carer's grant to all. It was another missed opportunity to recalibrate this unequal society of ours. We had fine words, as usual, from the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Varadkar, about the value we place on lower paid workers in this country - the people who kept our health service going and our shops open when the first wave hit. These were empty words. A candle in the window, as a tokenistic mark of gratitude, will not heat the homes of those on the national minimum wage who will only receive an extra 10 cent an hour increase to their hourly rate of pay next year. Virtuous signalling from Deputy Varadkar will not put food on the table. A Government that genuinely believes we were all in this together did not have to accept the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission. However, they did, and they have turned their back on those they applauded earlier on this year. This is not the start of a new social contract; it is business as usual. Where was the Green Party when this memorandum came to the Cabinet table last week? This shows, when push comes to shove, they cannot be counted on to stand up for ordinary low-paid workers despite all of their rhetoric about social justice. Should we be surprised? The Green Party has form here. When the previous crash hit, the first thing they did, along with Fianna Fáil, was slash the national minimum wage by €1 an hour. It did not create a single job. It only succeeded in driving thousands of workers further into penury.

There are also many of these low-paid workers to whom this Government continues to deny a right that almost every other European takes for granted - the right to statutory sick pay. If this is a Covid budget, where is the right to sick pay? This Government is throwing money at the business sector in the form of grants, reliefs, wage schemes and the like, and yet it is washing its hands of sick workers during a worldwide pandemic. Eighty-seven per cent of the public supports Labour's statutory sick pay Bill and the deputy Chief Medical Officer spoke about the importance of decent sick pay as a weapon against the virus when he was in temporary charge. The Minister has kicked this down the road again, for at least another six months when we need it now. We have proposed that we make illness benefit available after the second day, not the third day as this Government is doing, at a cost of €70 million, and we have suggested a levy on the meat sector to fund sick pay too. Action on sick pay is needed now, not next year when, in fact, we could have a vaccine available before the kind of sick pay scheme that the Minister states he is interested in. This is a shameful state of affairs.

I also note that the Minister has allocated moneys merely to delay the rise in the pension age to 67, and where is the jobseeker's transition payment? There is no sign of the latter in the documents I have seen. I cannot see the funding for that. Therefore, the Minister has not even done half the job he is supposed to do. We do not want this delayed. We do not want it deferred. It should be dumped, taken off the agenda, once and for all. The legislation should be amended. Otherwise, this will create a dangerous cliff edge every year for hardworking people who should be entitled to retire when they originally expected to. Much, much more could have been done in this budget genuinely to make life better and more hopeful for the lower paid and for those who rely on the State for their incomes. This budget begs the question whether we are, as this Government constantly says, all in this together. I am not so sure that we are.

The pandemic has shown that chickens have come home to roost because of years of underinvestment in public services. We have paid the price for Ireland having the lowest level of critical care beds in Europe, the lowest level of hospital consultants and the highest waiting lists, with currently 850,000 waiting for care. Despite years of delays regarding the implementation of Sláintecare, we were able effectively to nationalise private hospitals, practically overnight, in March, when we feared the worst. We need a healthcare system that works not only in a time of crisis, but for everyone all of the time. We should not wait another five or ten years for a change that we now know can and must happen. Ministers will tell us this week that we have the largest ever investment in health. It is not about the quantum of money; it is about what Ministers will do with it and how they will implement the things they say they will do today.

During the first few months of the Covid-19 outbreak, the Government spent a massive €115 million per month on private hospitals, which were run at just one third of capacity. Rather than outsourcing our healthcare system to the private sector, the State could have stepped in directly to nationalise at least two private hospitals for an estimated €450 million, as we set out in the Labour Party's alternative budget last week and as our leader, Deputy Kelly, has articulated. This would have been a bold but necessary first step towards a single-tier public healthcare system - an Irish national health service - that serves everyone and delivers on a vital component of a new social contract for the Irish people. It would have assured the necessary capacity in our hospitals this winter as we face into a second surge of Covid-19.

There is also a risk of another health surge: an apocalyptic surge in non-Covid waiting lists and subsequent non-Covid deaths. We have warned about this. Deputy Kelly is blue in the face reminding successive Ministers of the dangers associated with this. Too many people have suffered due to the inability of our health service to cope with the pressure. We know that timely treatment of patients is crucial in terms of survival rates for a whole host of conditions including cancers, stroke and heart disease, yet the Government has done little or nothing to ensure screening services remain open, to bring such services back up the levels they should be at, or to reduce sky-high waiting lists.

In the Labour Party's alternative budget, we proposed €35 million in additional funding for cancer services, cancer screening and the cardiac care backlog. We welcome the resources that the Government says it will put into these services this year, but there is no plan or detail on how to get cancer care back on track. That detail is needed today, particularly by those who are worried about their health and that of their family members. There is nothing in the budget to support our creaking ambulance service, which is the first line of defence in this country. There is nothing in it about a terminal illness card, for which we have waited for far too long, and which would make a difference to many people's lives during the remainder of the time they have with us.

Free GP care is also a critical component of early intervention and prevention of Covid-19 and non-Covid illnesses. We made the important first steps but Fine Gael has dragged its feet on major extensions to this scheme.

The Government’s winter plan has finally acknowledged the need to treat people in the community. Necessity is the mother of invention. However, the talk of community care we have heard in recent times is cheap when one in five primary care centres does not yet have a GP, while many more lack basic diagnostic equipment. The Labour Party's alternative budget set aside €40 million to fast-track community diagnostic and assessment hubs to take pressure off our acute hospitals at this very difficult time.

Nowhere has poor policymaking and waste of public funds been more evident than in the mismanagement of our housing system by both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Any new social contract must finally address the issue of housing, which is a running sore that has bedevilled our country for far too long. My parents, a factory worker and a confectioner in a local bakery on modest wages, could afford to buy a home back in the 1970s and rear two kids in it. They knew that if they could not get a mortgage, they could access a decent home from the council. We used to take both of these aspirations for granted, but now they are unrealisable for far too many people. I have been a public representative for 21 years and I have never before witnessed so much precarity, anxiety and hopelessness about housing from the people I represent.

This budget promises much on social and affordable housing but the track record of delivery warns us to be sceptical about today's headline-grabbing announcements. By the end of June, only 1,467 public homes had been delivered this year. This is shocking and does not inspire confidence at all. There is simply no substitute for building the social and affordable houses that people can call home.

The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, said earlier that the Government will build 9,000 social homes next year. I do not buy that for one minute. It is nowhere near the kind of resources that my colleague, Senator Moynihan, has identified to allow us to build 2,000 homes on top of those already committed to in the national development plan. We will spend considerable sums of money building social homes next year but we will spend more supporting housing assistance payment, HAP, rental agreements. Some 15,000 HAP agreements will be supported next year by this Government, when those resources should be focused and targeted on public and affordable homes. The Government should do as we suggest and provide an extra 2,000 local authority homes next year on publicly owned land. It could also do as we suggest by providing another €500 million for seed financing for at least 4,000 affordable rental homes and 4,000 extra affordable homes per year under our housing plan, which envisages €16 billion being spent over a five-year period to build 80,000 new homes.

This budget continues the subsidising of the inflated house prices we are experiencing at the moment. It continues the supporting of high earners through the really bogus help-to-buy scheme. The Minister should get rid of this scheme now. The ESRI has called it a poorly designed scheme, while a 2019 analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Office showed that the pre-existing scheme generated a deadweight loss of over 41%. What a waste of public money. Taxpayer's money is being used to subsidise home purchases for those who can already afford to buy. Despite this evidence, the very first act of the new Fianna Fáil housing Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, was to extend and enhance the level of subsidy provided under this failed scheme, and he is doing it again today. This is reckless and plain stupid. This is not a policy on housing; it is a policy for developers. Scrapping this policy alone would have saved €102 million which could have been ring-fenced for homelessness prevention measures or affordable homes. The shared equity scheme and the extension of the help-to-buy scheme represent an extension of State money to developers. That is all it is - nothing more or less. We have not seen a new site value tax on underdeveloped land, or a levy on empty houses of €200 as proposed by Social Justice Ireland. It is estimated that these types of measures would have yielded €75 million for local authorities in 2021, money that is badly needed due to the massive drop-off in commercial rates and the cuts to local property tax implemented by Sinn Féin, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael across the country.

As part of our new deal for renters, the Labour Party would have provided a €15 million rental arrears fund to help those in rental arrears through the worst of the crisis. We also would have returned to the idea of rent freezes. We know well about rent freezes. We know they can be done. Deputy Kelly knows this can be done. It has been done before. The resistance of this Government and its predecessor to fix the problem for renters is scandalous and will come back to haunt it.

Our vision of a new social contract is not only about building more homes, but also about sustainable communities. That is why we have proposed very significant interventions in home retrofitting and supports for local authorities and communities to ensure our towns and villages are liveable places. We need investment in our towns and communities to make that happen.

The Labour Party's alternative budget proposed to ring-fence part of the revenue from our proposed €10 increase in carbon tax - €2.50 more than the Government’s €7.50 increase - to fund a significant national home insulation programme, to extend the period of the winter fuel allowance by four weeks and to increase the weekly payment by several euro. That is very important this year because older people in particular will spend much more time at home, cocooning and keeping themselves safe, as a result of the pandemic.

I was intrigued by the earlier references to the national economic recovery fund. A figure has been mentioned, but we are still not clear on precisely how much will be in that fund and what it will be used for. Over recent months, current and previous Ministers have managed to escape the Dáil's gaze in relation to the eye-watering sums of money being spent this year to take on Covid-19. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, the Parliamentary Budget Office and others have criticised the fact that there has been little or no Dáil oversight of the Government's spending so far this year. Performance indicators have been dispensed with. "Trust us" is what the Government has said. Fianna Fáil has to earn our trust again and we know how wasteful that party can be with taxpayers' money. We have lived with the consequences over recent decades.

From the figure that has been mentioned of under €4 billion and the limited details the Government has made available, the economic recovery fund stands well short of the €10 billion multi-annual stimulus proposed by IFAC. Any fund or stimulus needs to be big enough to make a real difference, but this looks wide of the mark and displays again a considerable lack of ambition by the Government.

I wish to have an uncomfortable conversation about tax. By God, does this country need a grown-up conversation about it. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael see tax as a burden that people must carry. Those parties' settled view is that, the less that workers and businesses pay, the better. For me and my party, tax is an investment. Levied fairly, it can open up significant possibilities to help make our country work better and our economy work more fairly. Any of us who have served in government take pride in the fact that this country has a progressive tax system - those who have the most pay the most. This has been borne out by the fact that income tax receipts and corporation tax receipts have held up exceptionally well during this crisis.

However, a read of the latest figures exposes a major underlying risk. We are far too dependent on vulnerable corporation tax revenue to fund our State. One in every five euro taken in tax receipts is from corporation tax. What is more, the bulk of it is generated from a small handful of companies. Our tax base needs to be made more sustainable and it must be broadened out. In the ten years since the crash, we have replaced an over-reliance on stamp duty on property transactions with an over-reliance on corporation tax. This is a game of Russian roulette with our future. I agree that we must defend our right to set and maintain a corporation tax rate of 12.5%, but that should be the effective minimum rate and reliefs and so on should be avoided. Everyone should pay corporation tax and a fair share.

Corporation tax is an important element, albeit not the only one, in our offering on good jobs and investment. With most of our eggs in one basket, it is dangerous that the programme for Government has meant the Government has tied its own hands in refusing to countenance a conversation on higher taxes even on the much better off in this country over the Government's lifetime. It could have listened to the Labour Party, for example, and generated €250 million more by removing tax credits on all incomes over €100,000 in a tapered fashion. The Government chose not to. It is bizarre that, even at a time like this when departmental officials are worrying themselves to sleep at night about the deficit, the very same Department refuses to provide costings to me on the introduction of a net wealth tax. The people who worry about the sustainability of our borrowing levels are the same ones who will not even give a moment's thought to generating some more income from taxing unearned inherited wealth, gambling in shares, and massive pension pots that have grown thanks to tax reliefs and property, the asset in which most wealth is held. We have shown the Government how €1.8 billion could be raised by targeting wealth and assets, but it chooses to look the other way.

On the taxing of property, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have more in common with Sinn Féin than either would care to admit. Sinn Féin is now preparing for government, of course, and as its cowardly policy on property taxes exposes, it is about as prepared to tax wealth as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are. That is the truth and has been the experience. The evidence is there. It is a strange party of the left that says it does not see property and land as assets. In fact, Sinn Féin wants to cut the tax on a millionaire’s mansion by 20% according to its alternative budget, leaving our cash-starved councils even more financially vulnerable than they already are. This is hypocrisy of the worst kind. It is eminently possible to design a tax on wealth that does not impact on jobs and businesses, but the will simply does not exist.

I agree with the Minister for Finance's remarks about the necessity of a commission on taxation and welfare. My party has called for that for some time. We need to take a closer look under the bonnet at how our taxation and welfare systems work and interact so that we can better support employment and business. Pragmatic business leaders who care about our country understand that we need to have a mature, grown-up conversation about tax and PRSI if we are to plan strategically and smartly for the future.

I was intrigued by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform's references to the plans under the programme for Government to create a series of well-being indicators in order to monitor the country's performance, not just economically but socially and environmentally too. We have already written that legislation for him - Deputy Howlin did it in 2017, and I updated it just a few short weeks ago. The legislation is ready made, and we will ask him to support it in the coming time.

One of the large gaps in today's budget proposition is the veritable absence of a pathway to creating a better, more decent and fairer childcare model. Ireland has the greatest reliance on private childcare services in the OECD as well as a lower-than-average level of Government investment. None of that has changed today. This is a missed opportunity to usher in what we might call a State-led childcare model. Our alternative budget proposals on this matter have been consistent - we made them last year and included them in our election manifesto. We have proposed setting aside €60 million as a first step in developing a universal public childcare system. Nothing is more important. We have a significant over-reliance on the private sector to educate the youngest in our society. Good, decent early years education gives young people an advantage before they get to school and throughout their lives, not just in terms of education, but also socialisation. We need to re-examine the matter of childcare. It is more appropriately termed "early years education" because that is what it is. Thousands of early years educators are seeking a living wage. Many of them earn barely above the national minimum wage. Many of them have been educated up to masters level but are earning less than €12 per hour. We have a system where parents are not satisfied because of the excessive costs and where providers and workers are not satisfied either. This budget is a missed opportunity and shows a distinct lack of ambition to reshape our society into a fairer and more decent, caring and equal one. Nowhere is that more evident than in the absence of any serious thinking on a publicly funded, public-facing and publicly produced childcare system.

The Labour Party is patriotic. That does not mean that we go around waving flags at every opportunity. As a party, we are proud of the role we have played in building the institutions of the State and making this country fairer and more equal, driving real change not just in government over the decades, but also in opposition. We have always put our country and the interests of its people before the interests of our party.

Today, we are in an unprecedented situation. People are worried for their health, jobs, businesses and families. It is not a time for opposition for opposition's sake. It is not a time for naked political opportunism. We will leave that to others. The public health and economic emergency requires solidarity. We will support those measures announced today and that might be taken up by the Government over the next period that we believe will work. Where we do not believe that measures will work, where the sums do not add up or where the Government's ideas and initiatives fall short, we will propose alternative solutions. It would be churlish to oppose every aspect of a budget that provides billions of euro in additional resources to provide better safety nets for people and assistance for businesses and try to improve our health service, but nothing in the Budget Statement assures me that we are on our way to creating a new social contract, a new understanding where people who pay their taxes and work hard get better basic universal public services. It gives me no confidence at all. At this time of national emergency, we want the Government to be as ambitious for Ireland as we are, but the scale of our ambition is not matched by what we have seen today.

See this speech in context