Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

It is fair to say that this budget has been framed at a pivotal point in our country's history; a perfect storm of pandemic, Brexit, climate and biodiversity breakdown, all of which interconnect and impact on our people and our environment. While the current challenges may seem too great for any one budget to overcome, I am proud of what was presented yesterday and of the role the Green Party played in forming a budget that has a strong focus on both social and environmental justice.

The social protection measures in this budget are specifically and deliberately targeted to benefit the most vulnerable in society. As a former primary school teacher, I have seen the impact of child poverty at first hand. The extension of the hot school meals to an additional 35,000 children, the increases in qualified child payments, the removal of the earnings threshold for one-parent family payments and the increase in the working family payment thresholds all are key measures which target some of the most vulnerable families in our communities.

In March, we asked many of the people of Ireland who live alone, many of whom are elderly, to weather the worst of the pandemic on their own. It is our turn to give a little back to them. Through increasing the living alone allowance, the fuel allowance, and the widow or surviving partner grant, I sincerely hope that people living alone will be better equipped as our society continues to adapt to living with Covid-19.

This morning I listened to numerous analyses of the budget, among them that of Social Justice Ireland. All pointed to positives in the budget, but many highlighted negatives as well. We must acknowledge there is still work to be done. This is not the perfect budget.

While I appreciate that there are disappointments, I also want to highlight that there are new initiatives in the budget that have long been Green Party policy. For the first time, we are seeing well-being indicators included in an Irish national budget, setting out our stall for what is to come further down the line. This is the beginning of a longer process to enhance well-being in a much broader sense and I sincerely hope that it will lead to a well-being budget next year.

Finally, I wish to point out that there are still people in our society whose voices get lost in the crowd and whose concerns and fears fall through the cracks in between countless priorities and plans. There are people in rural areas, living in isolated situations, dependent on sporadic trips to local towns and villages to meet and connect with peers. These are people who are living in rural poverty and they are a group that must be addressed. We need to do more to look after such people. They are also weathering the storm of Covid-19, potentially more quietly but with no less resilience than the rest of us.

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