Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Fitzpatrick. At first glance, the Finance Bill looks like legislation for the ultimate Ross O'Carroll Kelly budget. When one looks more closely, it is clear that a phenomenal number of sectors have been left out of its provisions. In the case of older people, for example, who are most vulnerable and exposed in this particular crisis, there is not even a tenner a week for them out of an €18 billion budget. Another group that has been massively stuffed in this budget is student nurses. They were promised by the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, that they would be paid for the work they do on placement during the pandemic. That has not happened and it is absolutely wrong. It is unacceptable that nurses, who are most central to our management of the pandemic, very vulnerable to infection and holding the whole process together, have not been looked after in the manner that was committed to by the Government. I pay credit to Aontú representative, Paul Lawless, who has been leading the fight on this issue.

A shocking figure has come to light today, namely, that half a million people are now unemployed in this State. That does not take into consideration the people who are on wage subsidy schemes, who number in the tens of thousands. These people were made unemployed in large part due to the level 5 restrictions that came into place before the outputs of the level 3 restrictions materialised. The mantra of the Government from the start has been that we are all in this together. The Minister of State will have to agree that this is plainly untrue. Hundreds of thousands of workers and businesses have had their ability to earn an income taken away from them. Many have had their incomes radically reduced and hundreds of thousands have been pushed into poverty. The restrictions have imposed a massive cost on many people throughout the country.

We in Aontú believe that politicians cannot represent if they cannot relate. There is a song by Beck which includes the line, "You can't write if you can't relate". The same is true for politicians. We cannot represent the people if we cannot relate to the situation they are in. When a Government is making decisions for the population while its members are themselves immune from the consequences of those decisions, it does not make for good governance. If politicians do not share in the cost of those decisions, if they are blind to the real experiences of so many people, that is wrong. In the last economic crash, there was a logical downward pressure on the incomes of elected representatives in line with the rest of society. On this occasion, however, elected representatives' incomes are going in the opposite direction from the incomes of the people they represent.

I submitted a Bill to the Dáil today which seeks to cut Deputies' salaries by 25% for the period of level 4 and level 5 restrictions and during level 3 restrictions when pubs, cafés and restaurants are closed. If the body politic is going to make a decision to radically reduce the incomes of up to half a million people, even if that decision may, in some circumstances be logical, then we in this House should at least take some of that burden upon our shoulders. Talk of everybody being in this together has been thrown around like confetti in this House since the start of the pandemic. It is time we put our money where our mouth is. I will seek to amend the Finance Bill to allow for the provisions of the Aontú Bill to be taken into consideration.

Rural Ireland gets bits and pieces of support from the Government, with some money going to this scheme and some money to that scheme. The truth of the matter is that those schemes are, in many ways, like social welfare for rural Ireland, providing enough to just get by but never enough to strive. We have a radical problem in this country with a lopsided development that is turning Ireland into a city state. This budget will in no way address that problem. The trends we have seen over the past four Governments will continue under this Government unless we start to address that issue.

Finally, Ireland is an outlier in European terms when it comes to childcare provision. The shamefully low investment in the sector was completely ignored and allowed to continue for far too long. Since the start of the Covid crisis, many childcare operators have had to shut their doors for good and others are struggling to survive. I urge the Minister to accept our amendments seeking to give the childcare sector the support it needs.

See this speech in context