Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have €915 million out of the €672.5 billion under the EU plan. That speaks for itself. We need to ask why we are getting such a small share of the cake. Distribution based on population, the 2019 GDP figures and the average unemployment rates do not reflect the reality on the ground in regard to health, housing, education or sustainable employment. Are we going to continue to use the live register to measure employment success? Are we going to tackle the issue of precarious employment conditions, zero-hour contracts, employment uncertainty and the poverty traps that affect so many people who cannot get a mortgage or ever hope to buy their own home?

We need to look under the bonnet and then we need to do a permanent and sustainable fix. I have listened all afternoon to Government Deputies asking why people cannot be happy about this. The reason is that it is not going to permanently fix anything, first, in terms of the amount we were able to lever because of all that we keep hidden, including the hidden poverty in this country, and, second, as one of the Government speakers said, we do not have policy alignment. If anyone speaks to a local authority today and asks for something, the bureaucracy that is in place to prevent money from getting to where it is needed means it is just not working. The Government loves announcements of millions of euro for this and millions of euro for that yet when I try to seek an assessment for a child with autism or something very small or simple to be done, it cannot be done. The headline figures belie the true position. There is no flexibility built into the system. I am all for governance and accountability, but there is no flexibility to spend on many of these schemes in the way that is needed, including with SEAI grants. We have grants and subsidies for people who do not need them in the first place, but too many people are excluded and are caught in a poverty trap because they are excluded from the grants and schemes the Government lauds itself for providing.

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