Dáil debates

Tuesday, 12 October 2021

Financial Resolutions 2021 - Budget Statement 2022

 

5:55 pm

Photo of Peadar TóibínPeadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

Today Ireland is divided not just by partition but also by income, access to healthcare, access to housing, background, whether you live in Dublin or regionally and by whether you operate as a domestic business or in the foreign direct investment sector. The rising cost of living is eating away at people's ability to live. This Government has shown by this budget that it still does not understand the magnitude and urgency of the crisis that is engulfing up to half the population.

Approximately 1 million people in this State are in some form of housing distress, either grappling with spiralling rents, on housing lists, priced out of the market or potentially still in mortgage distress from the previous crash. Rent was mentioned on two occasions during the 45 minutes of Government speeches today. It is incredible that so little focus should be given to such a phenomenally difficult experience for so many people. The Government announced a zoned land tax today but said it will not be implemented for two or three years. This new tax will, in fact, be a reduction from the existing 7% vacant site tax it will replace. The new 3% tax is less than the increase in the value of the sites that are being hoarded at this time. It will not change the decisions of the people who are hoarding those sites. There is nothing in the budget regarding the 180,000 vacant homes in the State. Our towns and villages are festooned with empty homes but the Government is doing nothing whatsoever to get those properties into use.

The total undertaking in terms of extra Government investment to deal with hospital waiting lists is something to behold. There are nearly 1 million people on waiting lists at this time and the Government says it is going to spend €250 million on trying to reduce them. That works out at €250 per person on the lists. The average cost of one day's care in a public hospital is currently €899. That level of investment will not scratch the surface of the needs of the people in seriously bad, and worsening, health who are waiting on those lists.

On carbon tax, we in Aontú have proposed that there be a carbon tax plus market price ceiling for energy. The whole purpose of a carbon tax is that it should increase the cost of fossil fuels and push people away from their use. However, if the market has, through inflation, already increased prices to that level, what is the logic of a carbon tax? In fact, it is just a penalty on families. Moreover, introducing a tax several years in advance without taking into consideration the circumstances in which impacted families may be living is a punitive and cruel measure. A tax should only be imposed on a society when there is an understanding of the circumstances of the people living in that society at the time of its imposition. On the flip side of that, the funding for energy prices is another incredible aspect of this budget. A total of 22,000 houses will undergo a deep retrofit next year, but there are 1.6 million houses in the State. At that rate of retrofitting, it will take 72 years to achieve completion. The budget also includes a 50% reduction on travel fares but only for 7% of the population, and it will only benefit those among that 7% who have access to public transport, which many do not.

Budget 2022 is also very damaging in what is left out of it. There is no provision for regional-proofing and no effort to rebalance the skewed spatial development that is leading to the lopsided nature of the country in which we live. Ireland has an overheating capital, a sprawling commuter belt and rural areas that are emptying out of young people. We in Aontú called for a 2:1 investment ratio as between rural areas and Dublin. This would mean that for every euro spent in Dublin, at least €2 would be spent outside the capital to make sure there is some effort to redress that spatial imbalance.

Measures in the budget for rural Ireland include a €5 million upgrade for community centres. Given there are 2,500 parishes in the State, I will do the maths again for the Minister. That allocation will give €2,000 for each parish that is included in the investment. That might stretch to a couple of double-glazed windows or a couple of Burco boilers if people can get a good deal. Meanwhile, farmers in the beef sector, which has been on its knees for several years, have been offered a tax break on a feed-in tariff for microgeneration of energy that does not yet exist. Ireland is the only country in Europe without a feed-in tariff for microgeneration of energy. To be clear, the Government is giving a tax break on a tariff that has not yet been introduced.

There was no mention in the Ministers' speeches of Government waste. Given the colossal impact waste has on our budgetary expenditure, that is unacceptable. Aontú is calling for a commission to prevent Government waste and root out the spiralling wastage that is happening. It seems that if you put the word "national" into the name of a project in this State, you can be guaranteed the spending on it will overrun. The national children's hospital, national maternity hospital, national convention centre and national broadband plan are some examples of that. I learned today from the reply to a parliamentary question that the Government is locked into a contract for a Covid-19 testing centre at the Citywest Hotel until 2022, at a cost of €37 million for a building that has hardly been used over the past year and a half.

On the other side of that equation, every man, woman and child in the State now owes €50,000 as part of the national debt. A good chunk of that is because Ireland has been a radical outlier in terms of the restrictions the Government has imposed during the Covid pandemic. Indeed, the State spent twice the European average on Covid-related costs because it imposed longer and harder restrictions than any other country. We spent €40 billion on those outlier restriction policies, a figure that is comparable with the bank bailout. Shockingly, Aontú is the only political party that is challenging the Government in that regard.

The Government has included nothing in the budget to deal with the mica crisis. There is no chunk of money identified for that purpose in the budget. Despite the fact the Minister from Donegal was at the rally on Friday and committed to 100% redress, this omission means nothing is going to be spent on that next year.

Ireland is also an outlier on childcare. We are spending 0.3% of GDP on childcare provision and the measures in the budget will bring us nowhere near the OECD average or the EU recommendations. The sector is on the brink and it must be sorted.

If we were to measure Ireland in terms of the cost of availability of housing, healthcare waiting lists, spatial imbalance etc., this budget does not address the magnitude of those crises.

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