Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on budget 2022. To me and many others, this will, in many ways, be summed up as the "fiver budget" of 2022. I would call it the "lousy fiver budget" of 2022. Let us consider the State old age pension. Age Action Ireland has shown that when inflation is taken into account, the real value of the State pension has fallen by more than €10 per week in the past year. That is €542 in a year. To lose that much money is a considerable drop in income. Age Action's pre-budget submission called for a €15 increase to offset the exasperating rise in prices, particularly energy costs. Instead, we have a measly €5 increase. The recommended benchmark for a State pension is supposed to be set at 34% of average earnings. It is currently at 29%. That is a weekly shortfall of €43.84.

Those on social welfare are to receive a similar insult. There was no increase in basic welfare payments in budgets 2020 and 2021. A fiver increase means being left behind for three years running. At the absolute minimum, there should be a €10 increase. At the recommended benchmark of 27.5% of average wages, the basic social welfare payment should be €222 per week. A €5 increase to the €208 weekly rate is still €14 short of the benchmark. The people affected are the 400,000 people who experience fuel poverty. They are people on low incomes, the unemployed, single people who live alone, lone parents, pensioners, Travellers and low-paid workers. It can cost up to 26% of income to heat a caravan. Fuel poverty means a household must spend more than 10% of its income on energy. The measly €5 increase in this budget will easily be eaten up by the price rises and the €7.50 increase in carbon taxes on fuel. I am not opposed to the carbon tax outlined earlier by other speakers on the basis of a polluter pays principle. The manufacturer, and not the customer, is the polluter and should be paying the cost of the crisis in the environment.

There is an overemphasis on individual household consumption, as opposed to the high polluting industries, which will, quite rightly, be seen as unfair and will alienate people from action on climate change. The fuel allowance should also have been increased by €15 and extended by four weeks to cover 32 weeks. It should also have been extended to include all those on welfare and working family payments. We need substantial investment to provide affordable public transport links across the country. We need a properly funded retrofit programme starting in public housing and public buildings.

I will now come to the health service. This morning, on RTÉ radio, I heard about a heartbreaking situation facing a ten-year-old boy, Adam Terry from Cork. He needs surgery for scoliosis. If he had got the necessary treatment four years ago when he was put on the urgent list for the operation, it would have been less complicated. The family still have not received a scheduled date for his treatment from the HSE. He is one of many children facing the scoliosis crisis and waiting lists. That is just one example of the 908,000 people on waiting lists. That figure, just short of 1 million, may be heading towards 1.5 million.

In a recent debate on health in this Chamber, I referred to the pre-budget submission from the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, according to which we have fewer than 1.5 consultants per 1,000 of population. That is the lowest number of specialists in the EU; the average is 2.5 per 1,000. The IMO has stated the number of consultants needs to be doubled to meet present needs and a growing population. In terms of bed capacity, at three acute hospital beds per 1,000 of population, we are significantly below the EU average of five. We have five critical care beds per 100,000 of the population, which is well below the EU average of 12. This budget is not going to deal with those issues.

The IMO also called for an additional 5,000 acute beds in the public system and a doubling of critical care beds to 550. It also sought an urgent review to assess needs in terms of diagnostics, radiology and laboratory requirements. The Government has only applied a sticking plaster. There will be no transformational change without a substantial increase in funding. It does not only apply to bed capacity, staff or stand-alone elective hospitals. We need substantial investment in GP facilities to enable a shift to greater care in community, greater investment in women's health, mental health, e-health, IT infrastructure and to meet the care needs of older people in an aging population. This budget simply does not deliver.

The other key crisis in our society is the inability to provide affordable, good quality housing with security of tenure. The budget will change nothing in that regard. These should be the priorities, not tax cuts that benefit the better-off, as always. This budget has failed to address any of those priorities.

The Disability Federation of Ireland, DFI, has issued a statement to the effect that it is baffled that the Government, in its budget, is not meeting the minimum investment of €350 million in disability services. It goes on to state that the Government has estimated that €350 million to €600 million will be needed from budget 2022 to address unmet needs in the disability services. Today's budget shows that the Government is ignoring its own advice, which is baffling to the DFI.

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