Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to be responding for the first time in this House to a budget. I wish to follow the lead of Deputy Nash by approaching the budget in a constructively critical manner and welcoming what is positive in it while noting, however, that much of the positive change is so piecemeal that, although the budget has been largely and widely leaked in advance of its publication, with a drip-feed of selective positive piecemeal news, the reality is that it has failed to deliver. It has raised expectations without delivering any real change. The tax cuts announced today could have been invested in real and radical change in public services.

What we have seen instead is a lack of a grand vision, some tinkering around the edges and a failure to address the real structural needs of people.

There has been some good news in the budget for sure, for those who are perhaps cider drinkers or digital gamers. That is welcome. However, there is not so much good news for renters, or indeed, parents seeking to access increasingly unaffordable and scarce childcare places. This Government lacks a grand vision. What this budget lacks, and what Labour has proposed, is a new deal for a fairer and more equal Ireland and a new deal on care, climate, housing and work.

This budget lacks a progressive pathway for delivering real change on these issues. On care and climate, the two issues on which I want to focus, as Deputy Nash stated, there is a lack of transformative vision. This is all the more a shame, given that we have come through Covid and we have seen what solidarity and a collective sense of purpose can deliver. We have seen the loss of so many thousands of lives to Covid and the devastation it has caused to so many, in terms of lives and health and also livelihoods. Through this time, we have learned the real value of public services and the need to ensure good, decent and adequate investment in our healthcare, education and childcare systems. That is what we mean when we talk about a new deal for a fairer Ireland. We are talking about the sort of moment we saw in Britain coming out of the Second World War, with the creation of the National Health Service. We are talking about the sort of transformative vision that was expressed by Dr. Kathleen Lynn in this country, when she talked about a new vision for children's healthcare, and that was exemplified by the former Minister for Education, Donogh O'Malley, when he announced free secondary education for all children 55 years ago, stating: "We will be judged by future generations on what we did for the children of our time." That is the sort of transformational vision that could have been delivered in this budget, but the Government has failed abjectly to do so.

On care, we need to see a commitment to change to tackle the piecemeal, laissez-fairesystem that has emerged out of the failures by successive Governments to introduce a system of universal public childcare and a high-quality system of community- and home-based supports for older persons. We need a new fair deal, which I have been calling for, to move us away from the prioritisation of nursing home and institutional care and to instead reconfigure the system of subsidy to ensure that older people are given access to supports in their own homes to enable them to stay there instead of having to move into institutional care. This budget fails to introduce a system that delivers for those with disabilities, those experiencing chronic disease and those who need supports. It fails to introduce a new green deal - a radical vision on how we get to a point where we achieve our carbon emission reduction targets.

I have called for a transformational moment in respect of childcare, which we are not seeing in this budget. Although it was well flagged that there would be much in it for parents, what we see instead is a disappointing failure to meet those expectations. A sum of €78 million is proposed in additional investment in core funding and to reform the national childcare scheme, which is below the €100 million that was flagged in advance. We have seen, in the words of the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, a promise of a turning point, but we have seen promises of turning points each year for childcare, without any tangible effect for those involved. We see some fine words in this budget, but no sign of any reduction in costs for parents who are now paying effectively a second mortgage in fees to crèches, with fees for children aged under five running at approximately €1,000 a month in my constituency in Dublin Bay South and throughout Dublin. There is also a lack of places. Therefore, it is not just affordability that is the issue; it is also a scarcity of places. I am hearing from providers in my constituency about the difficulties they have in keeping childcare services going. We are also hearing from those professionals and early years educators about low pay. Serious concerns have been raised about low pay in the sector. SIPTU's Big Start campaign and the New Deal for Early Years coalition are telling us that 42% of professionals are actively seeking work outside the sector now, with 78% saying that if conditions remain the same, they intend to leave within the next year. Low pay is the biggest factor driving people out of this profession. We are hearing from managers and providers who cannot recruit new staff and, therefore, cannot keep childcare services open.

We are failing everyone. Our childcare system - or lack of one - is failing parents, professionals, providers, and most important, our children, who do not have access to quality early years education as a matter of right. That is why we need that Donogh O'Malley moment. We must ensure that children under school age who require deserve it, should be entitled to a free early years place in this modern Ireland. That is what we in the Labour Party have called for. I was proud to launch, with Labour Women, our call for a universal public childcare model, which we would have commenced in this budget, starting with a €60 million pilot. We would adopt a new approach defined by equality for children, affordability for parents and fairness for professionals. We put forward a clear and costed proposal of how this would be rolled out. It is built around the vision of a universal public childcare scheme. That is what is lacking in this budget. We do not see any commitment to a pathway to a future where there will be a universal public scheme. We do not see that absolute commitment to equal early years education provision for children in this budget. We welcome the changes proposed to the national childcare scheme. Indeed, my colleague, Senator Marie Sherlock, has led on that, but we do not see where it fits into the overall structural reform that is needed to fix a system that is failing everyone and is currently reliant on piecemeal private sector provision. Some questions remain. Why is it proposed to extend the scheme to under the age of 15 and how is that to be done? Why are we seeing such delay on the implementation of decent wages for childcare workers?

There is failure to meet expectations in the care and disability sector as well. As outlined in the recent disability capacity review, an investment of €350 million is needed in 2022 just to meet demographic and unmet demand. The additional funding of €105 million announced today is welcome but it is not enough to meet the serious needs of those with disabilities. The Disability Federation of Ireland has pointed out how increases in carer's allowance and the income disregard will not meet the needs of carers and will not help those carers who are not in employment. During the pandemic, we have seen how carers and front-line workers are unsung heroes who need supports. Not enough is provided in this budget.

I welcome commitment in the budget to provide additional SNAs, but I know, from my constituency, just how short we are in terms of the allocation of places for SNAs in schools.

Finally, on the catch-up for children fund that Deputy Ó Ríordáin and I have proposed, I do not see a commitment in this budget to ensuring that there is adequate resourcing put in place, particularly for those children who have additional needs and most need resources for catching up.

On climate action, the budget lacks a sign of commitment to delivering a radical vision on climate. Climate should be front and centre. This should be a green new deal budget. That is what we had all expected, but again, the delivery in this budget fails to meet the expectations that have been raised. The UN Secretary General described the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that was published in August as a "code red for humanity". Indeed, the Minister for Finance himself said that the world is burning. However, there is no sense of that urgency, the need for immediate action or the grand vision to take that action when we look at the small print of this budget on climate.

We know that the political will is there. We see it in the school strikes for climate outside the gates of Leinster House every week. We see it the citizens' assembly on climate change, 100% of the attendees of which recommended that the State should take a leadership role and address climate change. It must be at the centre of policymaking in Ireland for all Departments. However, we do not see that in this budget.

We needed to see plans for a more ambitious retrofitting programme and a commitment to a national recruitment campaign to ensure that we have adequate numbers of workers to deliver that programme. We also need to see more on just transition. We must ensure that income will be adequately redistributed for those who are going to be most hit by carbon tax increases. Labour called for a new carbon tax credit to be introduced to be refundable and allocated on a household basis and available up to a particular income limit and those living in homes of a BER rating of less than B2. We also called for increases in the weekly fuel allowance, and the announcement of such increases in the budget is welcome.

We would have gone further and restored the extra four weeks that were paid in 2020. We wanted to see more expansion of eligibility for more households. Again, we did not see this in the budget.

On transport, we called for a more ambitious programme and for free public transport for children and for all students instead of the half-hearted change we have seen. Certainly it is welcome to see reduced prices for those aged under 23. There is a question about how this can be rolled out logistically. We have a lack of public transport in many areas outside the major urban centres. It would appear that what we are seeing with the Government proposal on public transport is that it is encouraging people to use unaffordable, or sometimes unavailable, public transport before it can be made free to incentivise them to do so. We might call this putting the cart before the horse, or putting the Leap card before the bus or train where Leap cards do not extend or where there is no public transport available.

The budget is short on completion dates for flagship public transport projects. There has been serious concern in Dublin about when the MetroLink will be rolled out. We should have seen front-loaded investment in active travel and city bike schemes. For years, I have been calling for the introduction of a bike to school scheme modelled on the bike to work scheme that would encourage more schoolchildren to purchase bikes for their commute to school and to move away from an over-reliance on private cars for that crucial school journey. The Labour Party delivered on the Dublin bikes scheme. We have seen strong public infrastructural schemes for cycling along the Grand Canal and in other areas in Dublin but too many infrastructure schemes are piecemeal. What we are lacking in the budget is a sense of a grand vision for a move away from reliance on private transport and a move to active travel and public transport measures. We need to ensure the infrastructure is there to enable people to make this move. Some of the changes proposed are simply inadequate. A measure refers to extending the €5,000 scheme for electric cars. Again, it is not enough to enable and support people to make the change and move to electric cars. We see a lack of provision for electric car charging points. This is a serious issue for people who actively want and desire to make a change away from fossil fuel reliance in their everyday lives.

Overall, what we have seen in the budget is too much that is piecemeal. There is too much based on short-term thinking, of which we in the Labour Party have been critical. There is too little in terms of a commitment to the structural changes that are sorely needed in many areas, particularly in the crucial areas of childcare, care for older persons and care for those with disabilities. We have also seen tokenistic and piecemeal change put forward in the budget in many other areas, including climate, education and health, as Deputy Nash said. We are calling for a grander vision and a new fair deal for a fairer Ireland and a new fair deal for a more equal Ireland, in which the funding invested in tax relief is put instead into the delivery of high-quality public services. The budget we needed for 2022 was a budget that delivered real change for people throughout Ireland. This is not what we are seeing in this inadequate, flawed and underambitious budget.

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