Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

It is regrettable that not a single Cabinet Minister is present in the Chamber for the debate. Apart from being disrespectful, it is a disgrace that nobody had the time to participate in the debate and to come in here and listen to what those of us on this side of the House have to say about the budget. It is wrong.

The budget has been billed as an effort by the Government to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, which everyone agrees is completely out of control. How accurate is this assessment? If we peel away the bluster, spin and recycled promises and look at the fine print of this document we find these assertions are entirely threadbare. What we have is a budget that is full of smoke and mirrors, which is only tinkering at the edges and making minor changes but no substantive differences. Where is the ambition? Where is the vision? Where are the bold ideas?

As the Social Democrats pointed out ahead of the budget, the cost-of-living crisis is a direct consequence of decades of underinvestment in our public services, and in housing, healthcare, education and childcare in particular. This year, a major spike in the cost of energy poses an enormous danger to those living on the margins who are already struggling to get by. If we truly want to put money back into people's pockets and improve people's quality of life, then we must address in a serious and credible way the chronic deficits that exist in our public services.

In our party’s alternative budget we talked about the concept of universal basic services and the idea that everyone is entitled to a range of public services that are free at the point of use. It is the notion that in progressive societies there is a minimum standard of living below which nobody should fall. This is the social contract. We wanted to see budget 2022 taking concrete steps towards this modest goal. Sadly, it will not move us very far along the path we want to go. The Government just does not seem to get it. It does not grasp the scale of the challenge so it cannot even begin to determine how to rise to it. Even before the recent spike in inflation, Ireland was the second most expensive country in the EU in which to live. The cost of living here is 36% above the EU average; our housing costs are the highest in the EU; the price of goods and services is the second highest in the EU; and our fuel costs are the fourth highest in the EU. Marginal increases in the fuel allowance or pension payments and minor tinkering to tax bands will do nothing to address this imbalance.

The Government was focused on including income tax cuts in this budget. More than €500 million was given over but the regressive nature of the Government's priority is evident in its own estimations of the results. For example, single people on middle incomes earning between €25,000 and €35,000 a year will get the sum total of €2 per week, which is a quarter of what someone earning €100,000 will get. Couples with one income earning between €25,000 and €35,000 a year will also get a fraction of their better-off counterparts. They will get €1 per week if they are earning €25,000 and €9 per week if they are earning €100,000. It is even worse for the self-employed. The Government speaks a lot about encouraging people to set up small businesses and do apprenticeships to set up as self-employed. If self-employed people earn €20,000 or less, they get nothing at all in the budget. If self-employed people earn €25,000 they get approximately €1 per week. Self-employed people do not seem to benefit unless they are earning more than €50,000. The scale of this disparity between low-paid and better-off workers is stark. It is clear where the Government's priorities lie.

The budget fails ordinary workers and families but it particularly fails those on low and fixed incomes and not only when it comes to its regressive tax cuts. The minimum wage will increase by a paltry 30 cent, barely enough to cover inflation, to €10.50 per hour. We have heard a lot of platitudes from the Government about the importance of those front-line workers who worked in sectors such as retail and others throughout the pandemic, putting their own lives and health at risk. Where is the recognition of this selfless work in the budget? An extra 30 cent in the minimum wage? Is that all the Government believes these workers are worth? The living wage was increased by 60 cent to €12.90 at the end of September. This figure represents the bare minimum required to meet people's physical, social and psychological needs and enable a life with any kind of dignity.

Housing costs in Dublin now account for 64.7% of the living wage, net of salary, based on this new rate. One in five workers in Ireland earn less than the living wage. How does this Government expect people to afford a roof over their heads? Rents have doubled in a decade and renters have received no support whatsoever to insulate them from these extortionate price increases. Since 2013, we have listened to a succession of Ministers condescendingly say, "You can’t build houses overnight". During that time, the crisis has become immeasurably worse. It is not that they cannot build houses overnight; they cannot build houses at all. Every single target for the delivery of homes has been missed. Despite a €310 million affordable housing scheme being unveiled in October 2018, no affordable homes were built in either 2019 or 2020. Just eight affordable homes will be built this year. This abject failure to address the housing crisis is causing untold stress, trauma and hardship to tens of thousands of men, women and children all over the country. It is ruining people’s lives and this Government, and the previous Government, are enabling that.

"Liveline" recently heard from a woman in her 50s who was living in a garden shed with no running water. Sandra broke down in tears as she said she felt so ashamed about her appalling living conditions. The interview was distressing to listen to. Sandra did not want to say where she was living as she did not want to get the person who was renting her the shed, with no running water, into any kind of trouble. She sounded grateful to have the shed to live in. It is disgusting that people are being forced to live like this in one of the wealthiest countries in the world in 2021. Sandra and other victims of the housing crisis should not feel shame. This Government, and previous Governments, should feel shame that they have presided over failed policies that have resulted in the infliction of this misery on so many people for such a long time.

I was pleasantly surprised when I read in one of the newspapers that the Minister for Finance was increasing pensions by €13 per week. That was just another sham, however. It was spin from the Minister's Department to try to disguise the completely inadequate increase in the rate of core support. Pensions, and other social welfare supports, are increasing by just €5 per week. This is despite the fact that welfare rates have not been increased in two years. Since January 2019, the consumer price index has increased by 4.3%, meaning the purchasing power of the pension has fallen by €10.40 per week. Age Action Ireland said an extra €5 per week for pensioners is "not a serious gesture". Pensions need to increase by €10 per week just to stand still. Instead of recognition of this fact, we get spin.

We are told the fuel allowance is going up by €5 per week, but just 30% of pensioners are entitled to this and it is paid for just 28 weeks a year. The living alone allowance will also go up by €3, but a minority of pensioners receive this allowance. So pensioners get €13 extra a week. No, they do not, but they had better read the small print before they start spending that money. One in ten pensioners lives below the poverty line and one in nine experiences material deprivation. They will be rightly irate at this attempt to spin the budget as providing them more core support than it actually does.

An additional fiver a week is not going to do much to help others in receipt of core welfare payments either, particularly one-parent families, who are four times as likely to experience income poverty than couple-households and five times as likely to experience material deprivation and consistent poverty.

Those on the disability allowance have also been forgotten. Once again the Government failed to acknowledge the additional cost of living that comes with having a disability and ignored calls for a cost of disability payment. People with disabilities consistently experience the highest poverty rates of any group in Ireland at three times that of the general population, while more than two in five people with disabilities experience deprivation at any one time. On average, EU countries spend 2% of their GDP on social protection expenditure for disability. Ireland’s expenditure is just 0.8%, the second lowest in the EU. The Department of Health's, Disability Capacity Review to 2032: A Review of Social Care Demand and Capacity Requirements to 2032, was published in July 2021 following a long delay. It is an important report, which details the entrenched levels of unmet need across several types of disability services. While the report is not perfect, it serves as a stark reminder of just how far behind people with disabilities have fallen in terms of basic community and residential services. The disability capacity review estimated that a further €550 million to €1 billion investment in disability services is required over the next ten years. I do not see this acknowledged at all in today's budget.

The Social Democrats welcome the overdue moves to support carers. However, while the means test for carers is finally being changed for the first time in 14 years, we regret that nothing has been done to fund a dedicated long-term carers’ pension scheme. Given the contribution made to society by people who spend decades caring, the estimated cost of €3 million for such a pension scheme is paltry by comparison.

It is time for the Government to accept evidence-based benchmarks of what people need to live a decent standard of living. Pensioners and carers and others on fixed incomes should not have to depend on arbitrary decisions from governments when they try to figure out how much they have to live on. These rates should be evidence-based and benchmarked. The living wage and minimum essential standard of living, MESL, research provides a benchmark for what the Government should aiming. In the Social Democrats' alternative budget, we published a suggested pathway that would bring core welfare rates to a level of adequacy over the next five years. Will the Minister commit to such a target or are these just once-off decisions and figures just plucked out of the air? Why does he not set out a clear pathway to get us to adequate incomes for those who are currently vulnerable in terms of survival?

Will the Minister acknowledge that the increases in the qualified child increase, which are paid to families in receipt of social welfare payments as an essential support for children, are wholly inadequate? Of those dependent child increases, the increase is €2 per week for a child under 12. For children aged 12 years living in the poorest families, who are in their teenage years with the same kind of needs as adults, needing the same amount of food as an adult in the main together with the clothes that have the same cost as adult clothes, as well and other expenses, the increase announced earlier is a miserly of €3 per week, which is insulting.

The MESL benchmark research I referred to earlier shows that it is more expensive to maintain children when they are in their teens than when they are younger and there is little or no acknowledgement of that.

For a rich, developed country, Ireland has a terrible record on the alleviation of child poverty. Given the targeted nature of the qualified child payments, this was surely a missed opportunity to make a major difference to the lives of some of our most vulnerable children.

The pledges made in this budget in regard to healthcare sound familiar. Indeed, they are familiar, given they have been made before. The exact same promise to prioritise waiting lists was made last year. Back then, when 800,000 people were on hospital waiting lists, the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly, announced the creation of a fund to tackle these lists. A new €210 million access-to-care fund to buy private care was announced. That figure garnered many headlines, but what happened behind the scenes? Just €97 million of the €210 million allocated for 2021 was spent. Today, more than 900,000 people are on waiting lists, children are being offered dates in 2035 for hospital appointments and we are again told this is actually a priority. The Minister can forgive the people if they do not believe him. Waiting lists will not be truly tackled until the health service is restructured and Sláintecare is implemented in full. Under the Government and the Minister, however, there is, sadly, little chance of that, it seems.

The other big measure in the budget is the extension of free GP care to the under-eights. While this is certainly welcome, it is long overdue. In 2019, Fine Gael prioritised free GP care for under-tens by the end of 2021 and for under-12s in the following year. Do the Government and Fine Gael recall that promise? Did it mean anything at all? That target was abandoned, of course, and free GP care for those aged under eight was supposed to be rolled out in September 2020, but that month it was announced this promise was being shelved indefinitely as discussions with the Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, had not even started. Can we now assume free GP care for children under the age of eight will actually be introduced in the coming new year or will it be later in 2022?

The extension of the PRSI dental scheme will do nothing to address the crisis in the medical card scheme, from which dentists are withdrawing at an alarming rate. In 2020, one quarter of dentists withdrew from the scheme. That scheme will pay for just two fillings a year, no matter what the patient’s needs are - that is just incredible - but the patient can have as many extractions as he or she likes. This is a grotesque but apt metaphor for the manner in which our health service is managed generally. There is no long-term care or evidence-based planning but an overarching strategy for the provision of services that is archaic, arbitrary and extremely damaging long term.

We learned last month that €10 million allocated for pandemic-related mental health supports in February had not been spent. It is extraordinary that when faced with a crisis in mental health services, the HSE could not figure out how to spend €10 million over the course of most of the year. Attendances at emergency departments for mental health issues jumped by 58% over the second half of 2020 compared with the same period the previous year, according to Children’s Health Ireland, yet the HSE could not spend its €10 million budget. Did it even try? It is extraordinary, given the level of unmet need that exists. Spending on mental health constitutes just 5.1% of the health budget, while the World Health Organization recommends 12%. In the UK, mental health spending accounts for 13% of the total health budget. Our low level of spend in this critical area is the reason 2,000 children and young people are waiting to be seen by child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, and 10,000 people are waiting for primary care psychological treatment, the majority of whom are children.

The number of admissions for children and adolescents with eating disorders has also escalated, with a 66% increase in the first three months of this year. Meanwhile, there are just three specialist adult inpatient public beds for those with eating disorders in the entire country. That is an indictment of the manner in which we treat mental health issues in this country. There have been many plans to improve mental health services - Planning for the Future in 1984, A Vision for Change in 2006 and Sharing the Vision in 2020 – but not adequate implementation. We must move from plans to action if we want to see improved services for mental health.

We know our health service can react with speed and efficiency when it has to, as we saw during the pandemic. The pandemic highlighted how quickly resources, energy and funding can be mobilised when necessary. It is time to devote those same resources, energy and funding to fully implementing the Sláintecare plan. The Social Democrats call on the Government to lay out a ten-year funding programme for Sláintecare and to include this cost in the pre-committed element of the annual budget process, as happens with the national development plan and public pay agreements. Only then will we believe the Government is genuinely committed to reforming our public health service.

Small and medium businesses, especially in our hospitality and events sectors, have suffered extensively as a result of pandemic-related restrictions. Those sectors, which have been particularly affected by the pandemic, will continue to need support in the short term. About 320,000 jobs in approximately 27,000 companies are still being supported via the employment wage subsidy scheme. We must try to save those businesses and jobs that remain viable and we welcome targeted supports for those sectors worst impacted by the pandemic.

Transport is another area where, like in the case of pensions, the Government’s spin is more impressive than its policies. Discounted travel on public transport for those aged up to 24 has been billed in the media as a measure designed to get people back on public transport. Was that ever a problem? The central problem with public transport is capacity. There is simply not enough of it to cater for the existing demand, not to mention that of the future. The Government, instead of tackling this underlying structural issue, has failed to commit to constructing the vital public transport capital projects that are required to truly expand services, that is, projects such as MetroLink and DART+. Reduced rates for young people are welcome, but public transport should be made more affordable for everyone, and more accessible. This can be done only by sustained capital investment in projects, some of which have been promised for more than two decades and to which the Government failed to commit in its national development plan wish list published last week.

There are some positives in this budget in respect of how families will benefit from it. The investment in childcare provision is essential, particularly if we are to stem the tide of staff leaving the sector. Ensuring staff in the childcare sector have decent wages, benefits and job security that reflect their qualifications and the considerable social importance of their work is critical to its sustainability. Investment of €100 million in this area is a progressive move but we need clarity on the long-term strategy. Moving away from the current model, with its focus on privately provided care, and towards a system of public provision must be the overarching policy. While today's commitment is welcome, as is the suggestion that next year the investment is to be €200 million, although that was not stated today by the Minister, we would like to see that pathway to funding childcare fully, but it has to be in the context of moving to a public model for childcare. The State has let parents pick up the bill for childcare for decades. Other countries do it very differently. They understand that every €1 invested in early childhood education saves the state between €9 and €17 in the long term. That lesson has yet to be learned in this country.

Equally important is the element of parental leave. We have consistently called for a new deal for families and for the Government to meet its target of providing paid leave to parents for the first year of a child’s life.

This budget has increased paid parental leave by two weeks. The additional two weeks of parental leave means that for every child born in Ireland parents get a total of 35 weeks paid leave when all types of leave are accounted for. We are still only two thirds of the way to meeting the target that was set out in the First 5 policy document and which was reiterated in the programme for Government. In the Social Democrats' alternative budget, we called for an additional five weeks of paid parental leave. If we keep going at the rate this Government is proposing, it will be the end of this decade before Ireland is in line with our European peers on this. Budget 2022 also contains no mention of moving us to the European average of two years total leave per child, combining paid and unpaid.

With regard to education, the budget commits to reducing the pupil teacher ratio and providing additional SNAs. That is welcome. However, there is little or no mention of the cost of education for parents. Part and parcel of that is the need to increase the capitation grant for the cost of running schools in order to remove what is called the voluntary contribution. It is not acceptable at this stage of the country's development that sending children to school imposes such a massive financial burden on parents.

The Social Democrats have supported the principle of a carbon tax, as long as it is designed to truly incentivise behavioural change and that people have genuine options which allow them to make those behavioural changes. We believe the full revenue from carbon tax, not just the additional revenue from tax increases, should be ring-fenced to fund just transition measures, such as retrofitting homes. Most importantly, there must be significant financial mitigation for those on the lowest incomes. It is regrettable that there was no recognition of this in today's budget in respect of low-income families. Why was the fuel allowance not extended to families in receipt of the working family payment? There are no mitigation measures that I can see in the budget relating to that category of low-income families. Just €48.9 million of a budget of €221.5 million has been spent to date on retrofitting. Allocating funding is apparently easy, but the Government has difficulty in getting the money to those who desperately need to retrofit their homes. What must be done in this regard, in addition to retrofitting council houses, is a complete restructuring of the grant scheme. The problem is that many people on low and medium incomes simply cannot afford the upfront money that is required to draw down the grants for retrofitting their homes. The Social Democrats have set a very clear plan for doing that. It is regrettable that the Government has not gone with it.

This is a budget which set out to please everyone and will instead please nobody. It is short-sighted, lacks ambition, rehashes failed promises and presents them as original and fails to prioritise investment in our public services. The Government does not invest in public services. Instead, it seems to favour regressive tax measures. Overall, the budget will do little to address inequality in Irish society and certainly will not address the increased cost of living for so many families.

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