Dáil debates

Tuesday, 12 October 2021

Financial Resolutions 2021 - Budget Statement 2022

 

4:55 pm

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The senior Ministers who delivered the budget have scuttled off. We did them the courtesy of listening to their diatribe of propaganda to justify their budget, but they could not do us the courtesy of listening to our response. That says everything about this Government because it does not listen. The people will not be fooled by this budget. Despite all the leaked strategy, all the spin and all the interviews where no doubt Government Members are trying to sell this budget, the people will not be fooled.

The truth about this budget is very simple.

It is hopelessly inadequate. It is pathetic for the most part and, at times, it is downright insulting in how it deals with the problems that ordinary working families, vulnerable people, pensioners and students are dealing with out there. The truth about this budget is that the Government has decided to unload the cost of the Covid-19 pandemic on working people rather than ask the very wealthy and the corporations that did very well during the pandemic to pay their contribution to the bill for the pandemic. That is the truth about this budget.

This is obvious when we look at it in the round and even when we consider the Government figures. There is a totally insulting €5 per week for pensioners and social welfare recipients. It is a 2% increase as against inflation which is running at just under 4%. We can add to that the energy price hikes, the carbon tax increases coming down the road and the local property tax increases, all of which fall much more heavily and disproportionately on the less well-off and working families. Through inflation, we are asking ordinary working people to pay the bill for the Covid-19 pandemic so the Government's wealthy and corporate friends can continue to live on the pig's back. That is the truth of this budget.

Housing is the major concern being faced in this country and successive governments have consistently failed the basic task of putting an affordable roof over people's heads. The Government has been trumpeting a figure of €4 billion in Exchequer funding going to housing but when we look at the budget figures, although we can see there is some additional money for capital expenditure on housing, it is nowhere near the €4 billion figure. It is just not in the budget. The additional money put into the housing budget will be more than accounted for by the rising inflation costs in building materials in the construction sector. We will see similarly abysmal delivery figures for social and genuinely affordable housing to those that brought us to the desperate housing crisis we are currently experiencing. All of that is because the Government just does not want to break its addiction to filling the pockets of corporate landlords.

Even after all the talk of a step change in housing policy and the direct delivery of public and affordable housing by the Government, next year there will be 14,000 new HAP tenancies and 13,000 new public and affordable homes, if the latter is even delivered. That is the truth. There is no change and the big money continues to pile into the pockets of corporate landlords. There are 66,000 people to be taken off the housing lists as if the problem has been solved but in reality they are in insecure tenancies paying extortionate rents, with public money pouring into the pockets of corporate landlords. That is the truth of what is going on in housing.

The zoned land levy, which is a nod to the urgent need to deal with the rampant land hoarding and speculation of property investors and big property developers, is an utterly pathetic and meaningless gesture. The vacant site levy, which was a 7% annual charge on sites that should have been used to deliver public and affordable housing, has been replaced with a 3% charge that will not come into force until 2024. The shenanigans that allowed people to get around the vacant site levy in any event made it completely meaningless and ineffective. The same people will be able to do the same with this new levy. In any event, the levy equates to a fraction of the enormous profits these people are making just by sitting on empty properties and vacant land as they watch the value of their assets climb through the roof.

Again, this is not rhetoric. The Central Bank's recent quarterly figures on net household wealth are staggering beyond belief. The accumulation of wealth in the past year in the hands of the richest in our society is simply beyond the comprehension of anybody because those figures are so staggering. We now have national household wealth that jumped €89 billion last year to a record €883 billion. The 5% comprising the richest people in this country, which owns all those land and property banks, are 85,000 people with €331 billion between them. That gives them an average household income of €3.8 million and that figure is rising. There are no wealth taxes on them or capital gains tax on the accumulation of profits from the extortionate rents being charged to people who can barely afford to put a roof over their heads. These wealthy people are not being asked to pay the bill for Covid-19 but the ordinary people who are struggling to pay the rent are being asked to do so, all while the housing crisis is continuing to spiral out of control.

I can provide the simplest of contrasts if those big or macro figures on household wealth boggle the mind. They tend to boggle the mind, which is why they are never debated. People do not look at the shadow budgets taking into account the accumulation of the wealth of rich people and their tax reliefs. They are never discussed on budget day but amount to €17 billion in corporate tax expenditures. We can see them described on Revenue Commissioners documentation as costs to the Exchequer. It is €17 billion in public money going in tax breaks to the big corporations.

If all that is too mind-boggling, I can provide my simple contrast. The special assignee relief programme, SARP, is a tax break only available to those with salaries higher than €75,000 but up to millions of euro. There are 50 people in receipt of SARP earning in excess of €1 million, according to a document that the Minister for Finance helpfully provided to us this morning. They get a tax break of 30% of the income they earn between €75,000 and €1 million, for example. It is not taxed at all. They get reliefs to send their children to private schools and go on trips back to America, Britain or wherever else. I ask people to imagine having a particular relief only for those with the highest of high incomes, including millionaires, but which is not given to ordinary workers. People should consider that figure.

The figure equates to €38.2 million for the highest earners in the ongoing SARP but how much additional funding has been given for mental health this year? It is €36 million. We can think about all the people suffering in the mental health crisis, which worsened exponentially over the past year. They get less than 1,500 of the wealthiest earners in this country. There are tens of thousands of people suffering from a mental health crisis and the Government has provided an additional €38 million this year for those wealthy people. It gave them €42 million last year and it will continue to fund that relief for years to come. Meanwhile, the Government has provided only an additional €36 million for mental health services that are chronically underfunded. Even with this increase, less than 6% of the health budget will be going to treat mental health when the World Health Organization indicates it should be 12%. We would need an additional €1 billion to reach the World Health Organization's recommended levels of health expenditure on mental health. Instead, the Government has given a miserable €36 million while giving more than that to 1,500 of the best-paid executives.

There is another contrast with a similar amount of money. How much did students get in additional grants? We have nearly 250,000 students in this country and they got €35 million extra in the budget.

Nearly 80,000 students are in receipt of SUSI grants, but they get less in extras from this budget than 1,500 of the best-paid executives in the country. That says it all about this Government's priorities, which are to line the pockets of the rich with tax reliefs while working people are asked to pick up the bill for Covid. They will struggle, as students are, to put a roof over their heads or they will sleep on couches. Elderly and vulnerable people will shiver in the cold and make decisions to turn off the heat because they have not got enough money to buy food, but the Government thinks it is okay to give more in public money to millionaire executives in this budget than to those vulnerable people. It is nothing short of shameful.

There are some other issues worth looking at in this budget. I am a nerd and I love going through the Estimates books, where you get the truth of what is actually going on as against all the grand statements, the propaganda and the spin. The Green Party will save the climate, but what has actually happened? There is less money for forestry this year than last year. Our level of afforestation to address the climate crisis is abysmal. We have not hit our forestry targets for decades. They are far short of what was recommended by the Council for Forest Research and Development, COFORD, nearly a decade ago and are absolutely abysmal, but €99 million was allocated for forestry last year and €96 million is being allocated this year, which is an actual fall in investment in afforestation.

Last year, €2.4 billion was allocated for the transport capital budget, sustainable mobility, carbon reduction and public transport; this year it is €900 million. It is a dramatic reduction in capital investment in public transport and climate-related transport. It seems we got the cycle lanes and that is it. That is what we are getting in radical transport measures to address the climate crisis and to increase the capacity of our public transport system in order to take people out of their cars. There is no money for the additional buses we need in the bus fleet to provide more public service routes in this city and in rural areas, in particular. There is no significant increase. In fact, there is a dramatic reduction. There is a similar reduction under the climate action and environment leadership heading; there is a big drop in the amount of money allocated to that.

The people in arts and culture who carried us through the pandemic by making the music we listened to and the films we watched on streaming services, etc., were hammered by the public health measures and restrictions, which they are still affected by. What was the budget for 2021 for current expenditure on arts? It was €65 million. What is the budget for 2022 for the arts? It is €65 million. There is not a cent extra. For all the lip service and rhetoric about how much we care about our arts and entertainment workers and our musicians, there is not a cent extra in the current expenditure budget.

One could go on. On ICUs, for example, you would think that after the Covid pandemic the Government would realise the critical and urgent imperative of getting the intensive care capacity of this country up to at least the European average level. What will happen after this budget? We will still be below half of the intensive care capacity level of the rest of Europe. We have just under six ICU beds per 100,000 of population, whereas the average in Europe is 12, which is twice what we have. Other countries such as Germany have multiples of that. People should understand the implications of that. If we are compelled back into further lockdowns, it will be because our health service, especially our critical care capacity, is not adequate to deal with a public health emergency. Is there an increase to bring capacity up to the sort of levels where we can potentially cope with a public health emergency? No. The details are not clear in this budget as to the situation with our public health teams, but I will remind people that the public health teams we need to cope with these sorts of public health emergencies had one third of the recommended staffing levels before Covid and, from what I can see, there is no sign that those teams will be brought up to the recommended levels. There is some marginal increase in recruitment in some areas, but it is still way short of what is necessary.

The budget boasts of additional money going into the health budget overall but, again, when medical inflation is taken into account it will be more or less wiped away. Demographic changes mean we have an older population and more vulnerable people using the health service. We are so far short of the capacity necessary to clear the waiting lists of nearly 1 million people waiting for procedures, some of whom are waiting two or three years for vital procedures. We are nowhere near clearing those. If you look at what is happening in hospitals this week, as we talk there are 20% and 30% staff deficits in many of the emergency department, ED, units. The overcrowding we had pre-Covid is coming back with a vengeance.

I am sure every Deputy, including the Minister sitting in the Chamber, is hearing the horror stories that are starting to come back again of elderly, vulnerable people sitting in ED units for hours and hours, not being seen because staff are overrun and completely demoralised, and because we have not given the capacity and we have not recruited the staff. Why are we unable to recruit staff? Why are student nurses running out of the country in large numbers after they qualify? Why do more than 70% of them want to leave after they qualify? It is because the Government will not pay them on placement and when they do qualify they cannot afford the rent as it will not control rents. The Government cannot deliver public and affordable housing and there is nothing in this budget to suggest it is serious about doing so.

I was asked by the students' union in University College Dublin, UCD, to speak at the protest that will happen tomorrow outside Dublin City Council's offices, following the shocking comments of Owen Keegan. It is not just about Mr. Keegan. It is about the marketisation of housing even down to the level of student accommodation. We warned, as did many others, when expensive student accommodation was being built by investment firms that no ordinary student could afford it and it would end up as the tenements of the future. That is what will happen. Change of use is now being given for that student accommodation, while thousands of students have nowhere to go. They cannot afford that accommodation, but we will allow change of use to turn it into something else so investors can make profit. No problem. What change of uses will come after that on all these developments that have shot up all over the place, in order to ensure these investors can make their pound of flesh off the back of the housing crisis and a property market that has gone out of all control? It is a feeding frenzy for the rich and for the people who own multiple properties.

We suggested in our alternative budget, among many things, that the inequality in how these issues are treated should be addressed. People are getting their property tax bills through the letter box at the moment. Many of them are quite worried about the increases they are seeing and the increased valuation of their property, which is just the family roof over their heads. The anger is beginning to build on this one. There are very worried people on very low incomes seeing significant increases, in many cases, in the property tax they will be charged. It would be a simple measure not to punish people for the roof that is over their heads, to abolish the property tax on the principal private residence and to levy it instead on people who have multiple properties. By definition, if you have two, three or ten properties, you can manage to pay a property tax. If it is just a family roof over your head, you are reliant on a pension and your energy costs are going through the roof, how the hell are you supposed to pay it? Even for that simple measure, the answer was "No". We costed it in our alternative budget and have done so every year for multiple years.

In this year of all years, we should be thinking about that when we see what is happening in the property sector. That would be a fair measure to claw back some of the extortionate profits that are made by people with multiple properties and who are renting them out at extortionate rents to people who are struggling on basic or low incomes, rather than punishing those on low incomes with additional taxes and charges on the roofs over their heads.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy English, for at least having the courtesy to be here. It is a pity the senior Ministers would not stay to listen to the spokespeople from all the other party groups who listened to them as they delivered their budget speeches.

The simple summary of this budget is that the majority of working people will be worse off at the end of next year after this budget because the Government has done nothing to address the spiralling cost of living and accommodation, and other price hikes that people are suffering. The wealthy will continue to get wealthier. It is the same old same old from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, who look after the people at the top while ordinary people pay the price. People will not be fooled. They will see through this budget for what it is. The increases of €5 and 0.5% are insulting and people know that. The Government will feel the wrath of people, particularly after the pandemic because there is no reward for people. In fact, not only is there no reward, the Government has punished people for their considerable effort, sacrifice and endurance during the course of the pandemic. The Government has now asked the people to pay the bill with a completely unjust budget.

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