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

This morning, the Tánaiste said that most people in this country will be better off after yesterday's budget and the Taoiseach has more or less reiterated that myth. It is critical to puncture that myth and get across the truth about what happened in yesterday's budget. Using even the most elementary arithmetic, looking at the details of budget will show that is not true. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, pointed out that inflation is running at 3.7%. The Tánaiste actually got the figure wrong this morning and said it was less than 3%, but at least the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, knows what the rate of inflation is. Added to that are the carbon tax increases and the energy price hikes.

I want to zone in on one particular group and I want to use examples from the Government's own budget documentation to show how it disgracefully let down renters in this country. Its claim that little adjustments to USC compensate for that is simply not true. I will use some of the examples because I actually bothered to read the Government's budget books. The booklet entitled, Tax Policy Changes, gives example 3 of Mairéad, who is single and works in the hospitality sector earning €30,000 a year. Given that Mairéad works in hospitality and is single, it is very likely she is a renter. The booklet also gives the example of Roan, who is self-employed earning €40,000 a year, and Nicole with one child. Very likely they are renters. How much of a break on the tax they pay has the Government given them? Mairéad got the grand total of 0.5% more. Roan and Nicole got 0.5%. They along with the majority of people in this country are earning average industrial wages or median wages but the inflation rate is 3.7%. The rise in the cost of living will wipe out by about five or six times what the Government has given to Mairéad, and Roan and Nicole.

However, the situation for rent is even worse. Average rents in Dublin now are in fact higher than Deputy McDonald pointed out. The August Daft report pointed out that average rents in Dublin are €2,200 in south County Dublin and just marginally under €2,000 in Dublin city. In the three months of the second quarter of this year, they increased by 5.7%, on top of 4.4% last year. Of course, many people in rented accommodation also have poor-quality, badly insulated homes and they have no control over energy price hikes. Is it not the actually the truth that the Government has done nothing for Mairéad or for Roan, Nicole and their child? The vast majority of renters are seeing rents go through the roof and become completely unaffordable along with other costs they must bear like energy costs, carbon tax increases and so on. Is it not the truth that the Government has badly let them down?

See this speech in context