Dáil debates

Wednesday, 13 October 2021

Financial Resolutions 2021 - Financial Resolution No. 2: General (Resumed)

 

2:00 pm

Photo of Mary Lou McDonaldMary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The budget comes at a time when people are crying out for change. The past two years have been extremely tough for workers, families and businesses. The pandemic has tested us all to our very limits. It has been a time of heartache and hardship and of lost lives and lost livelihoods. It literally stopped our way of life in its tracks. It created a watershed moment when it became painfully apparent just how broken the system is and how exposed and vulnerable we have been left by decades of bad government priorities, bad government choices and a system created by a century of rule by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in power. The shock of Covid-19 laid bare the dangers and consequences for every one of the frailties in housing, healthcare and our social protection systems. A widespread consensus emerged during the crisis that as a country we needed different priorities and we needed to move heaven and earth to ensure that never again were we left in such a vulnerable position.

Now, it is budget time. The question that needs to be answered is whether the Government has listened and responded to the appetite for real change. Budget 2022 could have and should have been a budget for change. It should have been a budget that put workers and families first. It should have responded to the very real problems they face in their daily lives by targeting resources where they are most needed. Budget 2022 should have been a budget to get the basics right and get a grip on the housing crisis. It should have arrested extortionate rents and given working people chance to buy a home they can afford. It should have taken people off waiting lists and into treatment. It should have started building a health service that works for patients and staff. It should have met the cost of living crisis head-on by tackling the massive hike in energy bills and slashing the cost of childcare for parents who are forking out the equivalent of a second mortgage in fees.

This was an opportunity for the Government to show workers and families that it sees them and hears them and will act on the things that really matter to them. Sadly, what the people got.yesterday was a budget with no answers to those big questions in housing, health and the cost of living. Now we know that all three of the emperors have no clothes. This is a do-nothing budget authored by parties that are out of touch and out of ideas. It is authored by a government treading water, and trying to distract people from its failures with the promise of tax cuts. Never has a government spent so much to achieve so very little. It has no answers, it has no urgency and it has no leadership. Energy prices are out of control yet the Government has increased carbon taxes further. Rents are out of control and the Government has done nothing. There are almost 1 million people on hospital waiting lists but there is no real step change. We needed a budget that put workers and families first. We needed a budget to target resources where they are most badly needed. This is what we in Sinn Féin would have done.

This is the sixth budget the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil partnership has introduced and by God does it show. The budget, just like the previous five, will come and go and nothing will really change for ordinary people. This is a budget of big numbers but with very little substance. It is a budget that throws money left, right and centre but does not solve anything. Is é seo an séú cáinaisnéis atá curtha le chéile ag comhpháirtíocht Fhianna Fáil agus Fine Gael agus dar Dia tá sí soiléir. Níor chaith aon rialtas riamh an oiread sin chun a laghad sin a bhaint amach. Cáinaisnéis le líon mór figiúir ach le heaspa substaint atá ann inar caitheadh airgead ar chlé, ar dheis agus ar lár ach ní réitíonn sí rud ar bith do ghnáthdhaoine.

The budget fails to address the big issues that affect people's lives. The Government is clearly in denial of the scale of the challenges that face us. It looks away from people desperately seeking to put an affordable roof over their heads. It looks away from parents weighed down with massive childcare fees. It refuses to hear the voices of those living in agony trying to access vital hospital treatment. It does not hear the voices of families who count on every euro to make it to the end of the week. If the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, really understood the impact on people's lives they would have made far better choices in the budget. The budget cements and continues the policies that brought us the crises in housing and healthcare, that have created the sky-high cost of living and childcare costs, and that maintain a social protection system that skirts below the poverty line, keeping people down instead of lifting them up.

After decades of serving the vested interests and golden circles, this was the Government's chance to finally put workers and families first. Yet again, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party have not heard the call of the people and they have missed the moment. After everything our people have been through in the past year and a half, and after all the reflection, the realisations, the claps on the back and the articulations of the bright future we could have, the Government delivered a budget of more of the same. It is a budget drafted by claustrophobic thinking and jaded policies, destined to take us no further than the shore we have crashed against time and again on their watch. It is a budget that perpetuates the lie that it is impossible to fix what is broken, that tells people a housing crisis, crumbling hospitals and a crushing cost of living are just how it is and how it will always be, and that says that children with scoliosis or MS crying themselves to sleep in pain are just how it is. I reject their cynical stifling politics. I do not accept that things cannot be fixed and made better. I do not believe the people accept this either.

Sinn Féin's budget proposals showed what should be done, what could be done and what would be done if we had a government for change. The problem is the Government makes bad choices because it has the wrong priorities. It governs on behalf of those at the top. It really cannot see beyond developers, wealthy investors and big landlords. With Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, workers and families are always pushed to the back of the queue. It is as simple as that.

The crisis in housing has defined life in Ireland for more than a decade. Rents are sky-high and the average rent in this city is €1,800 per month. People hand over a huge chunk of their wages to landlords and really have no chance of getting a deposit together. Yet the Government included absolutely nothing in the budget to relieve this pressure on renters. There is nothing to cut rents or bring them under control. The Government has, however, managed to extend tax breaks for landlords and institutional investors, the very people who are charging these extortionate rents. What a surprise. So out of touch and blinkered is the Government to the damage it is doing that even members of the billionaire class are calling it out.

I never thought I would find myself quoting Dermot Desmond on the floor of the Dáil, but I can assure the House that I never thought I would be quoting him and agreeing with him. He is completely correct when he says that international investment funds are having a laugh at Ireland’s housing policy, that it is utterly insane in terms of the economy and that it "is a shocking mismanagement of public funds". It is, of course, no laughing matter. It should not take a billionaire to break this news to the Government because the ordinary people of Ireland have been screaming this at it for more than ten years.

Sinn Féin will always show up for renters. We would have cut rents and banned rent increases for three years. To be very clear, we would have shut down these tax breaks and sweetheart arrangements for vulture funds, cuckoo funds and institutional investors. That is what a government worthy of the name in these times would have done but the Government turned a blind eye and took no action. It has left renters to fend for themselves.

This budget reiterates the failures of the plan set out by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, and does nothing to make homes more affordable, nothing to get families off council waiting lists and nothing to make things better for the locked-out generation. It is a rehash of the policy which will see this Government deliver only eight affordable homes this year. It is the same recipe that will ensure the housing crisis will continue and worsen. To hear the Minister laud a zoned-land tax at 3% with a two-year lead-in demonstrates how bereft of ideas and constructive thinking he is.

It does not have to be this way because we can fix housing and we can deliver homes that people can afford to buy and rent, but it will require a fundamental change from the policies dictated by developers and landlords. Sinn Féin would have doubled State investment to deliver 12,000 social homes and 8,000 genuinely affordable homes. This is the kind of action and urgency that is needed to deal with this crisis and to give people hope for the future.

Sinn Féin also made a substantial first allocation to ensure that those whose homes have been affected and devastated by mica and pyrite, who are victims of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael light regulation, get full 100% redress and nothing less than that will do.

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