Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

If Sinn Féin were in government, I would like to think we would look at the issues and challenges both in Kerry and around the country: health, housing lists, the cost of living and disability services. What would €100 million have done for more occupational therapists, psychologists and speech and language therapists for the people who have been suffering for years unless they can afford to pay €150 per week for those services?

We would look at how we can improve the situation in the country after the Covid period.

When I was driving to Dublin yesterday morning and heard on the radio that the Taoiseach's plan was for a return to normal, I was worried this would not be a budget of change and the necessary changes would not be introduced. I was concerned, for example, that it would not make provision for a right to retire at 65 years of age. I was worried there would be no ambitious social and affordable housing programme. Both the ESRI and Sinn Féin sought a doubling of investment in social and affordable housing to deliver 20,000 homes. The Government will provide eight affordable homes this year. The specific urgency that is required has not been shown.

There is no plan to tackle the crisis in our healthcare service. At a three-hour meeting on Monday with management at University Hospital Kerry, we discussed the need for capital projects for extra wards, the plans for two of which have lain on a desk in Dublin since the previous meeting we had with management last November. There are problems with the provision of acute beds and with staffing. There is nothing in the budget for student nurses. No wonder there is a staffing crisis and nurses are emigrating. The Government supported our motion to pay student nurses but there is nothing in the budget in that regard. There is no vision for the health service. It is no wonder that people tasked with implementing Sláintecare are leaving their posts. In the budget for 2016, GP care was promised for under-12s. Six years on, we have reached the under-eights.

There is also no vision or plan to deliver Irish unity. As I read the leaks over the past week about what would be in the budget, all my fears were realised. It signals a return to a normal in which there are the same exorbitant childcare costs and an increase, not a decrease, in the cost of living through the introduction of additional carbon taxes, which will be unfairly borne by workers, retired people and their families. The ESRI says this measure will not be ineffective. There will be no climate justice for people in this country. The measures in the budget will penalise people rather than incentivise them. In the past 12 months, the cost of home heating oil has risen by 39%. For an older person who has to pay for private healthcare and an increased property tax, these new costs will simply be unaffordable.

The budget marks a return to the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael normal of giving the banks a break, retaining childcare costs that are the highest in Europe, and overseeing a situation where fees are too high and wages are too low. The zoned land tax will be charged at only 3% and will not kick in for two years. The sixth budget Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have presented is one lacking in ambition. Like the national development plan, it is a tired roll-out of old plans and old ideas. It has been said that the leaders of the three parties in government are like three emperors with no clothes. In fact, they have clothes, but they are old clothes. As in the children's book, The Smartest Giant in Town, these three giants are more comfortable in their old clothes, with old ideas for old problems and an old ideology. The budget does indeed represent a return to normal.

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