Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for the opportunity to respond to budget 2022. My colleague, an Teachta Doherty, summed this up quite well when he said never has so much been spent in the pursuit of so little. The Government budget has failed, by all accounts, across the pressure areas in our society and economy. We were told this budget would deliver for workers and workers' rights. However, two days have passed. I have been looking at and examining it and I cannot see where workers or their rights are represented or their interests furthered by this budget. There is no sign of the much-promised bank holiday, the bonus for front-line workers is also absent, and the delivery of a living wage is mentioned but in the context of being long fingered. Likewise, there is nothing for student nurses in this, though they worked tirelessly. Maybe we will have another round of applause. Maybe we will all stand up and have another round of applause for our student nurses and midwives, because that is all there was for them in this budget.

An increase of €500,000 in current expenditure for the Workplace Relations Commission is a derisory amount. The constant underfunding of the WRC is a political decision which I can only assume is aimed at trying to hamper the work of the main State organisation delivering workplace relations services for workers. The money put against the WRC shows this Government does not give a damn about workers or their rights. Budget 2022 again showed this Government is happy to continue turning a blind eye to employment law and workers' rights being ridden roughshod over. That does not surprise me when we consider that two out of three of the parties in government, when their backs were to the wall, cut the minimum wage. It did not create a single job. All it did was make people on low incomes even poorer, but we know that is the ideology that drives this Government. Workers' rights are not a feature, not an issue and not a part of the Government's budget.

There was some movement on an increased tax deduction which amounted to 30% of the cost of vouched expenses for heat, electricity and broadband for days spent working from home. The inequality in such measures for employment-related expenses between remote workers and those who have to travel to their place of work was mentioned on a number of occasions on the Claire Byrne show on RTÉ yesterday. Pitting workers against other workers like this is really unfair, but it is straight out of the Government's playbook, so I do not know why anyone would be surprised. The solution cannot be the State picking up the tab. It has to be legislating and empowering workers and their trade unions to ensure workers are paid decently by their employers and additional expenses are hammered out in that way.

Small and medium enterprises are another sector which can feel aggrieved. Many of their representative groups in this area have said as much. Another budget has passed without the establishment of a new Irish enterprise agency to assist SMEs trading domestically. This has been called for by SMEs and their stakeholders for many years. Almost 70% of people employed in Ireland are employed in small and medium businesses. Speaking to these businesses, they often feel like they have been left behind and that successive governments prefer to focus on foreign direct investment instead of helping to grow and nurture indigenous industry. There are many opportunities for our SMEs to access and exploit, but to do this they need help, advice and expertise on securing investment, expanding their domestic trading ability and looking at expanding into the European market, especially to capture the market share of any available opportunities created by Brexit. This is where an Irish enterprise agency could step in and help grow jobs and the economy in a sustainable and regionally balanced way, which is another one of the things the Government says it is interested in, but when it comes to fronting up, it does not do it.

Childcare changes do not address affordability for parents or help the future sustainability for childcare providers. It has been relayed that, in advance of the budget measures which were leaked last week, some childcare providers increased their fees the very day before the budget. Parents are paying extortionate fees and having those fees increased once again on the eve of the Government coming out and saying it will freeze them. We all agree crèche fees are too high and the Government's answer is to freeze them at the current rate and lock them in at the high rate. What Sinn Féin has proposed and what we want to see is a new model of publicly accessible and affordable childcare provision, with fees reduced by one third in 2022 and a further third in 2023. In addition, this must go hand in hand with the improvement of pay and conditions for workers in that sector.

The most glaring issue with this budget is the failure to help lift the burden for renters. I am thinking in particular of people in my constituency. If you are renting in Fingal, you are paying an average of €1,800, and yet we see house prices in Swords, according to the Central Statistics Office, CSO, at an average of €350,000. That is way above the national average. There is nothing for renters and no hope of them being able to save a deposit and buy their own homes.

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