Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State, Deputy Thomas Byrne, was wondering would Sinn Féin give an honest appraisal of the budget. I am certainly willing to do that. This budget, like somebody who has been in a job too long, has managed to look very busy while not getting very much done at all. Post budget, millions are still waking up to crippling rents, which are the highest in the EU. The cost of living is still spiralling, with every weekly shop and bill that comes in the door costing more. People have no chance of a hospital appointment for themselves or an operation for their children, despite being on waiting lists for months and years. In my own constituency, the outpatient waiting list for Naas General Hospital is enormously long, at 11,292.

Carers saw that what the Government gave them was in direct proportion to how much they feel valued by this Government for their 24-7, 365-days-a-year work. That value is nothing, nada, zilch. In contrast, Sinn Féin would raise the annual carer's support grant to €2,000, increase the threshold for the carer's allowance and at long last provide a long-term carer's pension in line with the State pension. All of that will still be a drop in the ocean, given what all our carers do for the people they love. Their work frees up vital services of nursing, physiotherapy, personal care, education, geriatric care, special care, feeding, cleaning, washing, hoisting, picking up and dropping off. I am exhausted just listing all they do and they are doing it relentlessly every single day. My constituency of Kildare North is heaving with these wonderful carers. They are people all too often forgotten but I remember them today, here in their Dáil.

This budget also did diddly-squat for our renters, including our young people, who wonder if they will ever be able to leave home and get a place of their own. I tell them with Sinn Féin's housing plans and with Deputy Ó Broin in charge of housing, they will. Working couples are camped out in parents' boxrooms with their own children. The plan was to get a deposit together and now there is absolutely nothing they can afford since the Government put the cuckoos, the vultures and the idea of property before the basic human need for a home. We in Sinn Féin have a carefully costed plan to change all that for the better because change is not only about money; change is about priorities. We are getting those priorities right by ensuring people will have a chance at an affordable home, can get public healthcare in a public hospital, can get help with their mental health when they need it and can rely on their Government to give them a hand when they need it, because that is the purpose of Governments. There should be no more abandonment of the people, no more saying "You are on your own pal", sink or swim, shape up because the markets demand it, or ship out. It is time for a better, kinder, bigger and more ambitious Government. Sinn Féin will be that Government and I look forward to that day.

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