Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I was struck by a reference in a recent report from the ESRI that essentially, and I am interpreting this to a degree, stated that for many people on low and middle incomes the Ireland of 2022 is starting to feel like 2008 again. This is a comment and a reference that will resonate with many people. The difference, however, between 2008 and 2022 is that we have the resources now, if properly targeted, to insulate those who are less well-off and to help those struggling on middle incomes to get by and to make ends meet.

We back and enthusiastically support this motion from Sinn Féin, but our calls for an emergency budget are genuine and sincere as well. They are made in an effort to be constructive, as my colleague and the leader of the Labour Party, Deputy Bacik, said to the Taoiseach during Leaders' Questions earlier. Our first call for a comprehensive set of budgetary measures and action of this nature was not made today, yesterday, last week or even last month. As far back as January, in a detailed motion brought to the floor of this House, we presented a comprehensive set of targeted and costed proposals to help people to make ends meet better during this challenging cost-of-living crisis. That package was valued at €1.5 billion. Some of these proposals, and we have to be fair to the Government, have since been implemented, such as the cut to the excise duty rate on fuel. It would be churlish of me not to acknowledge that.

That package was of course proposed when Putin's illegal invasion of Ukraine was only then the stuff of speculation and intelligence reports. We all know the world has changed incredibly since. Of course, everything comes a distant second place to the incredible suffering of the people of Ukraine and the millions who have been displaced internally and externally. More must be done, however, to insulate better the hundreds of thousands of Irish citizens at the very sharpest end of the cost-of-living crisis. This crisis is real. It is real, it is here and it is impacting now. It is being experienced and being lived now, not in October 2022, but now at the end of June 2022. Without comprehensive action therefore we will not only be facing into a winter of discontent, but it will also be a cruel summer for those on fixed low and middle incomes as they digest the news reported in the recent Kantar bulletin, which got a great deal of media attention in recent days, that basic shopping will cost an additional €450 or so this year. To put this into context, this is more than the gross weekly salary of someone on the national minimum wage and working a full week.

That is the pain people will have to endure this year.

It will also be a cruel summer for those, with seven or eight weeks to go until kids go back to school, who might not qualify for the back to school clothing and footwear allowance, will not get free school books and cannot pull the money together for a short summer break after the very difficult two and a half years that everyone has experienced. It is important to acknowledge that. On the day my colleague, Deputy Bacik, was elected leader of the Labour Party, she called for an emergency budget. That was in April. We have done so time and again to be constructive. The crisis is so severe that the Labour Party is prepared to cut short the Dáil recess, to sit as long as it takes, up until August, if the Government Is prepared to work with us to develop and legislate for a comprehensive set of targeted measures to help those most in need to make ends meet.

The Minister of State will recall, because he was a Deputy at the time, that two budgets in one year were sometimes required when the Fianna Fáil party was last in government. When public finances collapsed and severe cuts to public spending were to be proposed, the House and the then Government did not stick to the one-budget-a-year convention. If there is a national fiscal catastrophe, we can have as many budgets in a year as the Government of the day will decide, but when it is a financial crisis for hundreds of thousands of working families across the country, it is a case of business as usual and they will just have to wait until October to see what can be worked out. That is a tough message to have to sell to people who find themselves having to hand shopping back when they get to the till and realise that they do not have enough money in their purse or wallet to pay for the shopping they put in their basket or trolley. There is no dignity in that for working people who are struggling.

We are not calling on the Government to protect everyone from the impact of inflation. That would be manifestly and objectively impossible. Nobody is asking the Government to do that. There are inputs, which have contributed to the rising cost of living, that are way beyond the control of the State. If the Minister of State is to double down on requests in this House for an emergency budget and to deny the public the opportunity to have those targeted measures in place before the summer recess, I ask that he manage and control his colleagues' utterances in the long run-in to October's budget. This will be the longest run-in to a budget in living memory.

The people of Ireland are finding it hard enough to manage without the prospect of enduring pre-budget kites being floated by Government backbenchers and, indeed, Ministers during the summer as they all try to outbid each other in the pre-budget stakes during the silly season. Every bit of speculation the Government engages in causes more harm and anxiety for hard-pressed householders who are already at the end of their tether. The biggest offender in terms of public utterances and riffing away on what might or might not be in the budget is the Tánaiste. He started the silly season early with his annual call - a ritual call - for tax cuts. As the Minister of State will be aware, tax cuts disproportionately benefit the highest earners. If the Government is serious about targeted measures to help the people who need it most, it must take tax cuts off the table. If the Government is serious about using the resources we have in a targeted way, it should use the additional €500 million it intends to use to make primary education genuinely free, for example. With what is left over from that €500 million, the Government can ensure that GP care is free for more children in an effort to move, inch by inch, towards the ambition of Sláintecare.

In the Government's determination to drag the budget out to October, it is building up enormous expectations around what it will actually deliver with the big-bang approach it is conditioning us to expect. Expectations are being built up and the Government is talking up the performance of the economy. It is a source of great pride for us all that the economy is objectively performing so well. When it is looked at in the round, it is doing very well but one cannot eat GDP figures. We were initially told to expect a deficit of more than €1 billion this year but, as was put on the record earlier, we are likely to have a surplus of approximately €1.6 billion. That is an incredible turnaround and the resources generated through VAT windfalls, perversely on the products that have become the most expensive items these days, such as energy, need to make their way back into the pockets of those who need them most. We could decide on an administrative basis, without requiring an emergency budget, to use some of the money left over from the Covid contingency fund and channel it to core social welfare rate recipients with what could be known as a summer bonus. That would be a targeted way to make an intervention and put money into the pockets of those who need it most. That call we made a number of months ago has essentially been backed up by the ESRI. In our alternative budget last year, the Labour Party also suggested that we help those who work hard and earn less than €50,000 with a carbon credit that might generate approximately €200 for them to help them make ends meet as well.

There are a range of different measures we can take even without an emergency budget if the political will was there on an administrative basis to help people between now and October. We will be watching closely for the Low Pay Commission's report that is, by law, due by the end of the third week of July, to see what it will recommend as an increase to the national minimum wage. If the Government is to remain between the ditches and meet its target in terms of a living wage, not just a rebranding of the national minimum wage to a living wage, it will need to increase the national minimum wage by at least €1 per hour this year. I say "this year" deliberately because if a recommendation is made to increase the minimum wage, it needs to be introduced immediately after the budget, in the middle of October. We cannot wait until 1 January as is normally the case.

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