Dáil debates

Tuesday, 28 June 2022

Emergency Budget: Motion (Resumed) [Private Members]

 

8:40 pm

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Doherty and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this motion, which we support completely. We urgently need an emergency budget to address a crisis that is absolutely crushing hundreds of thousands of people in this country. Working people, pensioners, students and people on low and middle incomes are being absolutely crucified. The Government is being very dishonest in its responses to the cost-of-living and housing crises. We should always refer to those twin crises because they are both absolutely disastrous in their proportions and in the impact they are having on ordinary people. The Government is being completely dishonest in suggesting that the major reason for this cost-of-living crisis is the war in Ukraine. We all, of course, abhor Putin's invasion of Ukraine. It is a brutal, unjustifiable invasion and is impacting grain exports out of Ukraine and energy prices. However, the idea that the specific characteristics of the cost-of-living and housing crises in this country, which are worse than anywhere else in Europe and were before the war in Ukraine started, are somehow the fault of that war is just dishonest. It is the Government desperately trying to deflect. We had 35 energy price hikes in 2021, before the war started. In 2020, even before the cost-of-living crisis really took off, Ireland had the highest price levels in the EU, 40% higher than the EU average. The ICTU estimated in the document it produced recently on the social wage that utility costs and housing costs in this country are 78% higher than the EU average. We have the highest childcare costs in Europe. We are far worse affected by the housing and rental crisis than anywhere else in Europe because of the failure of the Government to control the cost of accommodation, childcare and so on and to provide them as public services and rights to our citizens and because we have essentially let the market dictate all those things.

There is a connection between neoliberalism, privatisation and the fact that we have more or less the worst cost-of-living and housing crises in Europe. The more you allow the market to dictate, the worse these crises hit you.

Why do we have just about the worst housing crisis in Europe and the biggest hikes in the cost of accommodation and rents? It is because only 9% of the housing stock in this country is social housing. The figure is 25% in Austria and in most of Europe, it is around 20%. When markets dictate rents and house prices go through the roof. Why do we have the highest childcare costs in Europe? It is because almost all of our childcare has been privatised. Why do we have the highest energy costs in Europe when we used to have the lowest? It is because we privatised and deregulated energy. The greedy profiteers control some of the key areas where the cost of living is crushing and crippling people. For the Government to hide behind the war in Ukraine is utterly dishonest.

In my last few minutes of speaking time, I will focus on human suffering that is coming from this and on the lack of urgency on the part of the Government. I will read out this message I received the other day from a young woman. She has now been in emergency accommodation with her young son for three and a half years. Again and again, I ask about her plight. Her message said:

I watched your video from yesterday. It doesn’t seem they are going to do anything. Leo mentioned the budget. Sure that’s not until October. It is awful. I have never hated living somewhere so much as I do living here. It is honestly taking its toll on both of our mental health. There seems to be no way out of this nightmare. So unfair of my son sharing a bunk bed with me in a tiny space. I am actually starting to give up hope.

The woman who, by the way, works as an agency worker looking after vulnerable children for a State agency, contacted me again the next day. This is how she has to live with her son. She said:

I am sick again out of work for the third time since March. The stress of it all is too much, to be honest. My son is off for the summer and he doesn’t want to come home here. He wants to stay with my parents. I don’t blame him but it is now separating us as a family. It is just awful. It feels like a trap with no way out now.

If that does not get across to the Government the urgency of this, I do not know what will. October is no good to her. She has been three and a half years in emergency accommodation and, just recently, was taken off the housing list because her income crept slightly over the income threshold. For five years now, successive Governments have said they would raise the income thresholds. We were promised that the Government would review those income thresholds before the summer recess. That is now gone. As Leo said the other day, it will be October now. That woman and many others are banjaxed. Why does the Government not want to review those limits? It is because it will have to extend the housing assistance payment, HAP, income support to many more people and it does not want to do that, so we will wait until the October budget. That is causing real suffering.

Today, as I am speaking again, a family with two working parents and two children aged nine and 14 years of age were made homeless because their landlord is evicting them for reasons of sale from where they are living. They have nowhere to go. There is no emergency accommodation available for the parents or their children. I have ten or 12 cases of people being evicted into homelessness in my office at the moment. The Government will not stop evictions, control rents or provide emergency accommodation for people. These things cannot wait. Real human beings are suffering grotesquely now from all of these things and something has to be done now.

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