Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This afternoon, the Government is asking us to vote confidence in it. We in Labour cannot do that. We have never had confidence in the Government to address the housing disaster, the childcare crisis, the spiralling cost of living or the climate catastrophe. In 2020, we did not support the election of the Taoiseach and we now believe in the need for a change of Government. We believe the project of Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party has been unsuccessful. Despite their stated aims, they are simply not delivering the desired and necessary outcomes or results.

Fianna Fáil has long professed itself the party of home ownership and of house building. Yet, since the Government took office, the housing crisis has deteriorated, rents have increased by 15%, house prices by 22% and homelessness by 19%, with more than 3,000 children and 1,300 families now homeless. That is without mentioning those who have homes but fear they will collapse due to mica, pyrite or construction defects. As the Fianna Fáil Minister for Health grapples with the two-tier health system his party ushered in alongside the Progressive Democrats, the promise of Sláintecare remains distant and, indeed, waiting lists remain unforgivably long for many basic services for many adults and children.

Fine Gael finds itself similarly unequipped to deal with the challenges of its own portfolios. In the midst of an enormous cost-of-living crisis, the best the party can promise is a five-year wait for a living wage. After the trauma of the pandemic, it has produced a sick pay scheme that will cost lower-income workers money, and so-called flexible working legislation that empowers employers to say “No” - a right to refuse, not a right to remote work.

The Green Party, a party that shares many policies and aspirations of my own, has managed to pass some climate legislation, which we have supported, but it appears it is incapable of pushing its Government colleagues to meet those legally-binding targets. We, therefore, see a stand-off on agriculture emissions and on peat and, all the while, the countdown to climate catastrophe keeps ticking.

On childcare, the Government is bound to examine the introduction of a universal public scheme by the First 5 funding model, which is welcome, but that does not appear to be on the horizon, despite ongoing poverty wages for those working in the sector and exorbitant costs for parents. Inequality in Ireland starts the day a baby is born and that should not be how it is in a republic.

This country deserves a Government with the imagination to do better; a Government that can be relied on to act in the common good for all its people, that will build affordable homes on public land, lead the charge on climate justice and a just transition, and bring about a new Donogh O’Malley moment to ensure universal public childcare and early years education for our youngest citizens and people; a Government that will ensure that nobody languishes on waiting lists for CAMHS, medical intervention, special classes or autism assessments; and a Government that treats care work with the respect it deserves and that will work for the unity of the island in the spirit of John and Pat Hume. Unfortunately, I remain unconvinced that the Government can deliver on any of that.

We acknowledge the many challenges that the Government has and that we all have - the brutal war in Ukraine, the ongoing effects of the Covid pandemic and, of course, the spiralling cost of living. As inflation has skyrocketed, we know that individuals and families are struggling to put food in their mouths and roofs over their heads, but we also know that there are solutions to these complex problems and there is a way to address these challenges. We believe in a Labour vision, a constructive and alternative vision for change based on a centre-left, social democratic philosophy and set of principles, based on the introduction of key measures, such as genuinely free education, genuinely free childcare and early years education, windfall profit taxes on energy companies, immediate increases in the minimum wage and social welfare rates, a rent freeze and new measures to drastically reduce rents, and ensuring the building of more homes as a matter of urgency.

We offer that alternative vision and we also offer a vision on climate justice and on just transition. Something that is notably absent from the no-confidence motion tabled by Sinn Féin is a mention of climate, and it is a strange omission. As climate spokesperson, I have certainly given the Green Party its due for the measures it has sought to introduce in government but we know its coalition partners are simply not willing to do what is necessary to ensure we address the real, existential climate crisis in climate and in biodiversity.

See this speech in context