Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Andrews, Deputy McGuinness and Deputy Kenny dealt with some of the realities of the world people are living in. It is a matter of the services that are not being dealt with. It is a matter of failures over many years, such as CervicalCheck, thalidomide and women dealing with the mesh issue. It is a matter of disability services and mental health services. We are all dealing with the issues of no psychologists, no psychiatrists, no consultants, no special needs assistants, SNAs, no speech and language therapists, SLTs, and no occupational therapists, OTs. The preparatory work has not been done to ensure we have the throughput for training, that the people are in place and that we can deliver the service. We go round and round the garden and we do not get to the place we need to be.

We can talk about glorious figures and all the rest of it. I will not even go through what Sinn Féin or anybody else called for here in relation to an emergency budget. We all realise people are under severe, significant pressure at this time. The Government has said it is not going down the road we would have liked it to go, and it has put all its eggs in the basket of the budget. We need to ensure that budget delivers for people because they are under severe strain. We can talk about inflation rates, but everybody knows this is not about the figure of 9.6%. It is about the cost of putting fuel in your car. It is about the cost of paying your electricity bill. It is about the cost of childcare and housing. These are the original sins we brought to party in this State. These are the problems we did not deal with and everyone has to deal with in society. Until we deal with those issues, we will have a cost-of-living crisis no matter what the international situation. The Government cannot do everything, but it can definitely do more. The pressure is going to be on and it will have deliver in this budget.

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