Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is welcome to work within a budgetary structure in which we have a measured opportunity to reflect on income tax, the current economic position, the challenges the country faces and the necessary and appropriate budgetary responses. I always welcome the process of the summer economic statements and the autumn statements because it shows a State that is thinking, planning and reflecting on the challenges it faces and the information that is coming to it in an open and transparent way. Looking back over the last ten years, it can be seen how the budgetary process has evolved. While it is very dull and a bit of an anorak subject, this process has developed into one of the responsible, mature and evolved political institutions that are a hallmark of a developed, democratic and mature state. It sets out the reality of the need to protect the centre and where our income tax is coming from and the conditions associated with that.

There is a lot of discussion in this House of a failed state. There is a narrative that Ireland has failed in many different ways. There are glib attacks on those in the middle ground who create enterprise and take risks and on those who work and pay tax and who do not receive any State supports. There is a constant contempt for enterprise and, it seems, for those who work in it despite how dependent we are on enterprise for job creation. Over recent years, more than 700,000 jobs have been created by enterprise. They were not created by Government. Government creates the conditions for jobs to be created and only that. It can just as easily undo that and take away the conditions in which jobs and enterprises are created.

We have to ask a basic question because I never hear the answer from the Opposition benches. Do Opposition Deputies want to create and protect jobs - yes or no? Are they interested in creating, protecting and maintaining jobs - yes or no? Is that something they are interested in, because I never hear that?

Deputy Patricia Ryan was correct to mention agriculture and small enterprise. They are a part of what we are talking about when we talk about jobs. On income tax cuts, I was challenged by Deputy Mac Lochlainn who suggested they were tax cuts for the rich. They were tax cuts for middle-income earners, which the Deputy voted against. Are those in the Opposition interested in creating and maintaining jobs? I remember when the unemployment rate was at 15% and 16%. I remember, as I am sure Deputies across the House do, the social impact on families of job losses and the effects of emigration. There is no mention in this populist narrative of how emigration has been reversed and how enterprises have been able to create jobs. Again, while Government creates the conditions, it is enterprises that create the jobs.

In that same time, we have increased the minimum wage, begun moving to a living wage and substantially increased the supports available to employees of all different organisations. I refer to sick pay, the retention of tips and different types of leave for different social situations, including miscarriage. These are all important and all welcome but none of them matter if you do not have a job against which to bench them.

These are meaningless words at a time of full employment but we have seen how volatile the economy can be and how volatile geopolitics has been. The key watchword in the summer economic statement is "uncertainty". The near-term fiscal outlook is highly uncertain; of course it is when we consider what has happened in the last five years, never mind the last two. On the upside, we have been surprised by certain tax revenues but we have full notice that corporate tax, in particular, is uncertain and that we cannot build an economy or society upon it. We have to take the steps we can to preserve and protect that rather than steps to tax it and make the returns worse.

Those who work in the private sector should lean in and listen beyond the rhetoric. They should ask what are political parties saying about their jobs and their pay. Sinn Féin, for example, proposes four separate tax measures related to jobs worth nearly €1 billion. This includes a change to employers' PRSI. That is a tax on jobs. What does it even mean? It means fewer jobs, less risk-taking by employers and it being more expensive to create a job with the pot of revenue employers have available to pay incomes. It does not mean any sort of increase.

Do we want to pay a salary and keep people out of poverty - yes or no? Are we happy to take steps on tax to keep people out of social welfare bands? You cannot say, as some Deputies do, that people must be kept out of poverty while also voting against and complaining about tax cuts that attempt to do exactly that for workers. Some Deputies claim to represent workers but they do not represent workers who pay tax and to whom we want to give indexation so that they pay less tax and have a better opportunity to stay out of poverty. These might be policy inconsistencies but they mean real things for real people. Despite this, we only ever hear rhetoric and glib attacks on enterprise and tax cuts. However, these measures are targeted at keeping people in well-paid jobs, genuinely improving the conditions for people in jobs and making sure they take home as much of their pay, which they need more than ever because of the increase in the cost of living, as possible. That is really important.

My priority and that of Fine Gael in preparing for budget 2023 is maintaining conditions in a highly volatile and uncertain world so that we can retain employment and continue to attract employment because we know what an important social and economic measure that is.

It is about making work pay and making sure people, particularly those on middle incomes who are so caught and pressed due to not receiving State supports, are offered the chance to take home more of their pay. Those are the things that are most important to my party, and to me, and I look forward to the budget that delivers on them.

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