Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with my colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith. As a country, we are unrecognisable from the young, poor and conservative State we were when the Tricolour was first raised over Dublin Castle in 1922. We are now richer than we have ever been in our history. We are more liberal, open, diverse, welcoming and confident as a society then anyone could have imagined even half a century ago. Ireland, though, is unfinished business. The idea of Ireland is a work in progress.

By standard international measurements, Ireland appears to be doing well. It is the third most competitive country in the world and eighth in the UN development index. We have a sophisticated economy and high levels of third-level education. We are healthier now than ever and we are living longer than our grandparents did.

Labour is a patriotic party. We have always tried to put our country first, even when it might have been easier and more politically opportune or expedient to stand aside. We are proud of many of our country's achievements but a party that cares about our country has a duty to highlight our problems too, and there are many of them. We also have a responsibility to provide solutions, and we do. Put simply, we are nowhere near as well-off as we think we are. For too many citizens, Ireland is falling short and we need an Ireland that works for all.

Today marks the culmination of the longest run-in to a budget in history. This summer, we saw more kites flown by Government than one would find on Bettystown beach in a good July. Some of the once-off shock-and-awe measures unveiled today flatter to deceive. A €4 billion self-proclaimed bonanza is really designed to take the bare look off the meagre budget for 2023. A lot of money spread is being so thinly that some will not even notice, while far too many will still need more by the time this winter is out. The mantra of this budget was supposed to be about targeting; that was the central theme. On the evidence of this budget, the shooting of the Ministers is way off. Take their income tax measures, for example. The reality is that thanks to their income tax measures next year, somebody earning €100,000 will be €831 better off. Contrast that with the situation for somebody who is earning between €25,000 and €35,000. He or she will learn an additional €4 per week or €191 per year. That will cost more than €1 billion. When we consider many of the tax cuts that are proposed, it actually will not even apply to people earning under €40,000 outside of some small adjustments to the USC. Some 1.2 million taxpayers will hardly feel any difference whatsoever.

All that any of today's pre-Christmas measures can promise is a temporary respite. It is a few weeks' break from a permanent cost-of-living crisis felt by far too many citizens; those who are always running to just stand still and the people a two-tier Ireland is leaving behind. Wads of cash are thrown around like snuff at a wake but with little honest reflection from this Government as to why this State must do so much heavy lifting in the first place to keep working people off the breadline.

The naked reality is that when we strip away the €4.1 billion sugar hit between now and New Year's Eve, what we have before us today is a budget package for next year that will, in truth, do little or nothing to transform this country. Once the hangover wears off in January, it will soon dawn on all of us, and certainly on Government, that another mini budget will be required to support households.

There is nothing in budget 2023 to fulfill the modest hopes and dreams of our people who wish for something different. A chance to live securely and perhaps own their own home and not have to worry about the cost of having a family; the hope that their hard work and long hours might be rewarded with better pay; the ambition of an Ireland that works for all.

For far too many, the harsh reality is that Ireland is simply not working. Our market-knows-best housing model is trashed, vital climate targets are being missed, the cost of looking after our youngest is soaring and the scandal of low pay diminishes and destroys us bit by bit every day. Now, we are faced with the dire prospect of almost half of Irish households entering into energy poverty and yet, just like the Conservative Party across the water, we still have not decided to impose a windfall tax levy on the disgusting profits of energy companies. It is a case of wait and see what the European Commission does; always kicking the can down the road.

Every year's budget gives an insight into the Government's priorities and philosophy. What is it made of? What drives it? What keeps its Members awake at night apart, of course, from who will be the next president of the Eurogroup? The tests for this package are clear and straightforward. Will this budget keep people warm in their homes this winter and into next year? Will the Government properly use taxpayers' hard-earned money to stop low-income and middle-income households from going under? Will people be able to make the rent or the mortage? Will the Government put those who are finding it hardest to cope first? Manifestly, it did not; just look at its tax decisions. Critically, will the Government be able to keep the lights on this winter? If it is a case of lights out in Ireland this winter, it will be lights out for this Government too, plain and simple.

This is a crisis like no other. It demands a response like no other that meets the scale and seriousness of the crisis. It is not the 1970s nor is it the 2000s when Fianna Fáil last left the country in tatters. Here is the difference. Thanks to the hard work of the Irish people, Ireland in 2022 is one of the richest countries in the world. That is hard to credit, however, when I see proud, hardworking people handing back food they cannot afford when they get to the top of the queue at the supermarket checkout.

I have seen too much of that already this year and I do not want to see it again. It is these families the Government needs to think about today and we need to address this budget through that prism. Will this budget work for them? Will what the Government has announced today mean they can take their shopping and their human dignity home with them intact, this year and next? The rude health of the national finances means next to nothing if the family finances are about to give way. To borrow a phrase from the great John Hume - you cannot eat good GDP figures.

Impressive Exchequer returns and massive tax revenues alone will not heat our homes. The cash available to Government will, but only if the right and equitable choices are made. This year’s surplus of nearly €4.5 billion and the bulging revenues forecast for next year give us options. These are choices we could only have dreamt of during our painful recovery from the crash and it would be churlish not to recognise that the €4 billion in once-off measures is not significant. It is a significant amount of money and a substantial deployment of resources in anyone’s language. Once-off payments now and a €12 increase in social welfare rates will not help next February and March when the weekly cost of living has risen again by so much, unless the Government knows something we do not and prices are going to go down but that is not what the indications are.

In truth, many of the measures the Government has announced today, whether they are once-off measures or measures for next year, could have been brought forward by weeks, if not months. If anything, the Government's delays and determination to do a big bang announcement for the cameras all in one day has left too many hanging on for too long. This is as uncaring as it is irresponsible. It is revealing to me of a Government more concerned about its own future than the future of hard-pressed families. A summer social welfare bonus could have been paid out in July, as colleagues like Deputy Sherlock and others were calling for. Money off crippling college fees could have been paid in August, easing the anxiety for hard-pressed parents during the summer, without having to wait for an announcement today at the behest of Government. Free school books for primary school kids could have been delivered this year, an achievement that owes more to the campaigning and vision of my colleague, Deputy Ó Ríordáin, than a Minister for Education who is back of the class when it comes to real education reform. That could have been done this year. Why should the less well-off have to wait until next year? It is unconscionable but the choice has been made and this Government will have to live with that choice.

The Government was indifferent in last year’s budget to the real needs of ordinary people for whom a cost-of-living crisis is nothing new. The Members of the Government have all been asleep at the wheel for months and have been providing piecemeal responses. Since this time last year, wage rises have not kept pace with rising costs and real incomes have fallen well back. We have seen real cuts to the value of pensions, and it is a case of families having to earn about €2,000 more before tax than they did just a year ago so they can buy some of the basics they need in their shopping trolleys every week. That is extraordinary.

What is keeping people from their sleep this autumn is the fear of a succession of eye-watering energy bills hitting the mat. The single biggest reason why inflation is soaring high is the record cost of energy. What has been the Government's response over the last year? It has been a confetti-like throwing around of a few bob here and there. There is a €600 energy credit for every household, regardless of family size, wealth, building energy rating, or energy use. The Government has had the guts of a year to come up with a better model but again it is betting the farm on flat payments that still benefit those with multiple properties. At the start of 2021, the average household energy bill was coming in at just under €2,000. It is now around €4,000 and it is still rising this winter by 25% or more. It will probably end up being closer to €5,000 than €4,000 and a €600 credit only covers less than 20% of the rise in energy prices. That is the sum impact of this expensive initiative.

We are constantly told - we trumpet this all the time- that a measure of our sophistication as a society is our sophisticated tax and welfare system. Yet it seems the Government is incapable, or more correctly I would say unwilling, to use that system to target the support to where it is needed the most. That is a political decision, end of story. I get why the Government favours a rinse and repeat of the electricity credit approach. It is popular and it is needed by some but the principle of equity and fairness would demand that the Government claw some of this back from the better off by way, for example, of a tapering off of tax credits for those with incomes of over €100,000. No attempt has been made to do anything like that. Instead, Labour proposed spending much less but on a targeted tax credit for those earning €60,000 or less. That would come in at about €800 between this year and next year and would represent real help for working families that are caught in the middle. Combined with our scaling up of Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland grants, it would have especially helped those caught in the middle, those earning too much for the warmer homes scheme grants but not enough to afford expensive insulation upgrades. It would have guaranteed they could pay the bills, not only this winter but every subsequent winter too. That is what is called targeting and that is good public policy.

The Government’s response to the energy crisis has been slack and inadequate and I am putting that diplomatically. This is not just my opinion, but it is that of the Bruegel institute in its published report last week. We can quibble about GDP or GNI* but regardless of that we are performing poorly in that regard. We have been the worst, most abject and most miserly in the EU bloc when it comes to interventions to support people with their energy crises. At a time of real national need, as families and businesses are driven to the wall, this should be a source of national embarrassment. If energy is the main driver of growing costs for homes and businesses, what has the Government done to control input costs? It has done nothing and the intention is to do little more over the next few months. When what we need is intervention in the market to bring costs down, we get a re-run of the one for everyone in the audience wheeze and no clawback from the better off. When progressive governments across Europe, like in Spain, Portugal, Denmark and many others, are capping the wholesale cost of energy, Ireland stands apart. Under this Government, Ireland really is exceptional, and not in a good way. Why is it always a case of Irish exceptionalism? The capping of prices is the mainstream European response and the direction of travel in most progressive European countries but we are not on the bus. We have heard every excuse as to why Ireland should not go down that road and why Ireland is different. The single most effective way to bring down the inflation that is crippling families and businesses is to control the price. Controlling the price of energy helps control the price of everything else. It is as simple as that.

The energy crisis is turning into a jobs crisis and I know this from my personal experience. Good manufacturing jobs in places like my home town of Drogheda are being lost this month and this week as people get their redundancy notices. This is all because viable companies have been put out of business or are down to short time because they cannot take the rising cost of gas and electricity. These workers, including those in the Premier Periclase factory in Drogheda, are the canaries in the coal mine and so many more jobs are in the firing line. We note the business supports package that was announced and we await the details of same but there is no specific wage support scheme, as proposed by Labour, to halt lay-offs. This is a must. There is no point in keeping the doors open only to make sure that the energy companies are paid. Jobs have to be kept alive and the business package the Government is proposing has to be conditional on no lay-offs, bonuses or dividends to shareholders at a minimum. There has to be a price for that considerable State support and there has to be a value to taxpayers and citizens. We have said to cap energy prices to address input costs and to use the funds we have to support jobs directly. That is what I am hearing back from employers; whatever about support for energy costs we need support to make sure we are not laying people off. We all know businesses need to be supported and we support that principle but this has to be allied with a demand not to cull jobs. We need to learn the lessons of the Covid schemes.

The energy companies must absolutely love Ireland. It is heaven for free market profiteers. We have a regulator that seems to me to be nothing but an enabler for the big energy companies. We have an agency with a consumer mandate that is apparently powerless to act for consumers on crazy, unjustifiable standing charges, even when homes are set to freeze.

Coupled with this, we have a Government that, despite the Labour Party’s call for windfall tax on the hyper-profits of energy firms even before the illegal invasion of Ukraine, still has not managed to put one in place. It still has not managed to do it. They did in Spain several months ago, for example and that is the mark of a progressive government.

Before anyone mentions our reliance on gas from overseas, think about the Corrib field for a minute. The field off the coast of County Mayo gives us over 30% of our gas. Their owners, including Vermilion Energy, which is a Canadian firm, have posted extraordinary pre-tax profits of 1.4 billion in Canadian dollars in 2021. Imagine what profits it will post this year and yet it still will carry on, untouched by the Department of Finance. In contrast, the Labour Party has proposed that we claw back up to €1.2 billion with a 30% extra levy on windfall gains on these outfits. There is a special place in hell for those who profit off the back of war and of human misery. The Government is letting these companies get away scot-free, because there is still no windfall tax.

Energy is a public good, especially now. A number of weeks ago, the Labour Party proposed in a considered way using the same laws that we used in the 1970s during the oil crisis to take the Corrib field under control for the emergency period. We have options but these are options the Government continuously ignores. These are options that appear to be too radical for some, but they are now part of the European mainstream. Why are we always last to learn the lesson? Germany nationalised three oil companies last week to secure its supply and to help to manage costs for consumers. Four short years ago, we never would have envisaged a situation where we, on an overnight basis, privatised private beds in private hospitals to help us fight Covid-19. Today, we need the same sort of fresh thinking to tackle this crisis and to keep people warm in their homes. The Government should take off the ideological blinkers. Let us decide instead to do what works for our people.

These massive profits are particularly hard to take when workers are now having to endure real cuts to pay and to their living standards, with no sign of a let-up next year. There is none. Inflation is now running at three times the rate of wage increases. Those on the lowest incomes are feeling it worst. We know who the hardest hit are but you would not know that from the measures in Budget 2023. Mark my words when I say that this budget will see more citizens slip into a spiral of poverty which, once it traps you, is really hard to get out of its grasp. I am speaking specifically about measures that will be employed next year. Those who are poor today will still be poor this time next year. That is the truth. This budget will not change this, and we will be back here again next spring, mark my words, having the same arguments and having a discussion about emergency interventions to assist those who need the most help. I say this because budget 2023 is inadequate, and it will fail.

A Government that was serious about supporting those who are the most in need would bring rates of weekly payments for pensioners, for carers and for the disabled above the rate of inflation or at least would match it. The figure should be approximately over €20, as we have proposed. It would bring in these proposed increases to rates now, and not next year. Regardless of lump sum payments and various other measures, these payments are needed now. A Government that wanted to assist 165,000 low-paid workers on the minimum wage would not wait until January for a minimum wage increase. Given that the Tánaiste has had the report since July, that could have been implemented today and the USC and PRSI changes could be implemented over the next couple of weeks to make that a reality. The tried and tested way to support those on low and middle incomes is to cut their costs, not taxes. The State has to help control the things that the Government can manage. That is the job of government. It is the central job of government and is especially true this year.

We acknowledge, it would be churlish not to, the steps that have been taken, for example, on fuel allowance. However, the Labour Party would have gone further and faster, making sure that we would in perpetuity include those who are at risk of fuel poverty. We would bring them into the embrace of the fuel allowance net, not on a once-off basis but permanently. We know who they are and we can target them. That is why on energy and fuel we want to bring tens of thousands more at-risk households into both the fuel allowance system and the household benefits package system. When we talk about controlling costs, this is why we in the Labour Party say that we must cap childcare costs at €200 per month-----

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