Duncan Smith (Dublin Fingal, Labour) | Oireachtas source

At 1 p.m. today, just as the Minister for Finance rose to begin the delivery of his budget speech, an email was sent by a head manager in the Mediahuis group to all staff indicating that the Fingal Independentwould cease trading from the end of October, which is a devastating blow for local media in north County Dublin. Unfortunately, the 0% VAT rate for newspapers announced in the budget has come too late for this particular publication. It made me think of the other eye-catching, well-intentioned and costed proposals in this budget that will also come too little and too late for those who need them.

Considering what we have all been through over the last number of years and the crises we have all faced in health, the permanent cost-of-living crisis and the never-ending housing emergency, people are in desperate need of some hope. Yet, the overwhelming feeling that I and my colleagues in the Labour Party get is one of helplessness and despondency. There is a feeling that while some measures announced in the budget may help people tread water for a very short period of time, ultimately, not one single or combined measure announced today is going to change the system or make a fundamental change in people's lives so that they can live more secure, safer and better lives. No measure is going to get a grip on the spiralling cost-of-living crisis, or prevent people from being evicted from their homes. That is where the hardest edge of this housing crisis is right now. None of the housing measures announced today actually spoke to that. They spoke to where the hardest edge of the crisis was perhaps a year or two ago. It is another example of how this Government is out of touch with where the real crises of this country are and what is needed to solve them.

We will be back at square one come late winter or early spring. Politics is always about choices. This budget is like a game of chess: every single move matters. It seems that this Government, with its eye-catching measures, has pushed all of its pawns to the centre of the board, hoping to dazzle people into thinking it is a powerful force that is going to resolve all their crises. However, the Government has not moved the more important pieces, which means that it is not going to win the game. It is not going to create the change that is needed. Ultimately, it is going to cheat the Irish public out of the solutions that are required to solve the many crises they are facing. By trying to please everybody today, the Government will actually please nobody. This cynical attempt to buy more time in office, by taking people's money and giving it back to them, will ultimately end in tears.

Right now, Ireland is simply just not working. For far too many people this budget will not change that fact. On the face of it there seems to be something for everybody in the audience, similar to the Fianna Fáil budgets of the Celtic tiger era. However, if we drill down to the detail, there is little systemic change, again like the Fianna Fáil budgets of the Celtic tiger era. People are being bought with their own money, with tokenistic tax cuts, and we will be paying an unexpected bill when it arrives or when families need additional childcare and when the knock-on from massive interest rate hikes is felt. It is a case of in one hand and straight out the other.

On transport, the extension of the 20% reduction in transport costs and the expansion of the short-hop zone into commuter counties outside Dublin is a good thing, but in the round, these measures seem largely piecemeal. If we want to be serious about getting people out of cars and using sustainable, affordable forms of transport, we need more radical action.

It should also be considered that transport costs are essentially costs that have been reintroduced for the majority of public transport users. During the pandemic, those who were working remotely would have in fact saved on transport costs. Now, because we do not have a real right to flexible work in this country, people are having an additional cost foisted on them at a time where costs are rising across the board. We, in the Labour Party, called for a €9 climate ticket to be made available nationwide on a trial basis in an effort to encourage people onto public transport and to reduce our emissions. The trial of such a scheme was very successful in Germany and saw a massive uptake. It was ambitious, made public transport a more viable option for people and saw significant positives in reducing carbon emissions. For people like those I represent in north County Dublin, it would make a massive difference.

Of course, beyond encouraging people to use public transport we also need significantly more investment in modes of active travel. Working parents should not have to rely on cars to get their kids to school. It is senseless that the Government has not introduced an expansion of the cycle to work scheme to allow parents to purchase a bike for their children under such a scheme. The recent school transport scheme fiasco and the Government’s handling of it only drives this point home further. We also need to get innovative in our approach to transport in Ireland. France plans to introduce a car scrappage scheme that will provide grants for trading in an old car in exchange for an e-bike or a cargo bike. What is stopping this Government from introducing a similar scheme here? Again, it is a simple measure that has been introduced elsewhere that will encourage people to get out of their cars, reduce their costs and give us a better chance of meeting our climate targets. We should also be looking to improve our existing cycling infrastructure. There are many towns across the country with ghost cycle lanes that simply are not being used because they are not connected to transport nodes. Why is this Government not developing the city bike scheme and piloting town bike schemes across the country? It is another scheme that has stalled. I welcome that there have been commitments made in respect of projects such as MetroLink and BusConnects, but again, these are copy-and-paste commitments that have appeared in previous budget statements. We must show that there is real commitment to delivering these big projects and that they are linked with substantial active travel projects, including cycle paths and better pathways for pedestrians. We need to join up the dots on the future-proofing of our public infrastructure. That is how the conversation should proceed. MetroLink, for example, does not exist in isolation from improved cycling infrastructure and other such measures such as BusConnects.

We are told that the Government will reduce childcare costs by 25% or €1,200 a year.

Tell that to a family in Dublin where the monthly bill is over €1,000 for one child. The changes in this budget in reality mean a fall of only 10%.

Last weekend, budget kites were being flown with reports that the Minister for Health will announce the extensions of free GP care to 400,000 children but nobody believed it. It builds on five years of broken promises from Fine Gael on this matter. Any extension of the GP care scheme has been stalled. We are now hearing that GPs have not been included in the conversation based on last year's announcement. There is no faith that there will be any real extension in the free GP scheme for children. Parents of six- and seven-year-olds want to know what happened to the Government announcement last year. Those children, who are now seven, eight or nine years old, have aged out of last year's broken promise from the Government.

The Minister for Health, in his press release on the budget of 14 October 2021, stated:

Funding of €45m is provided in 2022 for a range of measures to advance this objective [Sláintecare] and specifically to ensure that care is accessible and affordable for the most vulnerable in our society. These measures include expanding access to free GP care to children aged 6 and 7.

That simply has not happened. In January 2020, the then Minister for Health, Deputy Harris, announced he had received Government approval to extend free GP care to all children under 13. That still has not happened. The only party to have delivered free GP care in any way has been the Labour Party. This scheme has not been extended and improved for far too long.

Primary care is about much more than GPs, and primary care centres should provide the full suite of community-centred healthcare. We need investment in community diagnostics and assessment hubs and to work towards treating more chronic diseases in the community. Resourcing supports for those with dementia, diabetes, asthma and a range of other conditions will reduce pressure on acute hospitals. I note that €443 million has been allocated to tackle waiting lists, which is an increase of €225 million on last year's allocation. Is this costed and planned against the delivery of the staff required to tackle waiting lists? Throwing around money and lines in budget speeches will not solve the waiting list crisis. We know there is no workforce planning. We know there is no plan to deliver more nurses, healthcare assistants, physiotherapists and other healthcare professionals who are going to be able to tackle and beat our waiting list crisis.

The Department of Health still has not paid the pandemic recognition payment to a single section 39 worker, contract cleaner, caterer, member of security staff, worker in private nursing homes or even public health workers not employed by the HSE, such as Dublin Fire Brigade paramedics. Bluntly, it is beyond insulting at this stage.

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