Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I will start with a question. What is the most telling thing that has happened in this House this afternoon? It is not anything the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, or even any member of the Opposition has said. The most telling thing that has happened in this House this afternoon is the virtual silence from the Government backbenchers when the Ministers were making their speeches. There was the odd "Hear, hear", a mild ripple of applause here and there and a bit of a clap at the end. Apart from that, there was almost complete silence. Why? I will tell Members why: it is because the Government Deputies know, as does the Minister, that the budget does not fully protect people from the ravages of inflation and does not come anywhere near to protecting people from it.

A single person with no children earning €25,000, €30,000 or €35,000 a year will benefit from the tax changes introduced in the budget by approximately €4 per week, give or take. They will receive the €200 electricity and gas credits over the winter, but this will all be swallowed up by price hikes before even half of the winter is out. Where is the protection there?

Let us take another example. The budget provides for a €12 increase for social welfare recipients. For a social welfare recipient on a little more than €200 per week, that is an increase of less than 6%. For a social welfare recipient on a little over €250 a week, it is an increase of less than 5%. The Government will say that the extra double week payment and other measures will bridge the gap to the 9% inflation rate, but the rate of inflation is not 9% for the lowest-income households. These households spend a disproportionate part of their income on the basics of life, such as food and fuel. The price of milk and bread has risen between 20% and 26% in the past three months alone. The rate of inflation for low-income households is well above 9%. The Government has cut their incomes in real terms. It has done this at a time when it has refused to levy extra taxes on the super-wealthy in society. This budget pats the wealthy on the back and puts the needy on the rack.

Furthermore, many of the Government's new measures will be undermined by the failure and refusal of the Government to take on the profiteers. A good example of this is the €500 renter's tax credit. What does that really mean in a situation where the Government refuses to freeze rents? In many cases it will mean that landlords will decide to hike up the rent to make sure that this money, or at least a slice of it, ends up in their back pockets. Households will receive €600 in energy credits over the winter but where will this money end up? It will end up in the coffers of the energy providers. These providers will hike the prices by a hell of a lot more than €600. The commodification of energy, along with the commodification of housing has been a disaster for ordinary people. Instead of transferring money to the energy providers, the Government should cap the prices at the rates charged last year and eliminate profiteering by nationalising the entire sector under the democratic control of consumers and workers. In fact, it would be a bold and positive move in confronting this crisis if the energy sector were to be nationalised throughout the whole of Europe. Where would the money come from to balance the books in a nationalised energy sector which decided to freeze prices rather than freezing people this winter? It would come from two sources. First, from the massive pre-existing profits that these companies have accumulated during the crisis, not least of which is the ESB’s €679 million profit last year and €2 million a day this year. Second, from the wealth that exists at the top of society. A 2% tax on millionaires in this State could raise nearly €6 billion. I am in favour of a 25% corporation profit tax, but a 20% tax on the large corporations, with the closing off of loopholes, could raise a further €10 billion at a minimum.

I want to say a few words about this budgetvis-à-visthe position of young people. Seven out of ten young people are considering moving abroad for a better quality of life. This is being driven by the housing crisis. The former INTO president, Joe McKeown, stated lately that no recently qualified teacher could now reasonably expect to buy a house in most parts of Ireland. Has this budget fundamentally changed this in any way? It has not. The feeling that it has not was articulated by a young person on social media this afternoon. I cannot find the tweet but it was along the lines of: "Me: Can I have a house? Government: As Seamus Heaney once said: "No"." I think he is also having a go at the abuse of the wonderful poetry of Seamus Heaney by Ministers who seem to quote him on every single occasion until they bore the population senseless.

According to the ESRI, the housing crisis has combined with stagnant wages to leave young workers financially worse off than their parents. Young workers are earning less than their counterparts did in the 1990s or 2000s. The Government is choosing to worsen this situation by raising the wages floor, in other words, the national minimum wage, by less than the rate of inflation, and by offering increases in public sector pay which fall well below the rate of inflation also. In the 1980s, a Fianna Fáil Government promoted emigration. The late Brian Lenihan Snr., who held a senior position in the then Government said "we can't all live on a small island." The then government saw mass youth emigration as an essential safety valve, as did other governments, for the survival and saving of capitalism in this country. I believe this Government is doing the same thing now. It is an unstated policy, but in reality it is Government policy at this point.

Speaking of pay increases, there should be no pay increase for Deputies and Senators in a cost-of-living crisis. How can leadership possibly be shown to people at such a time when their so-called political leaders are earning a multiple of the wages that most people are trying to survive on? How can it be shown when their so-called political leaders are accepting a wage increase at the same time that many workers who were on the front lines for Covid, who put their lives and health on the line, and they have yet to receive their bonus payments? There should be a vote in this House on this issue. If there were a vote on this issue the Deputies in this group would vote "No".

Michael Taft, the SIPTU researcher posted on his Facebook blog, Notes on the Front, this afternoon to say that the budget papers show that spending on public services will increase by only 1% between now and 2025.

He stated that on a per capitabasis, it will fall by 2.5%. This is an aspect of the budget that has not generated any headlines so far, although it certainly should. Nevertheless, it will generate significant problems down the line for our society. In Britain, the Tory Government is openly stating that it wants to shrink the state and it is doing that through the front door. The Government in this country claims that is not the policy, but those facts and figures show that, in reality, that is what it is trying to do through the back door.

An exception, in terms of funding for Departments, relates to the Department of Defence, with a significantly higher spending increase allowance than that for other Departments. To be clear, I favour increased spending in the Department of Defence to end the scourge of low pay but I am opposed to spending more money on guns and military hardware when other Departments, such as the Department of Education, charged with caring for the children of the nation, are forced to go short. This budget will not come close to fully protecting ordinary people from the ravages of inflation. It will not protect the Government from criticism, not just in this House but outside it, as I am beginning to pick up on my social media and text messages. Moreover, it will not protect the Government from protest on the streets, and I agree with Deputy Boyd Barrett, in that I think we will see large protests on the streets nationwide on Saturday, 12 November.

Global capitalism has given us at least four major crises in the past 15 years. The great recession was caused by the greed of the banks and developers and devastated the lives of tens of millions of people. The Covid pandemic was hastened by global capitalism's abuse of the environment and exacerbated by governments that decided to put the interests of profit before the interests of people. The climate crisis has been largely caused by 100 corporations that have been responsible for 71% of carbon emissions globally in the past 30 years, and by the capitalist governments that have facilitated them. The current crisis is a systemic crisis. It began well before the war and was exacerbated by Russia's imperialist invasion of Ukraine. The crisis has been worsened for ordinary people by massive profiteering. The United States Economic Policy Institute calculates that more than half of US inflation in the period 2020 to 2022 has been caused by excessive profiteering, and Isabel Schnabel, an executive member of the European Central Bank, has stated that the position in Europe is not greatly dissimilar to that.

Profiteering, however, is not just an excess of this system; it is part and parcel of capitalism itself. Profiteering is in capitalism's DNA. This is a system predicated on ruthless competition for the maximisation of profit at the expense of workers, society and our environment. We need to end the dictatorship of the market in this country and internationally and break with this system. We need to put ordinary people before the interests of profit and put the enormous wealth that is evident at the top of society at the disposal of society through public ownership combined with democratic control. That is why we need an end to this Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael-Green Party Government, which slavishly obeys the diktats and grooves on which this system runs, and is also why we need a challenge and an end to this very system.

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