Matt Shanahan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In case anyone has not noticed, our economy is in a weird place at the moment. We witnessed a short economic lift as we exited Covid-19, yet in the past quarter we watched a reversal as our economic growth narrowed significantly. Corporation tax, which is expected to top out at €20 billion this year, is surely keeping the lights on in Ireland. The energy crisis caused by the Ukraine war and Russia's strategy to divide Europe by turning off gas supplies is causing energy prices to rise. These increases are feeding into our productive economy. The resultant inflation is affecting consumer spend and buying power. It is significantly impacting our SME sector and it will impact our employment and standard of living.

Rising European interest rates, designed to curb inflation, are destabilising Ireland Inc. from an economic perspective. The budget that was announced today, with budgetary measures of €6.9 billion, plus a once-off measure of €4.1 billion, marks this as an extraordinary €11 billion budget package. It will certainly plug holes. It is an expansionary budge, but hopefully it will not add to inflationary pressures.

What will this budget achieve? As well as income and pricing security, which we all value, Irish people want annual budgets to deliver better public services, better hospitals, better schools, better infrastructure, housing just taxation and opportunities for all. Many people - and I include myself in this regard - are hacked off with Ireland being a high-tax, low-service society. I have said a number of times that we need to see better budget processes. We need to see better data on where the money goes. That is the starting point for budgetary accountability and more mature decision-making. Instead, our Parliament and public continue to be kept largely in the dark about the actual spending choices we are making.

The reactionary political tensions - perhaps even dysfunction - affecting this Government have been exposed to a degree by this budget. We continue to hear lots of talk about green issues. There have been two and a half years of it now. We have seen very little today in the way of bold green actions beyond taxation and money for MARA. We had an obvious opportunity to address energy independence through renewables and smarter consumption. We missed it during the Celtic tiger era. Having failed to grasp that opportunity, the second-best time was after we returned to massive capital spending in 2016.

In this budget, we are still signalling retrofitting. However, we are taking no account of the dysfunctional retrofitting market whereby there is limited labour but limitless price gouging. We continue to signal Government policy areas through this budget, such as renewables, solar photovoltaic, PV, worthwhile feed-in tariffs, a just transition for the agrifood sector, communities dividends for wind projects and public delivery of large energy infrastructure. The absence of big green energy moves in this budget represents a political failure.

We continue to talk about world-class healthcare, but HSE capital planning is now bordering on farce. I see this in my county of Waterford and the disgraceful mistreatment of our regional model 4 hospital at University Hospital Waterford, with capital and resourcing promises have been shelved for years. It remains one of the busiest model 4 hospitals in the country, but it still is the least resourced by a country mile.

If we were in any other country, we would have built five national acute hospitals for the cost of the national children's hospital. The credibility of the HSE and the Department of Health in the context of budgeting, procurement and project management is in tatters. The only idea we can muster in this budget is to hand over more and more money, with no reform and, what is worse, no appetite for reform. We cannot even develop a register for diabetic patients, let alone a proper, national, accessible, digital patient record. We are happy in this budget to signal increased GP care access, but we remain oblivious to the burnout and the lack of GPs involved to resource the system. This budget continues to demonstrate that balanced regional development and a shared future only exist in the rhetoric of the programme for Government.

This budget continues a trend of ignoring the Border's, the midlands' and the south-east region’s need for equitable capital development. These regions are falling further behind. They have no voice in the Cabinet and they get virtually no capital projects. As we vote on the capital elements of this budget, I reiterate that we will not see where the money goes. I can tell the Minister of State that it mainly goes to Dublin and Cork. I see this acutely and continually in Waterford and in the south-east, where our university, our hospital, our infrastructure and our economic development agencies are continually starved of a fair share of investment. This is also true of other regions.

This Government is halfway through its scheduled term of office.

To date, in my opinion, it lacks any form of mettle. I believe we need a less juvenile form of politics to address our big issues. Securing our SME businesses and their employment should be a first priority. We should be supporting our agriculture, fishing and aquaculture industries properly, delivering on realisable climate change infrastructure and goals, and delivering the housing, healthcare and regional development that is needed and that is not simply happening at this point. To govern is to choose. This Government has yet to make the hard leadership choices. They are choices that might make Ireland a better country to live in, a more economically stable country, and a healthier and more equal country. I will hold my nose while voting for this budget, largely because the families and the enterprises of Ireland need the support that it offers. However, I worry that this Government, with its impending rotation, is not up to the task of addressing the hard choices and implementing the leadership we, in this country, now so desperately require.

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