Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, for the opportunity to speak.

Delivering a budget - or delivering an alternative budget, as many Opposition parties do - is challenging and onerous, and they are pretty difficult to put together. Therefore, while I do not agree with much of what is in the Government's budget, I wish to state for the record that I recognise that the elements I disagree with are the result of the Government making poor political choices and not the result of any effort on behalf of the officials who work behind the scenes to put the budget together. Similarly, I thank the policy team in our party for putting together our alternative budget document.

Budget 2023 was delivered as Irish households face the biggest drop in living standards since the 2008 financial crisis as earnings from work fail to keep pace with soaring inflation. We have just been treated to a couple of minutes of the greatest hits of Fianna Fáil. However, the party's Deputies left out the economic crash. They left out my poor auntie, who has to talk to her kids on Skype. They left out the fact that Fianna Fáil brought this country to its knees and drove it over a cliff. When they talk about Fianna Fáil and how proud they are of its legacy, let them not forget what that legacy is and how it is felt in every single home the length and breadth of this State. I will not thank anyone in Fianna Fáil for a trip down memory lane with them because the memories for many people, in my family and in other families, are painful. As Deputies pointed out, we see again the icy cold hands of Fianna Fáil all over this budget and, indeed, the hands of their very best friends in Fine Gael. There has never been more than the width of a piece of paper between the two parties when it has come to policy decisions. It is not so much that the Opposition is the hard left, as was described, but, rather, that we face the hard right every day, which I think has its effect on how we appear to the Government.

Many workers have waited all year for this budget. They wanted to see what the State would do to ensure that their work would pay. There are many things the Government can do to influence how we make work pay, but two areas are the national minimum wage and the delivery of collective bargaining for trade unions. Workers are being battered by the cost-of-living crisis. The 80 cent increase in the national minimum wage is far from what was needed to ensure that work pays. Furthermore, the increase is totally inadequate as the first step towards progressing to a living wage. Again we see the contradiction at the heart of some governments. They say they are interested in a living wage, but when the opportunity is presented, as it is every year at the time of the budget, to move meaningfully towards a living wage, that very small step is not taken, which makes me think they are not serious about delivering a living wage at all. In recent months there have been increases in rents and fuel, food and energy costs, to name but a few, which has meant that the cost of living has spiralled out of control for workers. A real and substantial increase in the minimum wage on the journey towards a living wage was what was needed in budget 2023. The recommendation by the Low Pay Commission, which was agreed by the Government, absolutely failed to grasp this. It was no wonder to me that the trade union representatives issued a minority report and dissented from that 80 cent recommendation. I said the same to the chair of the Low Pay Commission at a meeting of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Enterprise, Trade, and Employment yesterday. A higher minimum wage could have helped business by driving higher consumer demand. I think we all know that workers on low incomes, when they get money in, spend that money. They spend it locally and in the domestic economy. Increasing the minimum wage and moving meaningfully towards a living wage is an investment in local business. The Government's recommendation of a minimum wage of €11.30 represents a 7.6% increase. It does not keep pace with inflation and, as Government members will know because we have said it to them time and again, if it does not keep pace with inflation, it is effectively a pay cut for the lowest income workers in this State. Yet yesterday and in the run-up to the budget we heard again from big business owners and their representatives that a small increase, a modest increase, in the minimum wage would hit them hard. They should know, however, that that money will go directly into their budget and their coffers.

This is the third budget in a row in which billions of euro in funding and supports have been provided, very rightly, to businesses to keep them afloat, particularly to those businesses that are vulnerable but viable. They absolutely need that. However, they should not be allowed to do what they did after Covid and pay massive dividends to their shareholders. The supports that are there should be for the businesses that need it. When businesses talk about welfare for themselves on the one hand, they need to understand that that is a two-way street and that workers have to benefit as well. Often the people on the business side of the House will say that more money in the economy through wage increases will cause a cost-of-living spiral. Of course it will not, no more than putting money into businesses to keep them afloat will cause an inflationary spiral.

While there is stuff in this budget that one would welcome absolutely, there is an awful lot in it that will not deliver, particularly for low-income workers. That is a shame.

See this speech in context