Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have several points to make. First, a number of constituents have raised with me the issue of benefit-in-kind adjustments. The writer of one email on the subject said:

Dear Verona, I am writing to you about an issue which is going to affect my ability to feasibly do my job and whether or not I can continue in it. I am a sales rep. In the recent budget, the Government has proposed changes to be made on benefit-in-kind for those with a car provided by their employer. I cannot use a commercial van, so I am going to see a rise of nearly 50% in benefit-in-kind payments annually.

This measure is to incentivise people to use electric cars. I understand that. However, this is currently not practical for a sales rep as I cover a large geographical area and I travel into rural areas where electric vehicle charging points are not available. Additionally, I am under time pressure and do not have the luxury of waiting an hour to charge a vehicle. My car is my office and it is as important and crucial to me as your phone and laptop are to you. It is not a luxury that the company give me and for that reason I strongly urge that you ask the Government to offer a tiered system for those people who use the car in this way, or I will most likely be joining the social welfare system.

My constituents raise some very valid concerns and I urge the Minister to make allowances for them in the implementation of the new policy. I ask that the proposed timelines be delayed or scrapped now that he is aware of the unintended consequences and difficulties they present. Thousands of workers will be hit by a massively increased tax bill as a result of the measure. It does not seem at all fair or equitable. Again, it is the squeezed middle being squeezed to death. Constituents frequently say there seems to be no area of society where the Government is not trying to make life worse for the ordinary working people who are just trying to make ends meet. How can there be such a disconnect?

After a few weeks of a drop, we see fuel prices creeping up again, with diesel currently costing well over €2 per litre at the pumps. Fuel is the common denominator in this crisis. It is responsible for the biggest increase in the cost of living and is, in turn, driving up inflation. Yet, the Government has decided only public service workers will be recognised as incurring cost rises. They are being given a 6.5% pay increase, leaving low- and middle-income earners to suffer on. The Government must remove excise duties on fuel, as I proposed almost a year ago, and it needs to do so now. The Exchequer can afford, on a trial basis, to remove all excise on fuels. It will enable people to afford to do their jobs, particularly in rural Ireland, where there is no meaningful public transport and people have to use their cars. The question for most of those people is not how they will get to work but whether they will go to work. For them, work does not pay and that has to change.

Carers, to give just one example, are leaving their jobs. They get a measly 15 cent per kilometre. It does not pay them to use their car and nor do they receive a stamp towards a pension entitlement. Family carers continue to be means tested for the fuel allowance, which is just cruel. Those in charge and earning a much greater salary failed to comprehend the recruitment and retention crisis in the sector. Being unable to recruit and retain carers means the budget announcement of €11 billion in spending, which Deputy McAuliffe tried to impress upon us, will not be used. There are announcements about increased funding for home care support schemes but that money just does not get spent. Those announcements, like so many others, are just spin announcements.

I asked during my budget speech on housing earlier in the month whether the concrete levy will be applied to the price of concrete inclusive of VAT. That question went unanswered and is still unanswered even though the levy has been halved. The levy should be abandoned, not diminished. It is a sticking plaster being applied to a massive wound. The truth about mica is that those culpable went unregulated. The innocent paid and the Government continues to make them pay with a lifelong levy, just like the one introduced in response to the PMPA insurance crisis more than 40 years ago. It did nothing for insurance only make it more expensive. The competition regulator failed to investigate the insurance market's gouging of customers for years. That gouging continues and, 40 years later, so does the levy.

It is unbelievable that in the middle of possibly the worst housing crisis in the history of the State, the Government decided to increase taxes on house-building. The world looks on in disbelief not because we cannot house our homeless but because this is being done at a time when we are exclaiming to the world that we can take in and house more than 200,000 unfortunate Ukrainian refugees, not having even considered the 10,000 homeless people we had before the war broke out. It would be funny if it were not so tragic. For the sake of our people who are in need of housing supply, will the Minister please rethink raising the money on the mica scheme? Will he try cutting wasteful expenditure on lawsuits arising from incompetent semi-State bodies? An Bord Pleanála would be a good place to start.

There must be further discussion as to the behaviour of the Central Bank in relaxing lending rules by increasing the multiple that may be borrowed to four times applicant's earnings. It is very strange to see lending rules relaxed at a time when the cost of borrowing has increased and people's ability to pay has reduced due to increased costs in so many other areas. It raises the question as to why on earth this move was not made three years ago when houses were more affordable and the ability to make repayments was greater. Relaxing the rules at that time would have helped a lot of people to get on the housing ladder.

Remaining prudent was the excuse used back then, when housing was available at a more affordable price. These policies must have potential first-time buyers tearing their hair out. Everywhere they turn, the arms of the State have conspired to put barriers in their way. Now, when the cost of living is a crisis point, their spending is reduced, and as interest rates rise at a rocketing pace, the regulator sees fit to say "Tally-ho" to prudence, but "buyer beware". I am afraid that that is just another regulator that is about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike.

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