Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have said it before and I will say it again: the cost-of-living package represented by this legislation is completely inadequate. It is a further indication of this Government being out of touch with the real lives of so many people across the country. Up and down the country, so many workers and families are struggling to keep their heads just above water and this package is insufficient to ease that burden. I honestly do not know which is more difficult to accept - that the Government genuinely believes this package will help struggling workers and families or that it knows it is not enough and yet continues to defend it. How many more times do we have to come into this Chamber and remind the Government of the fear so many people are living in? Workers and families need to know how they will pay their soaring bills, not just this week or next week but next month and in the months that follow. They cannot possibly manage without greater support from this Government and yet the Government continues to let them down.

The very reason the Government has had to introduce a new package of measures is because it did not do enough in the budget last October. This is just proof of that. The Minister would do well to reflect on that. Instead of learning from its mistakes, the Government is repeating them. At the time of that budget, I pointed out its many flaws. What was billed as a giveaway budget disproportionately benefited the better off. Tax cuts and an array of universal lump sum payments were the key measures in the budget. These one-off payments may have created the impression that the most vulnerable in society were being taken care of but that charade was quickly exposed. The budget lacked the permanent distributional measures required to have a lasting impact. That is now plain to see. While temporary supports were welcome, they alone could not provide sustainable relief to the countless households that can no longer afford necessities such as food, fuel, energy and rent.

Let us take disability supports as an example. The Government's budget only provided for a €12 weekly rise in core welfare payments and a one-off lump sum payment for disabled people. Does the Government honestly think living with a disability is a one-off or temporary expense? I do not believe it does but the temporary nature of that payment was completely misjudged. In fact, it was insulting. This package was an opportunity to address that failing. In our alternative budget, the Social Democrats proposed a €20 cost-of-disability payment which we believe should be increased every year. We see this as a crucial step in addressing the significant additional costs of living with a disability, which the Government's own report put at between €9,000 and €13,000 a year. A one-off payment cannot even begin to address the systemic poverty, exclusion and disempowerment experienced by so many people with disabilities in this country.

The real tragedy, however, is that the budget, or this additional package, could have made a real and substantial difference to so many people's lives. Never before has a Government had so much money to invest - money that could have been used to begin lifting people out of poverty, to tackle those structural problems of high levels of poverty and exclusion in our society, to tackle the issues of low pay and poor working conditions and to improve our public services. Instead, short-term thinking was chosen over long-term reform.

Another failing of this Government is its inability to act decisively and quickly when it comes to addressing energy companies' bumper profits. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications announced his intention to introduce a windfall tax back in August of last year and the EU authorised it that September. Yet we have still not legislated for such a windfall tax. We have not even gotten sight of the draft legislation. Other EU countries such as Germany and Spain have already introduced a windfall tax. Italy's was introduced in March of last year and it had collected €4 billion by December. We are told that our windfall tax will be used to fund further energy supports. That is certainly welcome but this long-standing commitment from the Government should have been acted upon long before now. Can the Minister please provide a definitive timeline for the introduction of this legislation, given that it has now been approved by the Cabinet at last? This measure is urgently needed to curtail obscene profiteering from the war in Ukraine but it alone will not solve the problems facing families and workers.

Last month, the Social Democrats tabled a motion calling for a windfall tax and, crucially, a targeted energy price cap. Our proposal was modelled on the German energy price cap, which caps prices at between 70% and 80% of average energy usage. This will continue until April of next year in Germany. Unlike an unlimited cap, this targeted cap would not disproportionately benefit wealthier households and would incentivise energy conservation.

Another proposal the Social Democrats are calling on the Government to consider seriously is the introduction of a social energy tariff. This has been proposed by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and would specifically target households on means-tested social welfare payments. This would provide support to those who need it most. It would be a very targeted measure, ensuring that well-off households or those with second homes are not to benefit.

This Government cannot continue handing out lump sums to all and sundry. It needs to narrow its focus before the number of struggling households continues to grow any further. I have said this on a number of occasions. Are there any grounds at all on which the Minister can defend a decision to give those lump sum payments to, for example, everybody in this House? We do not need it. If we are honest, Deputies, Ministers of State and Ministers did not need those payments. There are many people in this country who earn an awful lot more than anybody in this House, even including Ministers, and yet they got that payment as well.

Why is the Government doing that? Why is it giving money to people who do not need it when there are so many people in this country, families especially, who are struggling just to get by and put food on the table? Earlier this month, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul published an energy poverty report which found that the number of people unable to heat their homes adequately had doubled, to 377,000, since 2021. How can it be a fair decision to give lump sum payments to people who do not need them because they are well paid? I do not mean that not everybody has got an increased energy bill. Of course we have all got those, but there are many people who can absorb those increases in energy bills and did not actually need that payment at all. In many respects it was an absolute waste of public money, given that 377,000 people are living in abject poverty in respect of their inability to provide enough food and heat their homes. The same report found that a further 98,000 people had gone without heating since 2021. This figure has increased to almost 454,000 people currently. The average annual electricity bill increased from €1,000 in the spring of 2020 to over double that, at €2,100, in February of this year. Workers and families cannot continue to absorb those costs because too many are at breaking point. An ever-increasing number of people throughout the country are now living in fear. They are living in fear of the next electricity or gas bill, or the next trip to the supermarket. Now on top of all of that is the huge fear of eviction.

Ireland is one of the richest countries in the world and yet so many parents are struggling. They are struggling for the very basics in life. Some 30% of parents are skipping meals so that their children have enough to eat. When the Taoiseach took up office last December, he promised to do everything in his power to tackle child poverty. Looking at this latest package, those words ring hollow. He hardly needs a special unit in his Department to understand that the best way to reduce child poverty is by targeting increased resources at the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children in our society. Some 50% of those living in poverty are lone parents and their children, including people with disabilities and their children, yet they have been almost completely ignored in this package. The qualified child payment was increased by a measly €2 per week in the last budget, an increase so small in the context of an €11 billion budget that it borders on insulting. This latest package was a chance to right that wrong for the poorest children in our country. At the time of the last budget, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul pointed out that growing up in poverty is associated with the worst outcomes across all key aspects of a child's life. Both the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Children's Rights Alliance have repeatedly said that the qualified child payment is a crucial intervention to tackle child poverty but it needs to be greatly increased. There was a measure there for the Minister of State. He could have done a huge amount to tackle child poverty by following the advice of the agencies which know most about the difficulties faced by children living in poverty and yet he chose to spread the resources far too thinly, making little or no difference to those children living in the worst circumstances in this country. What further proof does this Government need that it must intervene to improve the weekly incomes of poor families with children?

Ultimately, it is seems that evidence alone is not enough for this Government. Regrettably, it seems it is aggressive lobbying that moves the needle around here. We saw this play out over the 9% VAT rate for tourism and hospitality last month, which is now being extended until September 2023 as part of this package. I appreciate that this is a vast sector and many small businesses are genuinely struggling but it is difficult to justify an extension of this rate for all businesses in this sector. Could a distinction not have been made between accommodation and other hospitality business, for example? Many people find it difficult to stomach the excuse that this would be an administrative burden. Why could that not have been dealt with? That is no excuse for providing this kind of largesse to a very large sector, many of whose members did not require this funding. The prices many hotels are charging per room, especially in cities, are truly eye-watering. Some of the price gouging that went on last summer was reprehensible. It appears that this Government's concerns are completely misplaced. Where is its concern for workers in this sector who are some of the lowest paid in the State? Did the Government demand any assurances that pay and conditions would improve if it continued to give hotels such favourable treatment? Many hotels in particular are booming. The very least this Government could have done was to make sure this success was represented in better terms and conditions of pay and work for those working in the hospitality sector. After all, it is not of course the workers who have the ear of this Government.

Finally, I reiterate my disappointment at this package of measures. There are many things this Government could have done to truly address the crisis in which many of our people are living. It could have dealt with the scourge of low pay, or narrowed the gap between core social welfare rates and the soaring cost of living. Instead, it opted to leave low-paid workers, households reliant on social welfare payments, pensioners, lone parents and carers living below the poverty line. If we talk about fairness and inequality, it has to mean something. This Government must approach and provide sustainable supports and long-term solutions to the inequality which is all too evident in our society. This package is undoubtedly a missed opportunity.

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