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

I welcome the debate on the motion before us tonight. It provides us with a timely opportunity ahead of next month's budget to discuss the measures needed to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. I am very concerned by the signals coming from Government, particularly from the Fine Gael elements of the Government, that more tax cuts are on the way. At a time when we should be investing heavily in public services, it seems this Government is instead set on eroding the tax base. In our view, this would be a mistake, not least after last year's regressive tax cuts.

Most of budget 2023 was intended to play to Fine Gael's base and it should not be repeated in a naked attempt to win votes. It was a poorly targeted budget with, for example, the €600 in electricity credits going to everyone, whether they needed them or not. I made the point myself that it went to everybody in this House. That was not necessary. It also went to people with salaries like those of people in this House and to people with much higher salaries, who certainly did not need that €600. It was public money badly spent. Of course, it should have been targeted at those families who most needed it. The other point about that is that €12.4 million in energy credits went to the owners of holiday homes. By contrast, the working family payment measures in last year's plan amounted to just €4 million. Does this Government honestly believe those who own holiday homes are under more financial strain than low-income families? Does the Minister of State believe that or was his Government just trying to buy votes? The weaknesses in last year's budget soon became obvious once the temporary supports dried up and more and more people struggled to put food on their tables, heat their homes and keep a roof over their heads. Budget 2024 must not repeat those mistakes.

While I accept that many of the drivers of rising inflation are beyond the control of Government, there are still many measures that can and must be taken to ease the burden on struggling households. The increase in excise duty on fuel proposed for the end of October needs to be looked at because it represents a measure the Government could take to address the fact that so many families are struggling just to keep their heads above water. Even before the current rise in inflation, Ireland's underinvestment in public services meant that services that are subsidised or free at point of access in other countries, such as health and social care, transport and childcare, must be paid for, in many cases in full, from people's take-home pay. While a lack of protection for consumers means many pay very high bills for other basic services like utilities, waste, insurance and broadband, there is no doubt that much more could be done to support families. Of course, we are living in the midst of yet another housing emergency, where hundreds of thousands of people and households simply cannot afford an appropriate home. All of this makes life in Ireland extremely unaffordable. That is why there must be a focus on reducing living costs, including the cost of public services, rather than this Government's usual focus on giving people a couple of euro a week through small tax cuts. There is no gain for a person in getting an extra €5 if basic household costs rise by more than that.

We in the Social Democrats believe that budget 2024 must strike a balance between providing relief to hard-pressed households and meeting the long-term challenges we face as a society, such as our under-resourced public services and the climate crisis. In terms of immediate relief, there are a number of measures that could be taken quickly by Government. These include a reversal of increases in excise duty on fuel as called for in this motion. That is a reasonable proposal to make. We must remember that Irish people remain extremely dependent on cars. The reason for this is there are so few alternatives. Dublin is one of the most congested cities in the world and many of our other towns and cities are not a whole lot better. In rural Ireland, the situation is particularly bleak when it comes to public transport. The absence of a robust and reliable public transport system continues to be a significant challenge for people living outside of towns and cities. Again, decades of underinvestment are to blame. Instead of funding and delivering public transport programmes, successive governments incentivised the least environmentally friendly forms of transport, leaving people with few alternatives to the car.

I accept that radically scaling up public transport infrastructure cannot be done overnight but we have been talking about investing in significant transport infrastructure for decades now. A case in point, obviously, is metro north, metro link or whatever you want to call it. We are now on the third iteration of a metro to serve Dublin Airport and all of the neighbourhoods in between the airport and the city centre. I can remember in the 1990s going through the whole public consultation process. All of the documents were produced, the applications for planning, the railway order and all of that. That was in the 1990s. It happened again in the noughties - 2008, as far as I can recall - and we had all the brochures, all the leaflets delivered, all the engagement by the public, residents' groups and so on. Again, there was no progress made on it. Here we are again, the third time around. Now we are being told, at a time when the coffers are bulging with money that we could invest in capital projects, that the best case scenario is 2036 before the metro is up and running. This is shocking. It is outrageous. This is one of a very small number of capital cities in Europe that does not have a metro serving the airport.

Measures to reduce the cost of public transport and commuting could be done very quickly, and there is no excuse for not doing that. Measures such as reduced off-peak fares, a further cut to regular fares and increased funding for LocalLink would encourage people to leave their cars at home where possible. However, for this upcoming budget to have the greatest impact, more measures need to be targeted at hard-pressed workers and vulnerable households. It is time this Government accepted that we have a structural problem around low pay. It needs to take meaningful action on that. We know that around one in five workers is on low pay, essentially living week to week. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, between 2016 and 2022, the national minimum wage increased by 14.5%, failing to keep pace with the 22% increase in average hourly earnings.

Budget 2024 must begin to bridge this gap and crucially, set a clear pathway towards achieving a living wage over the next three years. This must be a genuine living wage, not this Government's interpretation of what that is. Last year, the Government announced plans for a living wage that would be pegged at 60% of median earnings. While this may be a step in the right direction, it is not true to the concept of a living wage, that is, what it actually costs to achieve a decent standard of living. Median earnings have no bearing on the cost of basic necessities. This Government knows that. It has resiled from its commitment to introducing a living wage within the timeframe of this Government.

Next month's budget should also increase support to the most vulnerable households. We must prioritise a combination of core welfare increases, increases to payments such as the fuel allowance, the secondary payments and the qualified child payment, as well as some one-off cost-of-living measures. Those measures must of course be targeted, and the Government has been advised to do that by all of the agencies working in this area. If this budget is to really improve people's quality of life, then the majority of resources must be shared fairly and investment in public services is the best way of doing that.

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