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

Yes.

Sitting here listening to the Ministers, Deputies Michael McGrath and Donohoe, I struggle to understand the aim of this budget. After all the leaks and the spin, to what does it amount? It sounds very much like budget 2023 lite - a budget with a bit for everyone, a fair bit more for some who actually do not need it, an emphasis on short-term measures rather than lasting structural measures, and not a whole lot that will substantially change our country for the better in the medium-to-long term. There was an opportunity with this budget, given the resources available, to do some transformative things, to tackle the big problems facing the country and to ensure that we were not pulling up the ladder and passing on problems to the next generation to solve again. We could have finally begun to address the chronic underinvestment in public services, thereby bringing them up to European standards, ensuring that people got value for their taxes and helping to reduce the cost of living. We could have used some of the large surplus to invest in the potential of wind energy to reduce our fossil fuel use, meet our climate obligations and save on the inevitable fines we are facing. We could have made bold moves to tackle the increasing level of child poverty, to uphold the right of all children to live a decent life, and to end the shocking waste of human potential. We could have taken steps to drive down the cost of housing with a major programme of affordable house building on State land and by unlocking the high rate of housing vacancy. We could have aimed to achieve a fairer tax system and a more equal society, one where we started to close the gap between the better off and the less well-off, which has been exacerbated by recent budgets. We could have transformed the lives of those with disabilities, adults and children, by prioritising vital supports and services. We could have done so much more. Instead, we have a budget that is desperately short of ambition.

Ireland is now the most expensive country in the European Union. The price of goods and services for households is 46% above the EU average. This is largely because successive Governments have tried to treat the symptoms of Ireland’s high cost of living and not the causes. This approach will never get to grips with the problems. The Social Democrats believes that the aim of this budget should have been to improve everyone’s living standards and quality of life with better public services, to create a fairer country and to make our lives more sustainable.

My colleague, Deputy Cian O’Callaghan, will address the housing aspects of this budget, but I will just say that I am concerned about what I have heard so far. Ireland’s housing system is becoming increasingly characterised by privatisation and the abdication of State responsibility for provision. This is at the financial expense of taxpayers and a societal catastrophe for so many of our young people, who are locked out of housing and forced to put their lives on hold. This Government’s housing policy is a litany of failure. Every measure is designed to boost profit and increase costs. Nothing in this budget will change that.

The Social Democrats believes that radical reform is required to facilitate a better work-life balance for families. We know that the first 12 months of a child’s life are important and that many parents would like the choice to care full time for their children during this time. For far too many, though, that is not an option. When couples rely on two incomes to pay the mortgage, rent, energy bills and all of the additional costs associated with having a baby, they cannot absorb the inevitable fall in household income. We know that 45% of women do not get top-ups from their employers when they take maternity leave, for example, which can leave a large gap in families’ finances. It may also explain why fewer than 50% of fathers take the paltry two weeks of paternity leave to which they are entitled. This does not mean that dads do not want to spend time with their babies. They simply cannot afford to do so.

What can we do? In our alternative budget, the Social Democrats proposed increasing paid parent's leave so that it covered the first 12 months. To do this, we would increase paid parent's leave by six weeks to 13 weeks per parent. We also called for the benefit payment for maternity leave, paternity leave and parent’s leave to be increased to €350 per week so that more people could afford to take it. All of the evidence shows that there are significant benefits when both parents can afford to take time off to share in the care of a new baby. It is disappointing that the Government has failed to adopt this measure or to make any significant extension to paid leave. The extra two weeks announced is the bare minimum that we are required to do under the EU directive.

What about childcare? Research suggests that high quality early childhood education and care can have positive and long-lasting impacts on all children’s outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children. It can have a positive effect on children’s educational, cognitive, behavioural and social outcomes in the short and long terms, but it is important to emphasise that this is only if it is of high quality. We need to invest adequately in this area to ensure that all children have the best start in life and an equal start in life.

I welcome the fact that, after months of wavering and uncertainty, the Government will keep its promise to cut childcare fees by a further 25% in 2024.

However, I raise a concern about the increasing corporatisation of the childcare sector, with the involvement of multinational chains and investment funds. We do not believe the early education of our children should be entrusted to large firms whose main motivation is the return to investment funds. There is enough money in the Government coffers to begin building a not-for-profit, high-quality, public model of early years care and education and we should be starting that process now. The Government should ring-fence a portion of the surplus to acquire and develop early years facilities on existing and new sites, like schools, community centres or housing developments. Many sites earmarked for childcare throughout the country lie idle while parents struggle to find places for their children. Budget 2024, unfortunately, ensures this will remain the case.

The lack of real progress around child poverty is very alarming. When the Taoiseach returned to office last year, we were promised there would be a strong focus on child poverty in the second half of this Government’s term in office, but where is the evidence the Government is going to do that? It does not exist. It is not in the derisory €4 increases to the qualified child payment, a benefit the ESRI repeatedly points out would have great potential to target child poverty were it to be increased. All the recommendations from the agencies working in this area were that there needed to be a €15 increase for children over 12 yeas of age and one of €10 per week for children younger than that. Ambition to tackle this problem is evident in the failure to mention any improvement in children’s therapy services, or the failure to fully fund early education and childcare for children experiencing the worst disadvantage, or in the failure to create a DEIS-plus programme for children in the most disadvantaged schools, or the failure to adequately fund the area-based childhood programmes and extend these to other areas of significant disadvantage.

Child poverty does not just contribute to bad outcomes but has a direct and causal negative impact on children, especially when it starts early in childhood and persists throughout. It affects everything, including emotional development, educational attainment, mental health, physical well-being, career opportunities and income in later life. It destroys and limits lives. The Government had an opportunity to tackle that and ultimately eradicate it, but it failed to deploy that power. Of all its failures and missed opportunities, this will be the most damaging and amounts to the biggest betrayal of this budget. I noted a comment in the Budget Statement, "We will continue to improve our understanding in this area" in relation to child poverty. What on earth does that mean? After 12 years in government, this is a damning admission by the Taoiseach.

I wish to speak about disability. The experience of people with disabilities in Ireland continues to be one of social exclusion. People with disabilities consistently have among the highest poverty rates of any group in Ireland. It is three times that of the general population and more than two in five people with disabilities experience deprivation at any one time. What then has the Government done to lift those with disabilities out of poverty? The answer is very little. A cost of disability payment has been required for years. This payment would be a way for the State to acknowledge the significant additional costs of having a disability, which the Government’s own The Cost of Disability in Ireland report has said is between €9,000 and €13,000 per year. Today, the Government announced a €400 special once-off payment for those on disability allowance, among others. This is the second year in a row a temporary sticking plaster has been placed on the problem. I am certain the Minister for Finance does not think disability is one-off or temporary, so why are supports for disability dealt with in one-off measures? The one-off nature of these payments is not just inadequate but completely misjudged and even insulting. A €30 weekly cost of disability payment, which the Social Democrats have advocated for, would amount to €1,560 over the course of a year, which is more than three times the Government’s one-off payment. It would also send an important message that the costs associated with disability are recurring, unavoidable and often very high. While it would not have solved the issues highlighted in cost of disability report, it would have been a great first step.

As well as introducing a cost of disability payment the Social Democrats would increase disability payments and other core social welfare rates by €25 per week to protect payments from inflationary pressures. This increase amounts to an additional €676 per year in payments compared with the paltry €12 increase the Government announced today. Under our proposals disabled people would therefore be much better off than under the Government’s budget. The Government has heard from disability groups over many years and it continues to ignore the things they require. As it stands, the Government’s meagre €12 increase to core social welfare rates is an effective cut that leaves disabled people and other vulnerable people behind.

The failure to adequately increase core social welfare rates or indicate that they will be benchmarked against the minimum costs of living is hugely disappointing. It is more short-termism from a Government obsessed with short-termism. We should all be clear about the implications of this. This is a deliberate policy choice that will ensure increasing numbers of people, including, pensioners, one-parent families, disabled people and others remain living in, or at risk of, poverty. This is a deliberate choice the Government has made.

There is a huge structural problem around low income In Ireland. Hundreds of thousands of people subsist week to week on incomes which are not sufficient to live a dignified existence. Budget 2024 could have changed that. It could have provided certainty and security. Plenty of research exists illustrating what different households must spend each week to achieve what is considered an acceptable standard of living in Ireland. The most well-known is the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, research carried out by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, which suggests a single adult would need to spend at least €286 each week to cover basic needs. Core welfare rates only cover about 77% of what is required to meet basic needs this year, and budget 2024’s meagre €12 per week increase means this will not even keep up with inflation. For months, organisations from the Society of St. Vincent de Paul to Age Action to Social Justice Ireland and many others have been pointing out what kinds of increases were required just to maintain the purchasing power of the payments - not to have a real increase, just to maintain their purchasing power. This €12 increase is not enough to insulate the most vulnerable from price increases. As well as increasing core rates by €25, the Social Democrats would also have directed significant additional resources to the fuel allowance payment to provide relief to the most vulnerable in our society. The fuel allowance should also be expanded to those in low-income employment who are in receipt of the working family payment. Doing this would provide low income families with an additional €420 in income as well as a once-off payment of €400.

This would be far more beneficial to families than what the Government has proposed, a once-off €300 payment.

Last week when we in the Social Democrats launched our alternative budget, we pointed out that the income tax package in budget 2023 gave more than twice as much to people earning €100,000 as it did to someone on the living wage. Also last year, a working couple with no children earning €100,000 received more than four times as much as a working couple with two children earning €30,000. Once again with this budget it is a matter of the more you earn, the more you get, widening the gap all of the time. Our alternative budget looked for a fair taxation system with a focus on tax credits, which benefit a broader base of people equally, and a system of refundable income tax credits targeted at low earners. However, once again it is those on higher incomes who will be most rewarded by the Government’s income tax measures. The Social Democrats were criticised when we said we would not reduce the USC but today’s budget announcement has helped us to justify this position. Cutting the 4.5% USC band by 0.5% gives a tenner to someone earning €25,000. That is a tenner over the entire year. Someone earning €70,000, on the other hand, gets €235 or 23.5 times the benefit the low-income person gets. Again, the Government is widening the gap. Was there ever a clearer example of why it is better to ensure we rebalance our tax system through credits which benefit all recipients equally? Under our plans, those gains would have been distributed more fairly.

The indexation of tax bands should be in line with wage increases, and while indexation is justified for middle-income earners, there is no reason this tax benefit should go to very high earners. No effort has been made to claw back any of those gains from those at the very top. The Social Democrats proposed a third rate of tax of 43% on incomes above €100,000 for this purpose. While more than 90% of workers would benefit from our tax plans, we believe those at the very top can afford to pay a little more. In return for that, they will get hugely improved services under our plans, which bring down the cost of living for everyone.

In respect of health, this year’s deficit should have come as no surprise to this Government. It was clear from the very beginning. Why else were attempts made to massage the figures? Why else was the national service plan delayed by more than three months? The financial allocation fell very far short of what was required. This Government needs to realise we have a growing and ageing population, and that means increasing demand. This Government must also accept that reform costs money. There is no doubt that budget controls are extremely important but a number of key enablers are needed for better control. That is why we should scale up funding to accelerate implementation of an integrated financial management system and the digital healthcare strategy. The Minister for Health should be prepared to invest heavily in these critical projects and he must be supported by the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform in that work. We should not need to remind the Minister what the R in that Department's title stands for. If this Government is genuinely committed to reforming our public health service, then it needs to lay out a multi-year funding programme for Sláintecare. The Social Democrats have repeatedly called on the Government to do so and to include this cost in the pre-committed element of the annual budget process, as already happens with the national development plan, NDP, and public pay agreements.

Notwithstanding the urgent need to follow through on Sláintecare reforms, one of the biggest challenges facing our health and social care services is still the recruitment and retention of staff, across all disciplines. We urgently need a national workforce task force to address this. A coherent and integrated approach is so desperately required, not reactive solutions which fall short of addressing the profound challenges facing our health and social care systems. This recruitment and retention crisis is also jeopardising service delivery in the community and voluntary sector. However, this escalating crisis is fuelled by the disparity in pay and conditions between State agency staff and staff in section 39, section 56 and section 10 agencies. If we are to make this sector sustainable, then the funding and staffing arrangements also need to be sustainable. It is time this Government restored the principle of pay parity. In our alternative budget, the Social Democrats called for a minimum of €150 million to begin to address pay and conditions in those sectors.

In terms of social care, a series of interventions is needed to address the increasingly privatised services. Employees within the sector deal with precarious working terms and occasionally other forms of exploitation. This is particularly problematic in the home care sector, which is largely unregulated. Investment in universal social care services is vital for older people and people with disabilities. They must have the necessary supports to reduce dependence on family and friends and to maintain a private, independent life with dignity. Although funding has improved in recent years, outstanding issues in home care require urgent attention, especially in the long-promised statutory scheme.

The other big issue is the cost of accessing healthcare for patients. We have a long way to go to meet the principle underlying Sláintecare of access to universal health and social care based on health need. Budget 2024 will do little to progress the removal of healthcare costs or bring us into line with the implementation timeline proposed in the Sláintecare report.

When it comes to mental health services, we know from all of the agencies working in this area that an additional €120 million is desperately needed in this budget. However, we still have no idea how much will be allocated to mental health after the Minister’s speech. I certainly hope that when we hear from the Minister of State with responsibility for mental health, she will indicate an understanding and appreciation of the level of funding that is so desperately needed.

Education is another area of missed opportunity. It is the single greatest driver of opportunity, quality of life, social equality and economic growth. One of the most radical reforms to our education system would be to make it what it claims to be, to make it genuinely free. Primary and secondary education in this country is supposed to be free but we all know that is a myth. It is a scandal that schools are expected to fundraise for basics like heating, lighting and cleaning. Parents face huge additional back-to-school costs every year, while so-called voluntary contributions are a very unwelcome financial burden. Making education genuinely free would mean fully funding schoolbooks and other classroom resources, increasing the capitation rate to eliminate the need for so-called voluntary contributions, as well as permanently eliminating school transport scheme fees. The Government announced some additional funding in the capitation area but it is quite clear it will go nowhere near meeting the increasing basic costs of running schools. It is a drop in the ocean compared with what is actually required. Why are we stopping here? Why are we not committed, in 2023, to ensuring our primary and secondary schools are genuinely free?

On climate action, this Government excels at climate rhetoric but fails at climate action. We see evidence of that failure everywhere. Failure is baked into its climate action plan. If every measure is implemented, it will only reduce emissions by 29% by 2030, when the target is 51%. Even when it comes to what should be simple measures, the Government comes up short. Climate action is not just a moral and ecological imperative; it is a financial imperative. If we do not meet our 2030 targets, we will incur billions of euro in fines. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, also warned last week that climate mitigation measures could cost the State up to €5.5 billion every year between 2026 and 2030.

If it is not by now clear to the Government, it should be. We need a huge investment now. The climate fund announced today is a start, but it does not go anywhere near far enough.

The Social Democrats proposed using the vast majority of the budget surplus – about €6.5 billion – for climate transformation. That would be the ultimate rainy day fund. We would set up a new semi-State with a singular focus: renewable energy. We want the State to invest in offshore wind to cut energy costs for families, improve our energy security and get a financial return for the people of this State from investment in our own natural resources. Private companies are the ones reaping all of those benefits at the moment.

In general, it is fair to say that budget 2024 will not change very much. Yes, there are some nice headline-grabbers for the Minister of State and the coalition parties, but the deeply embedded structural problems that make life so difficult for so many in our society will not see much, if any, improvement. The budget fails to tackle the lack of affordable housing, the huge waiting lists for basic healthcare, the absence of social care for so many older people, the threadbare disability services that deny tens of thousands of children the ability to reach their full potential and the soaring costs that make life unaffordable for so many. Instead, the status quoof increased privatisation and erosion of key public services will continue. It is about prioritising profit and a good return on investment, rather than what is in the public interest. When governments facilitate or even encourage this, they betray their citizens. This betrayal stems from a philosophy or ideology which does not understand the importance of equality as a means to bring about social and economic success. It is a mindset which does not appreciate the huge benefits of universal public services and sees the provision of public services as being some kind of necessary evil for those who cannot afford to go private.

This budget could have been transformative. Instead, its legacy will be more of the same. I will finish with a quotation from IBEC:

We have pretty much the same number of public sector workers as we had 15 years ago but as societies get richer, they want their public services improved. These things are all a function of State but the fact is that that State is demonstrably shrinking.

Those comments were made by IBEC because it recognises the need for improved public services. Along with many other agencies in this country, it has urged the Government not to concentrate on cutting taxes and instead to develop and grow our public services. In other words, thousands of additional public sector workers are required to provide the high-quality, reliable and accessible public services we all want and need. I see no plan from the Government to make this happen on the scale that is required. Instead, the Government continues to look to the market and the private sector to provide the public services that should be part of a basic floor that everyone in the State has a right to expect. The causes of the problems we all face as a society have their roots in political choices. Their solutions are also highly political. It is clear we will need a complete change of direction in order to implement the kinds of solutions that this country so desperately needs.

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