Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

Anything extra going into people's pockets is welcome, even if they were underwhelming increases of €4 in some cases. What I saw today, however, as did most people in this country, was a Government that is out of touch. We live in a time of declining standards of living. Wages have fallen behind inflation and there are record figures for homelessness and evictions, as well as record costs in housing, healthcare, energy and the other necessities of life. What we needed today was a radical budget for real change; what we got instead was a budget to buy time for a broken system the Government does not have the political will to fix. There is a fundamental difference in the standard of living for the rich and for everyone else who lives in this country. We know from Oxfam’s Survival of the Richest report of earlier in the year that the wealthiest 1% in Ireland now own more than one quarter of the total wealth. For every €93 of wealth created in the past ten years, €31 has gone to the richest 1% and less than 50 cent has gone to the bottom 50%. If you are not rich, you face a low-wage economy, a broken housing market, extortionate energy and grocery prices and a failing healthcare system and other public services, and I have a lot of examples of those situations.

Successive Governments have caused this growing inequality through neoliberal policies started in the 1970s, austerity and privatisation and now, with budgets such as this, there is more profit and wealth for the rich and more vulnerable people are being pushed into poverty. This is not some sort of organic crisis; it was caused by political decisions made by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party and the Green Party to serve vested interests at the expense of ordinary people's ability to live a decent life in this country. I read that the period after the banking crash was the "proudest period" of Deputy Howlin's career.

Deputy Howlin stripped the copper wiring out of our country and sold it to the highest bidder. He chose to push thousands into homelessness and hundreds of thousands into poverty. He chose to decimate our councils, our communities and our public services. We are still fighting that fight. Section 38 and section 39 workers are going on strike next over years without pay restoration. The crises we are in are a direct result of those political choices made by Deputy Howlin.

What we needed today was a budget that started taking back what we lost during austerity and stop the growing inequality in this country. This has been framed as a giveaway budget. To whom is it a giveaway? Every budget that pushes people into poverty while keeping the tax burden on ordinary people is just a giveaway to the wealthy. The Government fiddles around the edges to keep our public services on life support while making no real changes. Poll after poll has shown that people want to see investment in public services rather than tax cuts. This was all done and justified with talk of financial stability. There is not a financially stable person on low pay in the country. The clearest examples are these one-off payments. We welcome them, but the cost-of-living crisis has decimated people's savings and their wages, and put many into debt and arrears. A poll at the weekend showed that 39% of people could not afford a €1,000 bill in an emergency . Some 65% of people have less disposable income than they had last year and one quarter of people cannot make ends meet.

This crisis will affect many people for years. It is not a once-off. More than once-off supports and payments will be needed to buy time because the Government does not have the political will to fix the crisis. I have raised this before. When these once-off payments end people on social welfare face a significant pay cut, a worse standard of living and increased poverty and deprivation. How many have been pushed into energy poverty? St. Vincent de Paul says that it has been at least 40% this year. Charlie Weston pointed out in a recent article that one in eight homes is now in arrears on energy bills. That figure comes from the Commission for Regulation of Utilities.

This crisis will affect many for years. It is not a once-off. I have been dealing with an elderly woman who has energy arrears of more than €1,200. That is after the €700 she got in energy supports. She does not even turn her heating on anymore. She was made an offer to pay that off over ten weeks, on top of her current bill. That is more than €130 extra per week with all of her usual costs. She is on a pension of €248. She contacted me when she was told she that her case was being transferred to a debt collection company to which she would have to pay €35 for the privilege of facing intimidation over money she cannot afford to pay. This budget will do nothing to help her or anyone else in her situation. That is the reality. That is why we need a real increase for those in receipt of social welfare payments. Most groups have been calling for a minimum increase to social welfare rates of between €25 and €27.50 per week. The Pension Promise Campaign is trying to hold the Government to its own roadmap for social inclusion, which would raise pensions by €53. Instead, it has given us another €12 increase after years of either no raises above inflation or none at all. This is a political decision to put more of the vulnerable in our society into poverty. It is s a broken promise to our pensioners and disabled people. We already received a response to the budget from the Disability Federation of Ireland, which has said that the measures introduced today do not come close to meeting the needs of people with disabilities. It is difficult to understand how the cost of disability payment of €500, acknowledged and introduced for the first time in budget 2023 has not been continued. The Minister for Finance said last year that it is important to acknowledge that persons living with disabilities face additional costs. They were not reflected in this budget.

This budget is buying time for a broken system. The Government is hoping we can grow our way out of these problems. Economic growth cannot fix this problem because we live in a society where most of proceeds from economic growth go straight into the pockets of the billionaire class. We have seen that quote from Survival of the Richest.We need real structural State interventions and we need a government that can provide radical solutions to our problems. This Government lacks the political will to do that. It is just not interested. We need to bring core social welfare payments to a minimum of between €25 and €27.50 with a promised index to average earnings, which the Pension Promise Campaign is fighting for. The minimum wage must be raised to €15 per hour so everyone is guaranteed a decent wage. It was increased by €1.40 per hour, but I have not seen any increase for under-18s. I want to see if that is coming through.

A State construction company must be created in order to allow people to retrofit their homes, to build the hospitals we need and to start a public housing campaign on the scale of the 1950s and 1960s in order that the average worker is guaranteed a home. We must fund the retrofitting of council houses and stop the slum-like conditions for our tenants. Dublin City Council has said it will not be able to retrofit all homes before 2034. Will this €90 million be able to facilitate that? I have to check that out. The Industrial Relations Act must be repealed so workers can fight for their own rights.

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