Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

He has decided to put taxpayers' money into the pockets of landlords.

You simply could not make this up. In this budget, the Government has provided nearly twice as much to landlords as it has to struggling renters. The Minister knows fine well, because the experts in his Department told him, that the vast majority of these landlords never even thought about leaving the rental market. This sop to landlords will go down as one of the stupidest tax reliefs ever to be provided by a Minister for Finance in recent times. It is shameful what he is doing with public money in this regard.

Do not just take my word for it; listen to what the experts in the Department of Finance have said. The Minister's own Department made clear this summer that tax is not the reason landlords choose to sell their properties. The tax strategy papers are published for us all to see. The Department also warned that personal rates of income tax have always applied to rental income and that any favourable treatment to this income would raise legitimate questions around social equity, but we know what side the Minister is on. He is always on the side of landlords. It is for the Government, therefore, to explain why a nurse should be taxed more than a landlord. It is a legitimate question. That is what the Minister has done in his proposal today and it is shameful. It is absolutely wrong and the worst thing is that it is not even going to work, and if the Minister had listened to his own Department, it would have told him that. Today's budget is grim news for renters and aspiring home-buyers, but what is most shocking is that the Government has announced a housing budget that it knows falls far short of the needs of our people. This budget is a further confirmation, if ever we needed it, given we have known it for some time, that the Government has given up on housing. It is clear only a Sinn Féin Government can deliver the type of change we need, the types of homes our people need and the type of energy and determination needed to cut through the red tape to deliver and to end the crisis created by the two parties opposite me.

For too long, under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, our health service has lurched from crisis to crisis. Overcrowding in our hospitals is out of control and waiting lists continue to go up. Our young doctors and nurses are looking abroad, and in this budget the Government has given them no reason to stay at home and plenty of reasons to leave. They cannot afford a home and they cannot provide the quality of care they were trained to deliver, because of the conditions in which they are forced to work. Let us turn to the state of our hospitals. Over the recent period, the number of patients in emergency departments has broken all records and represents a damning indictment of the Government's lack of planning in respect of this crisis. It lacks urgency and prioritisation and that has caused significant distress to many patients and families. They are not my words; they are the words of the Minister's party leader, Deputy Micheál Martin, in 2018.

What has happened since Fianna Fáil took office? In January, the Government broke new records, with 931 patients languishing on trolleys in a single morning. Since then, the Minister for Health has set a new target that no more than 350 patients will languish on a trolley on any given day. A decade ago, 350 patients on trolleys in corridors in our hospitals was a national scandal; today, it is a Government target. How shameful. That is the ambition the Government has; it is now a target. A total of 710,000 people are waiting just to get a date for a hospital appointment, or 40,000 more of them since the Government took office three and a half years ago. There are 250,000 people waiting for a diagnostic scan and patients with cancer, children with scoliosis and older people with broken bones are told to wait and wait again. The same applies to children's mental health and children's disability services. Waiting lists for children have more than doubled since the Government took office. More than 15,000 children are waiting for first contact with their specialist disability team. At the other end of the scale, 6,000 older people who have been approved for home help have been left waiting with no help. The same challenges are faced by people with a disability. In every section of our society, from young to old, from people with disabilities to people with mental health issues, it is clear our health service is going in the wrong direction.

What do we have in the budget, given all those facts showing we have been going in the wrong direction since the Government took office? What has this budget done? It has done next to nothing. Very little in this budget will give any comfort to patients or parents who are struggling to get access to basic health and basic care services. There is no urgency, no vision and no compassion, and that is the reality. The Government decided just to forget about health. It has failed time and again to invest in the workforce and plan for the future. Today the Government boasts about record tax revenues, yet it has delivered a standstill budget for health. There is no new funding for additional hospital beds and there is less capital investment for health than was promised in the national development plan. In fact, the health capital budget would not even keep pace with inflation.

Real-time cuts are happening to a health service that is crying out for investment. The Government has decided at Cabinet, in all consciousness, despite the resources we have as a State, to leave the health system, which is breaking at the seams, as bad next year as it is this year. Indeed, it is probably going to be worse, because the reality is the Government has underfunded for the ELS. This standstill budget is not even enough to keep pace with what is happening. That tells us the Government has decided very clearly that it is throwing in the towel on health, that it does not have any vision, that it has nothing to offer anymore in terms of improving the conditions faced by healthcare workers or patients or, indeed, that it has no interest. Tá an tseirbhís sláinte ag fulaingt faoin Rialtas seo. Ní féidir le hothair leapacha a fháil inár n-ospidéil agus tá páistí ag fanacht blianta le haghaidh obráidí criticiúla. Is iomaí dochtúir agus altra atá ag fágáil agus is léir go bhfuil an Rialtas seo tar éis éirí as an tseirbhís sláinte.

For Sinn Féin, improving access to healthcare and reducing its costs is a key priority. We have proposed a major investment in healthcare in our plan, including to roll out 1,800 additional beds over the next three years, to invest in modern diagnostic equipment and fit-for-purpose CAMHS units that support children and their families and treat them with dignity and respect, and to reduce medical costs, extend medical cards to an additional 400,000 citizens and abolish prescription charges. The Government could have done that, but it has decided not to. The difference is that we in Sinn Féin have an ambition for our health service; instead, the Government has thrown in the towel. It has given up on patients and given up on our healthcare staff.

In the past year, more and more workers and families have struggled under the cost of living. The high cost of living has impacted on every corner of our society, young and old, and those working hard to pay the rent or make their monthly mortgage payment have felt it hard. Citizens with a disability have felt it really hard, as have many others. Energy bills remain too high, food prices and fuel costs have shot up, and instead of moving forward, far too many people believe they are moving backwards. Le breis agus bliain anois tá oibrí agus teaghlaigh ag fulaingt de bharr an chostais maireachtála. In ainneoin an rud ceart a dhéanamh dóibh tá an Rialtas dá ligean síos.

In the past year, as the Minister knows, mortgage costs have soared. According to the Central Bank, two out of every five households will have seen their annual mortgage costs increase by more than €3,000. One in five households will have seen their mortgage costs increase by a staggering €5,700. Mortgage prisoners who have had their loans sold to vulture funds, in sales both Ministers opposite me actually facilitated, have felt it really hard, as they have seen letter after letter fall through the letterbox, one after another, telling them another punishing interest rate hike is on the way. For months now Sinn Féin has put forward a clear plan to help workers and families with the soaring mortgage costs with temporary and targeted mortgage interest relief, and for months the Government opposed it, over and over again at every turn, including the Minister for Finance. He opposed it right up until recently. He himself argued for 100% mortgage interest relief, did he not? He is Minister for Finance today and he has provided 20%. At the time he was arguing for 100% mortgage interest relief in 2016, the ECB's interest rate was zero. It has never been as high as it is now in the history of the State, and he has dithered and delayed.

Even now, after the announcement, we find out that people will not even be able to benefit from this until 2024. Instead of implementing the plan we have put forward for many months, the Government decided to implement a scheme that appears to lock out tens of thousands of households who have seen their mortgage costs go through the roof. There is no rationale for why the Minister would do this - none whatsoever. The idea he was scrambling at the last minute, trying to put a plan together for how to do this, is just ridiculous. We have been raising this since December of last year. The Minister has had plenty of time to design this measure and he has decided consciously to lock out tens of thousands of people who have seen their mortgage interest rates rise. The mortgage interest relief the Government has proposed will not be available to households who have an outstanding mortgage balance beneath €80,000. Does the Minister know that somebody with a balance of €75,000, if they have been on a tracker rate or are with the vulture funds, will have seen their interest rate increase by nearly €2,000 in the past year, and he is deciding to do nothing for them?

Some of these individuals are older people who have started to pay to pay down their mortgage. The Minister has decided to lock them out. There is no rationale whatsoever to do this. What does he say to people looking in today who have seen their interest rates increase on ten separate occasions since July last year, who are paying €2,000 more than they were last year, but whom, because their outstanding loan is less than €80,000, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the Government have basically told they are on their own and it will not support them? That is absolutely shameful and must be dealt with in the Finance Bill. Again, it is testament to how this Government takes a good idea from Sinn Féin and decides to make a mess of it.

What the Minister should do, and what we have told him since last year, is to provide mortgage interest relief up to €1,500, absorbing 30% of the interest that has been increased since last year, and that should be available to everybody who has seen their interest rates increase. There is a way to do it. Let us not mess it up. The Government should not try to be different just because we came up with the idea. The Government has made the U-turn and acknowledged that we are right. Let us now get this policy right and support individuals.

Workers and families continue to spend too much on heating their homes and keeping the lights on. In recent months wholesale prices have fallen sharply. While electricity prices for households have fallen across Europe, Irish electricity prices remain unacceptably high. Sinn Féin has been clear. In government we would provide the energy regulator with the power to stamp out anti-competitive behaviour and regulate standing charges. We would force the hand of energy companies by setting a price cap above which they could not charge consumers, reducing energy bills for households at a time of crisis. In March, the Taoiseach promised to take action against energy companies that failed to pass on reduced costs to struggling households. No action was taken. Instead, the Government has allowed energy companies to continue fleecing households with unaffordable bills.

Sinn Féin put the high cost of childcare on the political agenda in the election of 2020. We did it by committing to cut childcare fees by two thirds. However, what the Government has announced is too little, too late. It is a 25% reduction, but people will not get it until September next year. People need to see reductions now. There should be no delay until September. We need to see these bills coming down from January. I urge the Government to again heed Sinn Féin's call and reduce these costs by two thirds in total - 55% next year as we have planned.

Even before the spike in energy prices and inflation, more and more of workers' hard-earned money was being spent on extortionate childcare fees, rents and energy bills. We have been one of the most expensive places to live in Europe for some time. In recent years, half of all households have seen their incomes fall or stagnate. Despite doing everything right and working hard, the economy has not been working for them. We in Sinn Féin have said for some time that the fairest way to reduce taxes and put money back in workers' pockets is through cuts to the USC. This budget needed to deliver a fair tax package. In 2020, we stated our intention to remove from the USC tax net the first €30,000 a worker earns. We will deliver on that if we get an opportunity in government.

That road could have been started today - by abolishing the first rate of USC, by slashing the second rate of USC in half and increasing the point at which the third rate of USC is applied. That is what Sinn Féin has proposed. Instead, what we have is what the Government has announced. The most expensive element of today's tax package is a €2,000 increase in the standard rate band, which well over half of workers will not benefit from. The package will see a worker earning €35,000 benefit from €320, while someone on €200,000 will benefit from €890. That is not a fair tax package in anybody's books.

We also know that the rise in fuel prices has added further financial strain to households throughout the State. In September the Government increased the price of petrol and diesel with a tax hike. At midnight tonight it will push ahead with another tax hike, pushing up the price of petrol further. We will submit an amendment later tonight to try to stop that price hike going ahead. Because where I come from, and what the Government fails to understand, and in many parts of Ireland, driving a car is not a luxury. Driving a car is a necessity. It is how you get your kids to school. It is how you travel to work. It is how you make your way to a hospital appointment. Rural transport or affordable or accessible public transport does not exist in many of these communities. Yet, the Government is hell bent on continuing to increase the price of petrol and diesel through further increases in carbon taxes at midnight tonight and again next year. Not content with that, in May of next year, it will increase the cost of home heating oil, which more than one third of households rely on to heat their homes.

The first test of a republic is how we protect the most vulnerable. The decision to increase payments for citizens with disabilities by only €12 given the high cost of disability, which everyone seems to recognise apart from the Government, is unacceptable. What should have been provided and what Sinn Féin would have provided is a €20 weekly increase in the rate of disability-related payments. The qualified child payment to the poorest children will be increased by only €4 per week. Sinn Féin would have increased it by €5 for the under-12s and €10 for the over-12s. The Minister also failed to increase child benefit. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have both cut child benefit in the past. To this day, child benefit payment remains less than it was in 2008, so the Government is neglecting children. Child poverty will deepen as a result.

Our economy has faced significant headwinds in recent years, from the pandemic to an energy shock. In the past year we have faced emerging and interrelated headwinds - high levels of inflation and a tightening monetary policy. These challenges have placed significant pressure on households and businesses. Rising interest rates pose a risk to future investment and infrastructure delivery, most crucially in the areas of housing. That will require a greater State response. The growing threat of climate breakdown and our duty to transition to a low-carbon economy poses challenges and opportunities to our society and the wider economy. However, despite all of the rhetoric, the Government is failing on climate action. At the beginning of this year, we had the highest rate of greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. Under this Government our emissions are increasing. This is a perfect example of all the Government bluster - all talk but no action. What has been announced today to provide alternatives to households? We have a meagre increase in the budget for residential and community retrofits. We remain with a retrofitting scheme that is only available if an applicant has €25,000 lying about in a bank account which he or she can afford to spend, thus locking out low and middle-income households from support where they are hit with further carbon tax hikes. We can do much better, and Sinn Féin outlined how we can do better in terms of climate. We have proposed an additional half a billion euro to expand retrofitting, making it accessible to low and middle-income households, to reduce transport costs and accelerate our transition to renewable energy.

Today, the Government announced an increase in the research and development tax credit. We welcome that, because Sinn Féin has for years been calling for the research and development tax credit to be increased to 30%, to simplify the application process and support SMEs, and to provide tax credits to Irish startups in one instalment in the first year to drive innovation among Irish startups and firms. Next year, the domestic economy is expected to grow by 2%. The ultimate task is to convert economic gains into increasing living standards for our people, and for too many the Government is failing in that task. Tax revenues have grown and will continue to grow over the next year. A key driver of revenue growth in recent years has been corporation tax. We know a significant amount of this revenue is highly concentrated and comes from a small number of foreign-owned multinationals. As such, the future course of this revenue is uncertain. Next year will also see the implementation of the OECD tax agreement for the digital age, which Sinn Féin supports, and we will scrutinise the legislation underpinning this agreement in the coming weeks.

Today, the Government has stated its intention to create two separate funds, and Sinn Féin supports the principle of establishing a fund to increase and support public investment in the years ahead. However, while it is important to keep an eye on the future challenges, we cannot lose sight of the problems our people and our economy face here and now. As the State's tax take bulges with surpluses billions of euro in the years ahead, we have a unique opportunity to tackle the housing crisis and infrastructure deficits that harm living standards and undermine our economy. This budget was a squandered opportunity in that regard.

Tá a fhios agam ó mo cheantar féin an ghéarchéim atá sa Ghaeltacht. Tá líon na gcainteoirí laethúla Gaeilge tar éis titim don dara daonáireamh as a chéile agus níl ach teaghlach amháin as achan cúig teaghlach ag tógáil a gcuid clainne trí Ghaeilge. Cá bhfuil an scéim labhairt na Gaeilge a gheall an tAire Stáit, an Teachta O’Donovan? Cá bhfuil an maoiniú breise a theastaíonn d’Údarás na Gaeltachta, ó phleanáil teanga go dtí na coláistí samhraidh atá i gcruachás agus 30% de na mná tí tar éis éirí as ó 2018 i leith? Níor éirí leis an Rialtas fiú €5 milliún breise a chur ar fáil i dtreo na Gaeilge agus é dírithe ar scéimeanna taobh amuigh den Ghaeltacht.

Cuirfeadh Sinn Féin €12 milliún breise sa bhuiséid malartach don Ghaeltacht amháin, €11 milliún breise don Ghaeilge, agus €10 milliún do TG4, mar go bhfuil sé mar thosaíocht againn. This budget needed to make life more affordable for our people. It needed to reduce the cost of living, accelerate the delivery of affordable homes, tackle overcrowding and unacceptable waiting lists in our health service and use the opportunity to deliver lasting change and better living standards for our people. In the time to come, this budget will be remembered as one which wasted that opportunity. It bears the hallmarks of a Government that is out of touch, out of ideas and out of time.

See this speech in context