Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle very much. I am sharing time with Deputy Duncan Smith.

It is said that RTÉ does too many repeats. So does this Government. There is some truth in the hackneyed description of a "The Late, Late Show" budget, with one for everyone in the audience. It is worse still. It is a "Reeling in the Years" budget in that it is a lazy rerun of all that was wrong with budget 2023. There are tax cuts that favour the better-off again. There is a failure to properly fund the public services on which we all rely and which the citizens of this rich Republic should expect. Again, we get a wall of once-off payments, but no permanent change. Once those once-off payments are gone, they are gone. This is a budget that, again, will be found to be regressive, once lump sum payments melt away like snow on a ditch. Like "The Late, Late Show", we have changed the faces, but the formula is the same no matter who is fronting the gig. Whether it is Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, it simply does not matter.

In my almost 14 years here, I have rarely seen such frustration and anxiety among the general public. There are many reasons for that. This is the first time since 2010 that a Fianna Fáil finance minister has delivered a budget, and what does he do? He gives nonsensical tax reliefs to landlords. Same old Fianna Fáil. Some €160 million in tax reliefs have been given to landlords. There has been more in tax reliefs given to landlords than provided, cash-wise, to individual renters.

Having fixed the economy, the period 2016 to 2020 provided the chance to fix our society, build homes, invest in public childcare, get to grips with the climate catastrophe, get our health service right, start the work of tackling divisive inequality gaps and build the foundations of a better and more sustainable future. Those years were wasted, however. They are years for which we are still paying the price.

Fast forward to 2023, under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, Ireland is a country of contrasts and contradictions. We are rich and poor at the same time. We saved almost €7 billion in bank accounts last spring when two out of every five of us cannot lay our hands on €1,000 to meet an out-of-the-blue bill. More than 20% of us are officially on low pay at a time when Irish corporate profits are breaking records. Yet, we still cannot get the basics of running this country right. As someone who is proud of our country and prouder still of the great country we can be, it gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say that. If a country ever donned the proverbial fur coat, and Deputies know the rest of the crude colloquialism, it is Ireland. The piece in Financial Timeson the Monday before last took a look behind that tatty coat. The article asks the question, "How can a rich country have transport, health, education and water services under increasing strain?" Why can the two thirds of young people number imprisoned in the purgatory of their childhood bedrooms not afford to rent or to realistically dream of owning their own homes? Why are one in ten Irish people on health waiting lists for more than 18 months when the official target is three months? Thankfully, we should be grateful for this. Nobody told them how much it costs a working family to get the kind of child care that citizens of other rich countries such as Denmark and Sweden rightly take for granted. Now that would have been embarrassing.

As Mr. Fergal O'Brien of IBEC said to the Financial Times, we arenouveau riche.He asked what was the point of us being a wealthy country if we do not have the things we need the most, namely, physical infrastructure and social and public services. IBEC got it in one. The Irish Congress of Trade Unions concurred, so both sides of industry are in agreement. However, we have tax cuts. The latter are the perennial Fine Gael answer to the question absolutely nobody is asking. A person unable to get an assessment for their child is given a tax cut instead. Someone else who has been on the housing waiting list for 12 years is being €5 per week. People who could do with more affordable childcare get €10 back on their USC and are told to jog on. We are getting performative tax cuts when what we need are performing public services.

Every euro of a tax cut, if not replaced by taxes elsewhere, is one euro less for the social wage, for schools, for hospitals, for childcare and for community safety. The tax cuts presented today, which disproportionately favour the better off, are as fiscally unwise as they are socially damaging. Throughout our long history, the Labour Party has never been short of vision. It was the resources we were always short of. On the evidence of this botched budget, even though we have the money, it appears the Government is woefully short of the vision we need to transform our society. Some €2.7 billion in once-off measures is no small sum of money. It is a lot of money, but it is being spread so thinly that nobody will be happy. Allocating such a wall of money on lump sum payments is no cause for the kind of backslapping we saw on the Government backbenches earlier. That does not demand a standing ovation. The necessity of these once-off measures should be worn as a badge of shame by this conservative coalition. Why are these interventions needed? They are needed because under the Government's watch, the real value of workers wages has dropped. On the Government's watch, living standards have fallen like a stone for the first time since we waved goodbye to the troika in 2013.

Under Fianna Fáil, the spending power of the pension has been effectively cut for three budgets in a row. Where is Deputy O'Dea when Fianna Fáil needs him?

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