Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to join the Taoiseach and Tánaiste in commending the budget to the House, as the third party in a coalition Government that is working collectively to serve our people to the best of our ability. That is our entire focus. This budget does it and I want to set out why, in a very uncertain world, in a very difficult time.

Some of my colleagues have to leave for a Council of State meeting. I wish them well.

It is a very uncertain and difficult time. In the lifetime of this Government we have had to manage Covid and the Irish people came straight out of that to war in Ukraine and a cost of living crisis. All of this is framed within a wider reality that the climate change hitting our world is now reaching such dramatic proportions that it has gone beyond what anyone was predicting in terms of the impacts we are seeing. Our weather systems are going completely outside of any modelling projections as to what would happen. This is leading to very incredible concern among the scientific community that we need to act all the faster to try to protect our future on this planet for all its inhabitants.

It is also a very uncertain time in the world of economics and that has to be taken into account in framing a budget. We listen to economic advice. We are in a very unusual time where we have had a very long period since the financial crash of very low interest rates and now a sudden switch. Bond yields in the United States are up over 5% while in Ireland they are up 3.2%. The economic future, even next year, that we have to plan for, is very uncertain. We have listened intently to the Fiscal Advisory Council, FAC. We have to do that after what happened in the 1980s or in the Celtic Tiger years when we did not look forward and try to budget so that we avoid economic shocks.

The FAC is critical that we have not stuck to the 5% spending rule that we set ourselves some two or three years ago. Instead, the core funding increased to something like 6.1%. I would answer the FAC that I think 6.1% is appropriate because we have a much larger population increase than what was expected even two or three years ago with the huge influx of people into our country. Also, it is an uncertain year ahead. I listened with real concern to people who said we should not provide too much of a stimulus to an economy that is at full employment and that has seen very significant inflation in the last year, which is starting to come down. What we are going into next year is uncertain. In my mind, it may be a harsher and more difficult economic environment than we might even have even expected a few months ago. The soft landing some were predicting in this strange world of long-time low interest rates is not likely to come back as quickly as some might expect. I would argue it was correct in those circumstances to live within the 6.1% limit that we set in the summer economic statement and also to provide some of the one-off measures that protect our people in this extraordinarily difficult and unusual time.

If there is an objective, we need to make sure we are strategic in terms of supporting some of the investments we need to prepare for the future, not just react to the current economic situation. I want to break the budget down to its various components. Within core spending, I want to focus on three or four elements. I could go through every single Department line and each has got critical areas of improvement, investment and decisions that have to be made. However, I want to reflect just on four. This is not just because they may be involve Green Party Ministers but also because they were some of the key decisions and developments within the budget process.

I will start with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. My colleague, the Minister, Deputy Roderick O'Gorman, has responsibility there. The Department's increased budget from €1.41 billion to €7.3 billion spending is not the only signal of how this Department now has a central role in protecting, providing for and helping our people. The obvious headline development that jumps out is of incredible consequence. I refer to the halving of childcare costs that will occur by this time next year, for people across the country. This is unprecedented. I cannot think of another example of a major public service or major cost of living measure for so many families. This is a major issue that we all know was really hitting our people hard. Can someone show me an example elsewhere where the cost of a major public service has been halved within a two-year timeframe and done in a very clever way? The Minister agrees to the arrangement with the providers first in terms of quality and their ability to increase staff and so on. In return he gets agreement that any further reductions go to the parents rather than just being eaten up in terms of increased inflation in the sector. It is a real and incredible achievement of strategic importance and long-term consequence and I want to commend the Minister.

It was not just that. The key issue, which only moved to the Department of the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, from the Department of Health, is the focus we need to put on disability. As a State, we need to step up and improve the conditions of people with a disability and parents of young people with a disability. It is not good enough at the moment. It is not working for a lot of people. We have to be honest and frank that there are a lot of cracks in our system. We need to focus and concentrate on that in a variety of ways. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, and the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, are working to that goal.

I will not go through the entire list but I will mention some of them. I remember being part of those negotiations. We are standing up for foster care. We have increased the rate by €75 per week or €73 in the case of a slightly older child. We have opened up the access and inclusion model for 7,000 children with a disability into our early childhoods and childcare system.

We expanded the disability action plan by €55 million for where some of the cracks are at the moment. Any parent with a young adult with a disability knows we do not have respite, day care services or, God almighty, the connection in our health system for those with a disability, in particular for those with autism, to provide for the needs of our people.

Not every crack will be covered immediately, not every improvement can come in any one budget. However, there is real ambition within that Department with the Ministers involved and signalled in the budget, to step in that direction. We will continue taking those steps because it is our first priority.

I want to cover some of my own area, which I can speak about with a certain authority as I am involved with it on a day-to-day basis. We are seeing real strategic shift happening within budgets. We have to prioritise because we have limited resources. We cannot deliver absolutely everything. Let us take transport, for example. The Department has a very significant capital budget of €35 billion but we have €100 billion of projects in development and planning.

There we have to prioritise, and we are prioritising, public transport because we as a State failed to do that for the past 60-70 years and we need to catch up in providing the really high-quality public transport our people want and need and see actually starting to be delivered under this Government.

Connecting Ireland is a transformative new project where, every week, we are rolling out a new rural bus service or changing, improving or adding frequency to existing services. The response has been incredible. In the past year alone, the number of passengers has increased by 112%. It is similar on our other public transport services. Our bus service is on average 15% above pre-Covid levels and our rail services 8% above pre-Covid levels, which is out of kilter with what is happening in the rest of Europe and the rest of the world. Most other countries have not seen a return to pre-Covid levels. We are going right through it and beyond.

One of the reasons is that in last year's budget we reduced the overall fares by 20% and by 50% for those aged 23 and under, which was actually a 60% cut for those younger people when the two are combined. It is those younger people who are using these new rural bus services. They are the ones benefiting most, getting to the match, getting to training, getting to college, getting to school and getting to see friends. As a significant further enhancement of that, we have extended it up to 24-year-olds and 25-year-olds, and we have to match that now. Some ask why not make everything free. There is a problem with that because we also need to go beyond in delivering new services.

In Dublin, BusConnects is about to come out of the planning system and we need to build that, subject to political support. It is not just BusConnects but also the other road space reallocation we need to do which will require political strength and courage at local government level to make some hard decisions to make the public transport system work. It is the same in Cork where I expect metropolitan rail to come out of planning shortly; we will build it. The first priority is more balance with better balanced regional development. Change is happening within the Department of Transport. Change is easily talked about it but not as easily delivered. Much of the time change means disruption to people's lives, particularly in transport. In the remaining time of this Government and in local authorities throughout the country, I commit to us working collectively with other parties to try to make the decisions that deliver that level of change.

Change is also happening in our homes. Irish people are responding to the call for the need for climate action, helping to reduce their bills and looking to creating a better and warmer home, because the level of retrofitting is now ahead of the targets we set which many people said were too ambitious and could not be delivered. We are delivering it in the retrofitting of 1,000 homes a week. All the public money is skewed towards those on the lowest incomes through social housing and warmer homes, trying to make sure we target the funding we are getting to those houses that need it most. It is working and has continued to increase. There have been 47,000 applications, which is way up on last year.

To give examples of the change that is happening, two or three years ago there might have been 2,000 or 3,000 houses selling electricity through microgeneration. Now it is 70,000 within the space of two years. We have cut the VAT and we introduced a new tax break yesterday as a further incentive to help make that happen, and it will not stop here. It is a positive change. This green transition needs to be a just transition and one that brings benefits to our people.

I am just picking some from personal preference. I could pick a range of key issues in various Departments - education, social welfare, the arts and others. I just want to mention two other areas. I am responding to some of the comments I heard the Tánaiste make in his speech. What works best in government is when we start thinking two, three or four years out in terms of the change we will make.

I remember distinctly, during the programme for Government negotiations, there was a real clear commitment among the three parties that we needed to review what was happening in our Defence Forces because the current system based on the review back in 2012 was not working. The grade structure we put in place was not appropriate. The resources were not sufficient, especially in capital. Particularly in our Naval Service and Air Corps, we needed to step up. Three and a half years ago we established the Commission on Defence Forces leading to a well-thought-out, well-delivered and appropriate assessment. The Government agreed on the recommendations. In last year's budget we started investing in it and are doing so again this year with, as the Tánaiste said, €1.23 billion. It may seem strange for a Green Party Minister from a party that has always been and still is rooted in the peaceful tradition of politics to put a priority on the defence spending. However, we need that in recognition of the proud role of the Defence Forces in our State and their need for all the right equipment, the right conditions and the right pay to perform that function well.

In this world of uncertainty at the moment where climate change is driving all sorts of conflicts and all sorts of wars are happening, the role of our Defence Forces internationally has brought real honour to our country. Our first thoughts are always with them when we hear of conflicts in a zone where they are posted. I would argue it is matched by the important increase in the overseas aid budget. In today's world it is important that we as a country that is seen as standing up for the poorest in the world and meeting its climate commitments would deliver on that target of €225 million in climate finance by next year, which is an important signal to the rest of the world that we understand that we have to protect the weakest to build up all our strength.

On the one-off measures, which are significant and are not small, the energy credits, which were designed, developed and delivered by my Department, are not insignificant but they are there for a reason. Last year, the average domestic bills for gas and electricity came to €3,689. We were able to reduce that by €600 with the energy credits. Even assuming a 50% reduction in electricity prices this year, which we are seeing this autumn, and a further an assumption of a 10% reduction in electricity prices in February 2024, the analysis is the average bill will still be something like €3,239. The €450 energy credit will bring that down to €2,779, which is still way above the average in 2021 of about €2,000. We are doing that to protect our people through a difficult cost-of-living crisis. We will need to wean ourselves off these various measures because we need to continue to have money to put into the core services we need to provide on an ongoing basis in disability, social welfare, education and so on.

Some may argue it should be more targeted. It is more targeted. We will try to take out vacant housing, but it is also targeted because it is not the only measure. We have the social welfare measures - the increases in child benefit, the working family payment, the fuel allowance, I will not list all the different ones - on top of the lower cost of services in schoolbooks, school transport, college fees and a variety of measures, targeted, it is true, on families. I think that is correct in this world of uncertainty and difficulty where it is hard to raise a family. The annual number of births is reducing. I worry about that in terms of whether we have made it a difficult place to raise a family. If that is a fear, it is appropriate for us to target and help young families in whatever mechanism they use, whatever type of family, and to try to provide as much support as possible to get families through that expensive, difficult and uncertain time, and, as the Taoiseach said, create a country where it is a good and safe place to raise a child in a world of uncertainty.

On strategic investments, the introduction of the new infrastructure climate nature fund is of huge strategic consequence. It comes from long-term thinking. For the past two or three years we have been approaching climate in a systemic way - setting up the law and setting up the task forces to start delivering, and learning from them some of the gaps where we need capital investment in things like providing district heating and improving our public buildings.

The first real gap we have to close is in the protection of nature, the restoration of biodiversity and the beauty, strength and resilience of our natural world. This fund will take that strategic approach where, in the next two years, we will start pilot projects to test the investments in nature and in climate. It takes two or three years to get a programme working effectively in government. It takes that time to get through all the regulatory, legal and other mechanisms and administrative matters that are needed. By 2026 or 2027, we will be able to hit the ground running and use that money which, if we spent now, would have an inflationary impact but by then we will be able to make sure we spend it really wisely and well.

It is a significant measure because the creation of the fund means that action and climate change are not competing, which they could otherwise be, with investment decisions and priorities that are always there in social welfare, health, education and the core desire to protect citizens. Yes, we will need to do that. Yes, we have to provide the economic basis for it, but the certainty that is provided by creating a climate and nature fund is that we can start planning for the investments we know we need to make to meet our climate targets, to restore nature and to get all the improvements that come with that, and that fund is a strategic statement of real importance that says this Government is a green Government, this country is a green island and the Irish people are behind that. That sort of clever, smart, strategic, long-term investment thinking is included in this budget as much as anything else.

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