Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

We all want the same things for ourselves and our families: a secure home, a decent job, clean air to breathe and a healthy environment. We want to know that if we or our family members get sick or injured, we will be able to access the care we need. We want to know that everyone in our community will have a guarantee of the decent standard of living which should be so achievable in a country like ours, which has resources the envy of so many of our neighbours. However, that is not the reality in the Ireland of 2023. Insecurity is the reality in the lives of far too many people here. Nearly 13,000 people are homeless and nearly 4,000 of those are children. Many more people are in hidden homelessness; they are still couch surfing or sleeping in childhood bedrooms well into late adulthood. One in five workers is still on low pay.

Even those with good jobs and their own homes are unable to access decent public services. They face long waiting lists for services for children with autism, disability services and they are unable to find a crèche place or home care services for older relatives. Far too many have fallen victim to the lack of public infrastructure that is endemic here and which has resulted from a free market ideology that is content to rely on laissez-faireeconomics and hope for the best. Accordingly, we see unaffordable housing, overwhelmed health services, creaking public transport infrastructure and stalling capital investment programmes in housing and in climate infrastructure too. Over recent weeks, we have heard from so many constituents crying out for political solutions to the problems that hold back our communities. They did not get those solutions in yesterday’s budget. Instead, it appears that the budget was an attempt to find an electoral solution to the very different problems holding Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael back. A few euro here and there, but nothing to show for it sustainably. It is a budget that in truth perpetuates both inequality and insecurity. It is a budget that will not address the real cost-of-living crisis that is biting hard in so many households. The cost-of-living crisis has not gone away - far from it - but a comparison with last year’s budget shows there are fewer supports in this one for those most in need.

A key test in the long term is whether this budget will provide sustainable supports for families and communities. The short answer is "No". People look to the Government for improved public services for the security they and their families need, but when they look at this budget, they see that it gives many a touch, but it will give no one a real helping hand. The Government has delivered more than €14 billion in spending and tax measures, though as my colleague, Deputy Nash, has pointed out, there is more in the tax package than there is in social protection measures. The Government has also failed to address the glaring gaps in public services, the chronic shortage of housing, the lack of childcare places and of autism and disability service provision. As Deputy Nash has said, this budget bribes people with their own money, but ultimately leaves them worse off without the security net of strong public services.

Last Thursday, we in the Labour Party published our alternative budget, with an emphasis on building those strong public services. We outlined radical but realistic plans to address the real economic insecurity which is impacting people’s lives. We sought to put an end to the Hibernian paradox of a rich country which is poor at the same time. We are a country running budget surpluses that are the envy of Europe, but with public services that are an embarrassment within Europe. Last week I met a constituent of mine and of the Minister for Transport who is paying €1,200 a month in childcare, which is €300 a week. Her friend in Germany has a crèche fee of €30 per week. Despite this, our constituent considered herself lucky to have a crèche place for her child at all, in a country where childcare and early years education has always been the poor relation within our care system. Our Labour Party plans would have offered real change, not just in childcare where we have a costed package to cap fees at €50 per week and build towards a publicly funded model of childcare, but also in our cost-of-living package which would have supported all households who are feeling the pinch, lifted the boats of those with least and crucially provided for sustainable improvements to public services. Instead of a plan like that, a plan which would have delivered an Ireland that works for all, the Government chose to give a wad of once-off payments with no lasting, sustainable change. On the issues the public are most concerned about - the cost of living, housing, childcare and elder care, healthcare, jobs and climate - the Government lacks ambition. Its budget lacked any mechanism to deliver real change.

Nowhere was that more evident than in the lack of provision on housing. I have said it before, but housing is the civil rights issue of this generation in Ireland. It is a workers’ rights issue. Lack of housing is hindering our economic growth and hampering our public services. On that point both ICTU and IBEC agree. Ireland must build at least 50,000 homes a year to address this crisis. We know that and the Taoiseach said earlier that the Housing For All targets are set too low, yet in this budget housebuilding targets remain unchanged. If the Government's financial allocations for next year do not reflect the real, established need, it will have fallen at the first hurdle, because even if its housing plan is implemented in full, it will meet just two thirds of the real need. This lack of ambition and urgency will perpetuate and worsen the housing crisis for years to come. We have all been lectured on how the crisis will not and cannot be fixed overnight, but since Fine Gael entered government, 4,599 nights have passed. That includes 1,202 nights since this Government was formed. How many more are needed? On the Government's current trajectory, there will never be enough.

What was needed in yesterday's budget was decisive action on housing, but what we got was just more cosmetic fixes. This was effectively the first Fianna Fáil budget in over a decade, but some things never change. At a time when rents are skyrocketing and rental properties so hard to find, the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, announced tax breaks worth €160 million a year for landlords without a shred of evidence this policy will deliver any increase in supply or improved conditions for renters. It is reminiscent of the Government's evidence-free policy on lifting the temporary ban on no-fault evictions earlier this year. This move will not address rising rents or tenancy uncertainty. It is also just wrong. How is it justified to treat the taxation of working people as different from the income generated by landlords? Let us look at it this way: a student renting a bedsit in Rathmines, in the constituency the Minister and I share, will be paying more tax on earnings from his or her part-time job than the landlord will be on the rental income from a house on which the mortgage may well have been paid off, that is to say, a passive asset.

It is fundamentally wrong that people paying rent will be paying more tax on income generated from their labour than a landlord will pay on income generated from a fixed asset, and one that is increasing in value. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have caved in to the wrong demands here. All they have offered renters is a measly rent credit that is inaccessible to those whose tenancy is unregistered or who are afraid to engage with their landlord in case they lose their home.

On vacancy and dereliction, something we in the Labour Party have been leading on, we have also seen far too little from the Government. Instead of a winter blitz on vacancy and of an emergency empty homes fund like the one we proposed, the Government chose to just offer a minimal increase in the vacant homes tax. What was announced yesterday will be ineffectual in driving the change that we need. The Government has even delayed the residential zoned land tax. Last-minute measures on vacancy are simply inadequate. We need far greater State investment here, especially given the level of vacancy and dereliction in our communities. It is a scourge on our urban centres. I know the Minister, Deputy Ryan, agrees with me on this. We have over 160,000 vacant properties around the country and yet we are going to see another wasted year when we will not have the sort of really significant investment required to tackle the problem.

It is not just on vacancy or renters' rights that this budget has failed. In this budget, 10,200 new HAP and RAS tenancies were announced. While the 74,000 existing such tenancies will continue, we have no detail on where these promises are coming from. Again, there are plenty of rhetoric and misleading figures but very little substance. Most surprisingly and disappointingly, there is nothing in the budget to provide for the necessary big push on house building, on supplying the 50,000 new homes that are so badly needed every year. Everyone agrees that what is needed to unlock the housing crisis is the speedier delivery of new homes. The Taoiseach made an extraordinary statement earlier to the effect that the difficulty in housing will be the Government’s capacity to spend the housing budget, as if he is a bystander, but the Government can fix the capacity issue. Where in this budget is the Government's plan to kick-start a massive construction recruitment programme? We in the Labour Party provided for this in our alternative budget but all we see from the Government on this is hand-wringing over a lack of capacity. That is not good enough.

The Government's hand-wringing and inaction on the housing disaster affects every facet of Irish society. Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, said that young nurses and midwives are spending up to three quarters of their monthly income on rent. We cannot fix the HSE while this continues because it is contributing massively to difficulties in recruitment and retention. At the same time, we learn that the HSE is sitting on hundreds of vacant properties which could be renovated to provide accommodation for healthcare workers. One example is the empty hospital in mine and the Minister's own community on Baggot Street. That building is still lying empty. It is a blot on the landscape but it could be used to offer overnight beds to so many people.

It is not just the housing disaster that is wrecking the health service. Where is the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly? Where are the measures in this budget on health? There is simply nothing here. We have a huge gap in the health budget. This budget does not allocate enough money for the health service, just like last year's budget. As Deputy Duncan Smith said, there is no real money for new services and no new health initiatives at all. What of the money needed for the national cancer strategy and the funding needed to fully staff our health services? Where is the promised funding to restore pay parity to the community and voluntary sector workers who are about to go on strike next week?

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