Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I have been wondering who this budget is designed for. When the Ministers for Finance and for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery, and Reform sat down and thought about the people they wanted to help, who did they think of? One would imagine it would be the young people who are locked out of buying their own home and who cannot even afford to rent; the more than 500,000 adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s living in their childhood bedrooms who feel a sense of panic because their lives are passing them by; or the young couples who are postponing having a family because they cannot afford to live together.

I have looked through the document hoping to find any indication that the Government is finally going to try a new approach in respect of housing and that it is going to target resources where we really need them, namely, in the delivery of affordable homes, but there is nothing, zero. There is no new capital for the biggest social catastrophe of a generation. Is this an oversight or, finally, an acknowledgement of failure? Has the Government given up on delivering affordable housing and instead just blatantly introduced a budget with more support for landlords than tenants or first-time buyers? It is just incredible that there is twice as much funding in the budget for landlords than the tenants who are paying them record rents. It is a clear demonstration of where the Government's priorities lie. This is not a budget for renters or first time buyers, so who was it for?

Unfortunately, its not a budget for struggling families either. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, did follow through on his commitment to reduce childcare fees by 50%. I welcome that, but the savings will not be introduced for another year.

This is a budget that could have gone so much further for families. Where was the vision and the ambition? In our alternative budget, we in the Social Democrats proposed radical reform. We proposed €500 million of capital funding to begin investment into a public model of childcare. The State needs to shift its perspective on early childhood education and care, viewing it as a public good rather than a private commodity. We also budgeted for the extension of parents leave for the first 12 months of a baby’s life. This would mean an additional 12 weeks of paid leave split between parents. Not only that, we would increase the rate of maternity, paternity, parent's and adoptive benefit from €262 per week to €350 per week. This is a measure that would make a massive difference to parents who often struggle financially when a new baby is born, especially when their employer does not top up their maternity or paternity benefit. We know that many employers - around 45% - do not do so. New parents should be entirely focused on enjoying time with their babies, not worrying about bills. The Government's budget increased parent’s benefit by just two weeks, but we know that increase was required by an EU directive. The increase is just the bare minimum that was legally required. This is another missed opportunity.

The budget is also certainly not designed for low- and middle-income workers. In fact, it is higher income earners who disproportionately benefit from the tax measures. I will give an example. The Government obsessed about USC cuts for months in advance of this budget. The Social Democrats were criticised for saying that we would not cut the USC. After all that talk, what did this 0.5% USC cut amount to? It meant a cut of €10 per year for low-paid workers earning €25,000 and a cut of €235 for those on €70,000, a figure that is 23 times higher. After all the column inches about tax cuts, not least those written by Fine Gael junior Ministers, that is what all of the fuss was about. The Social Democrats believe there should be a tax package in the budget but that it needs to be fair. Crucially, it should not pull valuable resources away from investing in public services which make a meaningful difference to people’s cost of living and quality of life. We would increase tax credits by €225 each, a saving of €450 for every worker no matter what you earn, and increase the tax bands in line with wage inflation. Because we recognise that those at the very top do not need further tax savings, we would also introduce a third rate of tax of 43% on incomes over €100,000. More than 90% of workers would be better off under our tax plan and, crucially, the benefits would be shared much more equally.

What has this budget achieved for the most vulnerable in society? We know those on fixed incomes, including pensioners, one-parent families and disabled people, are finding it especially difficult to get by. Price increases have been relentless, and there is no end in sight. The cost of goods and services in Ireland is now nearly 50% higher than the EU average. We know that an increasing number of pensioners are afraid to turn on the heating because of their sky-high energy bills, that parents are choosing between feeding their families and heating their homes and that more and more disabled people are living below the poverty line. What is the Government’s answer to this enormous crisis? Instead of providing sustainable support, it deploys a three-card trick. The trick goes something like this. It abjectly fails to adequately increase core payments for those most in need, while pointing at temporary one-off measures as evidence that their interests have been protected. Nobody should be fooled by this cynical approach. Temporary supports are not the answer to a persistent cost-of-living crisis. They will not provide sustainable relief to those who can no longer afford the extortionate cost of necessities like food, fuel, energy and rent. The Social Democrats proposed a €25 increase in weekly core social welfare rates because that is what is required to respond to this crisis. Instead, the Government has increased rates by just €12 – less than half of what was needed.

This budget was not designed for the most vulnerable, and nowhere is this more clear than on child poverty. The Taoiseach has claimed that eradicating child poverty is a priority of his, yet one of the worst measures in yesterday’s budget was the unconscionable decision to increase the payments that are targeted to the most disadvantaged children by a pathetic €4. The single biggest determining factor as to whether you grow up in poverty in Ireland is growing up in a one-parent family. We know that 70% of the families made homeless since March are lone-parent households. What has the Government given them? It has given them €4 a week. Four euro in a €14 billion budget when addressing child poverty is supposed to be the Taoiseach’s special project. Yesterday, the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform announced research funding to improve understanding of child poverty. We have mountains of research. We know which children are most at risk of poverty and what policy measures actually work. What we need is action, and the Government failed to act.

Disability services were also shown the cold shoulder to say the least. The parents of children with disabilities have to fight on their behalf from the moment they are born. They do not get anything they are entitled to without a fight first. The only thing people are guaranteed from the State is waiting lists - waiting lists for assessments of need, waiting lists for therapies and waiting lists for school places. There are no supports and no services, just queues. Despite this huge crisis, the figure in this budget for investment in disability services was €64 million. I have an honest question for the Ministers. Is that a typo? Mere hours after the budget was announced, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, was announcing a €195 million package for disability services but her short list of expenditure left €87 million of that unaccounted for. So what is the number? How much is the Government spending on disability?

Week after week in this Chamber we raise the crises facing the disability sector and every time we get the exact same rhetoric back from Government. Of course it cares and is doing everything it can to improve the lives of disabled people, and how dare we question that. In the context of this budget, I will question that. It has been ten years since the Fine Gael-Labour Government axed the mobility allowance and motorised transport grant. It is ten years since the Taoiseach promised disabled drivers a replacement scheme and still, we have nothing. The Government had the opportunity to provide the funding to make long-term improvements to disabled people’s lives, and it passed. If it is not going to fund the sector now, with such a high surplus available to it, then I have no faith that it will.

We in the Social Democrats would have put our money where our mouths are. We allocated a total package of €534.1 million for disability services. We would have introduced a €30 weekly cost of disability payment in addition to increases in core social welfare rates. We would also have made provision for pay parity for community and voluntary workers who provide so many of these services, and we would have ensured adequate funding for the huge capacity gaps that exist in services. This was all missing from the budget. It seems like the Government forgot about disability services. I presume it has the same excuse for mental health, because the phrase "mental health" is used three times in the budget. There is no detail, no funding, no nothing. Does the Government actually think that is good enough?

This budget had the power to be transformative and to tackle some of the major problems facing the country in areas like housing, healthcare, disability, climate and education. Instead of radical reform, what we got was minimalism and tweaking around the edges from a Government that is out of ideas for the future of this country. I am still wondering, who was this budget for? The Government claims it is a budget for housing, for child poverty and for struggling families, but where is the proof?

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