Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I am going to start with an observation on the reaction to yesterday's budget. When the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, concluded his statement, Fianna Fáil Deputies sprang to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. It was quite loud and lively. The reaction from the population of this country to the budget has been rather different. In the main, it has been to stifle one giant national yawn. People know this could and should have been a budget where they would get real change. Instead, what they got from the Government was spare change. Very few lives are going to be transformed on the basis of the announcements from the Ministers, Deputies McGrath and Donohoe, yesterday.

I want to make a few comments on the issue of housing. Last week, MyHome.ie issued a report, buried within which was a fact that was commented on very little. It stated that one in ten of the population of this State is an adult who lives at home with their parents. They are the locked-out generation who cannot afford to own or rent. What did they get from the Government yesterday? They got a tax break that increased by €250, provided they get no other State supports on their housing, but landlords get a tax break of €600, rising to €1,000, four times the size of the increase for the young worker. That is disgraceful.

The vacant sites tax has gone up. It was three times the local property tax and had very little effect. It has gone up to five times the local property tax, but I predict that will have very little effect either. The Government has gone from giving a tap on the wrist to a slap on the wrist, but speculators are still likely to make more money by leaving properties idle, letting the price rise and pocketing the gains rather than worrying about paying out the few bob on the vacant sites tax. A popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. The Government had market solutions and has stuck with market solutions. It is an insane approach to tackling the housing crisis.

In health, there is the lowest increase in years, at €808 million. Will it be enough even to cater for the increase in the general population, let alone the increase in the ageing population? The budget for new health measures next year was cut by €150 million. That is a recipe for the waiting lists to grow.

I might comment now on two groups, the first of which comprises people who want help with their mental health. Between 5% and 6% of the budget is dedicated to mental health, less than half what is the case in more than one or two European countries. There was no change in yesterday's budget, despite the demand for these services increasing in a post-Covid climate, or at least a post-Covid peak climate.

The second group comprises our transgender population. The healthcare that is provided for them is the worst in the European Union, ranked 27th out of 27 countries. We are at the bottom of the league and have the longest delays in any EU country. The average length of time you have to wait from asking to see a specialist to actually seeing a specialist is, if you are lucky, two and a half years, but you can have to wait up to ten years, whereas the average in the EU is far less than that, and in many countries it is less than one year. We need to invest in a GP-led, informed-consent model, but that investment was not in yesterday's budget.

Turning to climate, the UN Secretary General has stated we have gone from the era from global warming to the era of what has been called global boiling. The US climate scientist Zeke Hausfather stated last week:

This month was, in my professional opinion ... absolutely gobsmackingly bananas ... JRA-55 [I am not quite sure what that refers to but it is obviously some key climate measurement] beat the prior monthly record by over 0.5°C and was around 1.8°C warmer than preindustrial levels.

If that is not a warning, I do not know what it is. What does the Government do? It sets €3 billion of its new infrastructure, climate and nature fund aside to tackle issues, not now but in the future, and on the basis not of a sane, rational way of doing it but of the insane logic of the market. There is €29 million for public transport. The Government needs to invest 20 times that sum to make public transport free, which is what should be done. It was done in Spain and Germany as an experiment last year and it was wildly successful. It should be done throughout Europe, including in this State.

We need retrofitting of every home to at least B2 standard by 2030. That will not happen on the basis of piecemeal market changes but only with a State construction company installing and delivering insulation and solar panels.

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