Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I had planned to start with something else but I have to comment on the contribution by the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, tonight. It was quite something else to spend her minutes talking about the Future Ireland fund and to say this is the most significant thing any Government has done ever in this country, that is, to allow for €4 billion to go into a fund that will, each year, accumulate 0.8% of GDP so we will have €100 billion by 2035. She said to imagine you were a young person now listening to that and how exciting your future be, knowing that we would be able to, for example, have commercial offshore wind floating off the west of Ireland and expand the aviation industry. That last sentence says it all for me. Who in their right mind plans for a future by putting commercial offshore wind on the coast instead of State-run, not-for-profit offshore wind, and at the same time says this will help expand the aviation industry? The Minister of State clearly does not understand anything about science or climate. If that is the future for the young people listening in, I hope more of them will get out and march against this Government's climate policy, which is hallmarked by an unsustainable expansion of data centres and the imposition of a cruel carbon tax that is supposed to get them to change their behaviour, when they live out in the sticks and have no access to public transport or have poorly-insulated homes and have to keep the heating on because they are old and cold. For me, that says this Government is really codding itself.

I know all the devil will be in the detail of this budget when it plays out over the next period of time but like they say, you can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of them all of the time. This budget has utterly failed to deal with the growing crises we have in this country. The crisis in poverty is not a once-off. It will not be dealt with or go away because of once-off payments. That is what this budget is doing. It is giving the poorest a once-off payment to help them pay off debts that they have accumulated in energy and other bills, such as medical bills etc., but it is not dealing with the systemic crisis in poverty.

The housing crisis and homelessness are not a once-off. This budget has done nothing - zero - to deal with that most shocking crisis in homelessness and housing. In fact, I had some constituents asking me about this today. I live in a big working-class area called Ballyfermot. My constituency is littered with working-class areas with second-hand houses. These people are being excluded from the first-time buyers' allowance if they want to buy a second-hand home. It only applies to new housing. Where is the logic in that for a whole swathe of people who live in our city?

To deal with the crisis in climate, I have commented on what I could not believe my ears hearing from the Minister of State earlier about how we will deal with it into the future. It is just incredible. It is incredible tomfoolery to think that is what is going to happen, making out that we can rely on some far-flung technology that does not exist into the future and then all of a sudden in 2035 we will all have a great life. That is 12 years' time.

Pensioners may have gotten a €12 increase today but according to Social Justice Ireland and the figures produced by the CSO, their income will be down by 5.2% because of the lack of attention being paid to their poverty and the choices they have to make in life between food and heating etc. We all know about them. These choices are being made while profiteering and price-gouging continue, particularly in groceries. There are statistics here from Social Justice Ireland showing us that something like 95% of people are worried about the impact of rising food prices. When we discussed this a few months ago in this House, the Minister of State with responsibility for retail, Deputy Richmond, ran off to have a showdown with the supermarket bosses. What happened? Absolutely nothing. Prices have continued to rise, as have profits. Indeed, food inflation is running at 12.2% at the moment and is the biggest concern for most ordinary workers. Many of them are women.

This budget has done nothing to address the crisis of low pay for women because of the type of gender-based jobs they mainly do.

Women earning between €15 and €20 an hour will get nothing, while people who are better paid, such as me, will have a permanent fix in their income such that they will not have to pay more. As the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, pointed out today, a nurse working overtime will pay more taxes on their income than a landlord earning the same sum on a passive income from rent, with which they do not have to do anything.

This budget shows a shocking disregard for the long-term crises in this country and it has failed utterly to deal with them. As I said, the devil will be in the detail over the coming months and we will see what comes out, but most of all, it is ignoring poverty and homelessness among children. At the same time, the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, tells those children to wait until 2035, when there will be windmills and more radiation. What in the name of God sort of rhetoric is that to put to people who live day to day in cruel crises, whether in homelessness or poverty or struggling to get their kids to school and keep them there, where they have to use the hot meals programme, or else go to food banks? The Government should wake up and smell the coffee because this is an outrageous treatment of people when we have never before had as much money in the coffers.

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