Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

We set out to make this budget about putting money back in people's pockets, protecting children and families and ensuring our climate and environmental challenges can be met head-on. We framed it as a budget for children, your pocket and our planet. To me, the most significant aspect is the €14 billion infrastructure, climate and nature fund. It safeguards continued capital investment to ensure we keep to our commitments to carbon neutrality, to reverse the loss of nature and biodiversity, and to improve water quality, air quality, the natural world and the habitats upon which we rely. Never before has such a forward-thinking commitment been made by any Government for resilience and the means to seriously provide for climate action and the protection of nature. It has been broadly welcomed by the environment and climate NGOs and commentators. It is widely acknowledged as a strong and significant green aspect to this budget.

I highlight my party’s election commitment that if we went into government, we would reduce childcare costs. I thank my Green Party colleague the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, for steadfastly delivering that commitment in this budget. Parents of young children at that very expensive time in life will see a 50% cut in childcare fees delivered within the lifetime of this Government. Those highly trained, brilliant and committed childcare workers will also be supported. I hope to see this expanded soon to registered childminders. It amounts to a very significant saving for parents at, as I have said, what is a very expensive time in life.

Transport is the subject of another key Green Party commitment. When we cut bus and rail fares by 20% for everybody last year, and by 50% for everyone up to 24 years of age, the response was very positive. It has created significant savings for everybody who takes public transport, but particularly for young people. Public transport numbers have bounced back way beyond what they were at pre-Covid levels. Those up to 26 years of age can travel for half-price, which very much to be welcomed, especially if one is lucky enough to be under 26 years of age.

The Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, has not only managed to reduce rail fares significantly and thereby increase the use of public transport, but he has also expanded services. There is a new or improved rural bus service delivered at the rate of one per week. In Wicklow, I have seen extra rail services put on. The DART expansion to Wicklow town is progressing very well. I admit that much more needs to be done in transport because we can see it is over capacity. That shows the pent-up demand. We guarantee that we will supply the buses and trains that are needed.

On electricity credits, it is significant that three more payments of €150 will go to homes struggling with electricity costs. We know that gas and electricity suppliers are starting to reduce costs. We are taking money back from those energy suppliers that made excessive profits during the hike in energy costs. We are taking it back in this windfall tax legislation and giving it back to people who need it in the form of energy credits. This is also happening through the Department of the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan.

Many people have put up solar panels on their roofs. I believe that up to 60,000 or 70,000 roofs out there have solar panels on them now. As a result of this budget, people can now earn twice as much tax-free from that feed-in tariff and the excess energy they put back into the grid. If one assumes that we are talking about approximately 1,900 kW per household at a tariff of roughly 20 cent, and if one multiplies that out by 70,000 homes, one sees that a great deal of money is being paid to those microgenerators out there. That is happening because we took on the solar opportunities head-on. We got rid of the planning requirements; brought in significant grants, reduced the VAT rate to zero and produced this feed-in tariff. It is working and much more is going to happen out there.

In order to get more of that solar on the roof and to get the energy retrofits, which are also above target, we need the workforce to do it. Workforce constraints are probably the biggest constraints we face at the moment. I am glad to see €6 million to €7 million allocated in this budget to develop 16,000 craft apprenticeships. Having taken the craft apprenticeship route, I highly recommend that people should consider it. It is well paid, there is plenty of work out there and there is a good future in it. It is something that anybody in school can consider, or anybody in any job can go back to. Some of the best apprentices I ever trained were mature apprentices. These are people who had done other jobs and came in and decided to do a craft apprenticeship.

I want to briefly comment on the vacant homes tax. It was introduced at a rate of three times the rate of local property tax, LPT, plus the local property tax itself - so effectively four times the LPT rate. In the Finance Bill last year, I asked the then Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, if he would raise it to six times. He said he would consider that and review it where necessary. He has come back this year, through the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, to raise it to five times. I consider that to be heading in the right direction.

My opinion of this budget does not really matter, and nor does that of the Opposition. What matters is what the analysis and the evidence show. The simulating welfare and income tax changes, SWITCH, analysis carried out by the Department of Finance and the ESRI is where the evidence of whether this is a progressive budget is to be found. I am proud that the last four budgets which the Green Party has been part of have been shown to be progressive. In other words, they have sought to support as many sectors as possible and have been shown to favour those who need the financial support the most.

I will briefly return to the comments made by Deputy Ó Murchú on housing. He is correct when he says that more needs to be done on housing. I agree that we need greater, further and more rapid action on housing. This year's housing budget of over €5 billion is the highest capital investment budget that is ever going to be seen in housing. The Land Development Agency, LDA, and the Department, are building houses out there in Cork, Galway, Dundrum and Limerick. Sinn Féin voted against the LDA and said that it did not want the LDA to be building houses. It voted against the LDA Act. In Bray, Sinn Féin councillors voted against council-led affordable housing projects. If the Deputy’s party does not want the LDA building houses, if it does not want the council building houses and if it has an issue with investors investing in housing; who does it expect to build these houses?

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