Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has not answered my question yet. I asked why anybody in this House should get money back from the tax system and why there should be cash energy payments. Maybe the Minister will answer that question after my third time asking. Competitiveness is impacted. The top three issues, according to IBEC, are a lack of affordable housing, childcare and healthcare. Those are the things that make us uncompetitive and that should be addressed.

On refundable tax credits, 6% of the working population are living in poverty. We refer to them as the working poor. Their incomes are so low that they cannot keep their heads above water. We in this House and most people earning over €20,000 got the benefit of the two increases in the tax credits in the budget. People earning the lowest incomes did not get the benefit of that. Again I ask why it is that the people on the lowest incomes get the least from the budget. Surely at a minimum what the Government should be aiming to do is ensure that people on the lowest incomes, who are working and living in poverty, should get the full benefit of the tax credits. The only way to do that is to make those tax credits refundable. In doing that, our system is made fairer and the poorest people are helped to survive and cope with the high cost of living. Such action would also introduce a tool which enables this and future Governments to target funding and money where they are most needed.

For all of those reasons, we need to examine this and we need to be honest about the winners and the losers from the budget. We need to stop talking about percentage benefits and talk about who gets what money in the budget and yet again, the more you earn, the more you get. That seems to be the hallmark of the budgetary approach of this Government and it is a disgrace in a situation where we have unacceptable levels of poverty in this country.

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