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

I want to start today by again wishing Deputy Leo Varadkar the very best in the future. A record of public service in this House that extends for nearly two decades, including 13 years in Cabinet and two terms as Taoiseach, has to be commended. It requires hard work, dedication and many personal sacrifices. Those sacrifices were not just borne by the outgoing Taoiseach but by his partner and his family, and I think it is important to acknowledge that and their contribution, too.

Today the Dáil will elect Deputy Simon Harris as the third Taoiseach of this Government. It is a job more demanding than most of us can imagine. On a personal note, I would like to wish him well as Taoiseach and in his new role as leader of Fine Gael. However, we are facing serious challenges as a country. To address them, we need new ideas. For that, we need a new Government. Today the Social Democrats will not be supporting his nomination. We need to see a radical change in approach to the crises facing us in housing, healthcare, disability services, childcare and climate action. The change we need cannot be delivered by a Taoiseach from the same party with the same programme for Government and the same policies. The issues we face and will continue to face will worsen until we elect a Government with a fundamentally new approach.

A Cheann Comhairle, I start by welcoming the incoming Taoiseach's commitment to set up a new Cabinet committee on disability. A focus on disability is so desperately needed. Successive Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party Governments have left disability services threadbare, underfunded and understaffed.

Disabled people and their families have to fight every step of the way for access to basic services. This is ruining people's lives. We have heard enough platitudes and vague commitments. We need a Government that will provide the services that people are entitled to, such as assessments of need, essential therapies and personal assistance hours. The list goes on and on. We need a Government that recognises the cost of disability by providing a cost-of-disability payment. We need a Government that will replace the personal transport schemes that Fine Gael abolished over a decade ago and promised to replace at the time. We need a Government that will provide pay parity for section 39 workers if we are to have any hope of staffing our children's disability network teams. We need a firm commitment to naming the date for the long overdue ratification of the optional protocol.

People's lives are being destroyed due to completely inadequate or non-existent services. These are services that the Government does not seem to believe it has an obligation to provide. With that fundamentally damaging ideology at the heart of disability policy, I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that will improve the provision of disability services in this country is a change of Government. I hope the new Taoiseach will prove me wrong.

The housing disaster is the biggest challenge facing the country. We need a Government that will treat it as the national emergency that it is. People on average incomes have lost all hope that they will ever be able to buy homes like their parents did. The lives of more than 500,000 adults who are still sleeping in their childhood bedrooms have been put on hold. We speak about the lockdown generation a great deal in the Chamber. Deputy Harris has spoken about that generation quite a lot over the past few days. We all recognise how disastrous that reality is for people's lives and their mental health and what happens when the absolute basics of adulthood are kept out of reach and they are to have unable privacy, independence or feel any hope for a future for themselves in Ireland.

How can anyone start a family when they are a letter away from eviction and being given a few short weeks to pack up their belongings and struggling to find a new home in the middle of a housing crisis? People need to find homes they can afford to rent that are close enough to their workplaces, children's schools and the homes of their parents who provide the childcare they otherwise cannot access or afford. This is all stressful, damaging and preventable.

There is another way. We could introduce a no-fault eviction ban to stem the rising tide of homelessness and provide some security for renters. We could introduce a three-year rent freeze in order that those struggling to pay rent would have some relief and time to find their feet. We could stop the bulk buying of homes by investment funds in order that first-time buyers are not bidding against billion euro funds. Crucially, we need to acknowledge that the developer led model of housing dependent on the private sector for delivery has failed. We could address the affordability crisis at the heart of this housing emergency by delivering social and affordable homes at scale so that the dream of homeownership can become reality. All of this is achievable. Nobody is saying that it is easy, but none of the crises facing us in housing is insurmountable. We just need the political will and determination to change course.

The State needs to stop outsourcing its responsibilities to the private sector. Essential public services like housing, healthcare, disability services and childcare are fundamental human rights. They should be provided by the State and accessible to all, regardless of income. Every party in the House signed up to a plan stating as much for the future of our health service. In 2017, when the incoming Taoiseach was health Minister, there was cross-party support for the Sláintecare plan, but implementation has been painfully slow. Nearly 900,000 patients are on waiting lists and every day hundreds of people languish on hospital trolleys all over the country, while children with scoliosis wait in agony for years for surgery.

Providing quality, accessible and timely healthcare is a basic requirement of the State. However, the situation in the mid-west has deteriorated to the extent that people are afraid to go to the emergency department of University Hospital Limerick. This should not and cannot be tolerated. What changes is the Government going to implement to make a real difference? What is it going to do in the next year that it has not done in the past four years? How can we rely on the Government to deliver crucial healthcare reform when seven years into the ten-year Sláintecare plan, we are nowhere near where we should be?

Too often, the Government has excelled at climate rhetoric but failed at climate action. We have a responsibility to farming and coastal communities and future generations to take steps that are ambitious enough to meet the enormous challenge ahead of us. Instead, we are missing our targets. The leader of the Green Party summed it up perfectly. We are only warming up. We are on course to face up to €8 billion in fines by 2030. Every second we wait to take action increases the existential threat and costs we face down the line. It increases the risk of floods, failed crops, coastal erosion and irreversible damage to our ecosystem.

We need a Government that will approach climate action not as a burden but as an opportunity. We could have warmer homes, pristine waters, protect and rejuvenate our biodiversity and become a net exporter of energy by the end of the decade. We could be held up as the example for the future of agriculture. We have the resources to make all of this happen and help the communities and industries that will be most impacted. This is why the Social Democrats want to see the budget surplus used to create a €6 billion climate transformation fund that would provide funding for rural communities and farmers to ensure a fair transition. Change is coming and we have to embrace it. The approach of the Government of leading farmers to a cliff edge before pushing them off is not just dishonest; it has been a disaster for the future of agriculture and our natural environment.

The potential and desire for change in Ireland is huge. People know we can do better. They are demanding that we do better. I do not believe that a better Ireland can be achieved with more of the same old approach that we have seen from Fine Gael for the past 13 years. Fine Gael has been in office for almost my entire adult life. The incoming Taoiseach has been in office for almost his entire adult life. Where is the new energy? Where is the new approach? Honestly, I cannot see it. The Social Democrats will not support the nomination of Simon Harris today because we want a new approach. For that, we need a change of Government.

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