Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Deputy Michael McGrath on his appointment. I thank him for his service in this House over many years and for his kindness to me when shadowing him as I was the Labour Party opposition spokesperson over the last few years. I congratulate the Deputy but I must also warn him, as the Leader of Sinn Féin did, that this House and the Irish people will not stand by the Government and him, as Commissioner, in supporting the reappointment of Ursula von der Leyen as President of the Commission. That is plainly obvious.

I congratulate the Deputy Jack Chambers on his appointment as Minister for Finance. It is an enormous achievement of which he and his family can rightly be proud. Much has been made of the Deputy Chambers' youth. The commentary from some quarters has been nothing short of patronising. Age simply should not matter, but his performance and delivery will. That is how he will be judged. Deputy Chambers is from a generation of young people that is the first in the State's history that will likely do less well than their parents. They are highly educated but locked out of housing. It is a generation picking up the pieces from a climate catastrophe created by other generations. Deputy Chambers will owe it his generation to be much more radical than his predecessors were prepared to be. Being a young Minister for Finance will not matter if he is as conservative as the rest.

We live in a rich country that feels so poor and the new Minister will have a limited time to make a difference but he can. His big task is the delivery of budget 2025 if he gets to bring that budget to the House at all. The scale of the challenges facing our society and our economy are big but they can be addressed. October's budget must show that Fianna Fáil once again understands something it has not comprehended for most of its recent history, namely that it is only the State, led from the centre, that has the authority, the mandate, the power, the capacity and the resources to transform lives, societies and our environment. I ask that Deputy Chambers will not be a conservative but that he will be a reformer and show us that he is different. The deprivation and child poverty rates in the State should shame us in this very rich country. The new Minister for Finance cannot afford to not take radical action with his Government colleagues to give every child a decent start in life. The new Minister should commit always to making work pay, not simply through tax cuts but by resisting Fine Gael's efforts to backslide on the living wage. He will be under pressure to deliver a cost-of-living package and if he truly wants to make it easier to get by in Ireland in 2024 and 2025, he must use the money we do have, and which we can spend, on better access to improved health services, on education and transport services, to build more homes and to support renters with security, and not merely small tax breaks. Under this Government, the purchasing power of the pension has fallen off a cliff. This is to Fianna Fáil's shame.

Heed the Central Bank's warning that the economy is at risk of overheating, do not do anything in the budget to tip it over the edge, do not fuel the fire, listen to the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, when they say that premature tax cutting at the same time as spending hikes risks tipping the economy over the edge - it is a long way back from there. Dump the reckless fiscal gimmickry that IFAC has quite rightly accused Deputy Michael McGrath of engaging in. Stop pretending that extra health spending and the resources we spend on accommodating those who come to Ireland fleeing war in Ukraine is accounted as a once-off expenditure. It is core spending. Do not insult the intelligence of this House and its citizens. Account for it in the way it should be.

I ask Deputy Chambers to take seriously the work of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare. Two years on, this Government continues to blank the commission's report. Show that commission the respect its work deserves and start implementing its measures. Our tax base is far too reliant on corporation tax from three to four big companies. We all know that the base is in danger of narrowing but this Government ignores recommendations, for example on ending expensive tax breaks in non-productive parts of the economy. Fine Gael has this weekend been throwing shapes on inheritance tax. I ask Deputy Chambers to do his generation a favour and stop reinforcing unearned privilege.

If he wants to support enterprise, and he should, I ask him to use the tax system to promote indigenous Irish firms and help them to bridge the yawning productivity and innovation gap we suffer from in this country. I ask him to help Irish unicorn firms to scale up, go global and stay global in future. While I am at it, I ask him to change tack and back international efforts to support international proposals now emerging concerning the introduction of a 2% wealth tax on billionaires. There is an open-and-shut case for doing it.

I wish the Minister of State well in his new role. He has ascended to very high office and he is to be congratulated. With this elevation comes enormous and onerous responsibility. In the short time he has in this new role, he can make a mark. More importantly, he can make a difference and help to change the direction of this country if he chooses to do so.

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