Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will share time with Deputy Duncan Smith. The Ireland of 2024 is a country of winners and losers. It is a country of contrasts and contradictions. It is a paradox of plenty, if ever there was one. We have record corporation tax receipts and record numbers of our citizens without a home. We have the highest number of people ever at work, yet one in five of these workers subsists on wages below a living wage. We have surpluses the envy of Europe, with public services and creaking infrastructure that should shame us. We have an apparent economic miracle papering over the cracks of the daily, sadly now routine, indignities of crushing child poverty.

The Irish Boundary Commission was set up 100 years ago this year. It formally divided our island, and that was a tragedy. A century on, the policies of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have succeeded in dividing the people of this State socially and economically, winners versus losers. It need not have been this way, but these were the choices made by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. Politics is about choices. A few short years ago, our country was bust and our options were limited. Now, for the first time in our history, after a decade of uninterrupted growth, money is not the problem. It is a lack of imagination and vision that is holding our country and its people back. The Labour Party is different. We are ambitious for Ireland. Our country is at a crossroads and it needs a change of direction. An election should be called now. Never before was the Labour Party, the progressive centre left, more needed in government to shape a better and fairer future for this country to help get the basics of a rich country right.

On the way here this morning, I passed a takeaway food van parked across the road from 3Arena and the name on it was "It's All Gravy". These days, that is given to mean it is all good, but it is not all good - far from it. The literal phrase I read this morning is apt for this so-called giveaway budget day. There is gravy everywhere, a deep dinner place drowned in tasty once-off measures to hide the fact and reality that there is very little real meat on offer to sustain anyone. It is an insult to the intelligence of the Irish people. The tragedy of this Government is that it has contrived to waste a boom. Strangled by its own crippling conservatism, the Government's ideology has made this rich country feel so poor, all presided over by Schrödinger's Taoiseach, Deputy Harris, the man who manages to be both in government and in opposition at the same time.

It used to be the case that no thought was spared for TikTok. Now, no thought from the Taoiseach, no matter how trivial or frivolous, goes unsent to grateful hacks dutifully and diligently reporting on them. The conduct of this budget is a case in point. Frankly, I was fully expecting to see copies of the Ministers' budget speeches in my pigeonhole in Leinster House this morning when I picked up my post. They were not there. They were everywhere else. The utter disrespect shown to the Members of this House and, indeed, Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and Green Party backbenchers, with the farcical feeding frenzy of leaks going back to spring, is breathtaking. The Ceann Comhairle believes in the primacy of this Parliament. I believe he should make public statements on this. It is damaging. The Government is playing every day with people's lives so people can get their names in the newspapers. It is self-serving and arrogant. It does politics a disservice. It undermines good government and militates against the kind of big thinking that this country needs and that this Government, on all of the evidence over many years, is simply incapable of doing. It is a political culture, with some exceptions, dominated by ego. It is all about getting your name in the paper rather than getting things done. It is about time we grew up. Other mature European countries - sophisticated democracies - do their budgets professionally and respectfully. They actively involve parliament, not actively bypass and ignore it. Things need to change.

The business of governing the Ireland of 2024 is an accountability-free zone. There is so much cash on the hip that Ministers feel they can avoid and evade responsibility for indefensible cost overruns on key public projects like our long-awaited children's hospital. They are always on hand to take credit but never around to accept responsibility. We live in very peculiar political times but real accountability is on the way. We need an election now. That is where accountability happens, as it should.

This summer's non-stop briefings were revealing. It was an insight into the narrow ideological mindsets of parties that were once rivals but are now indistinguishable from one another. You could paper the walls of Leinster House ten times over with pearl-clutching opinion pieces from Fine Gael TDs and Ministers on the injustices of inheritance tax thresholds. I was on the verge of calling Amnesty International to see if it could help the Minister of State, Deputy Richmond, with a postcard campaign. I was very worried about him. Where is the anger? Where is the same anger over the injustice of nearly 15,000 of our citizens in this rich country living in emergency accommodation?

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