Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Some 20% of kids, one in five children in this country, have to go without a new winter coat this year, yet more was written over the summer about the tax implications for a tiny number of families who stand to inherit businesses than how a party that promised two years ago to fix child poverty might consign that scandal to history. The Minister, Deputy Burke, spent most of the spring and summer leaning on the independent Low Pay Commission to cool the jets on the delivery of a living wage for the lowest paid workers in this country. That is all we need to know about where Fine Gael is at at the moment. That was not always the case. Why is it that every small win for working people in this country is framed by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil as a loss for business? That is not social democracy. That is not the kind of country I believe in and for which I want to fight. It is virtue signalling at its very worst, from a conservative Government that has chosen sides and is damn proud of it. This is a Government that has chosen sides, and it is proud of it, boxing off Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil voters while poor kids, the lowest income families and poor public services will have to wait.

This budget should have given all families and children the hope of a better future. It should have truly rewarded work by using our wealth, not merely to cut taxes but to cut the cost of childcare, healthcare and education and deliver a real social wage, the thing that really matters for families and working people across this country. It should have heralded the radical step change demanded to build the homes we need. It should have delivered the massive investment we need to make homes warm, invest in renewables and cut emissions. It should have finally decided that, together as a country, we would fix the tattered social contract - the idea that if you work hard and play by the rules, you will get on in life. This budget is the last of this Government's five and it has delivered a resounding "No" on all fronts.

Today could have marked a real turning point, the day when Ireland started a journey of real transformation. I cannot remember the number of times I heard the Minister for Finance use the word "transformation" or similar words. He did not mean a single word of it. The fiscal decision is stunning but this Government's plans are not. This is a country that is swimming in cash, but this is a budget for the status quo, straight out of the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil "Sure, it will be grand" school of government. Even when we lock away excess business tax receipts, the Apple tax stash and the money from selling a stake in AIB, the surplus is striking. Today is an extraordinary missed opportunity. It is a missed chance to properly paint a picture of a better future. It provides €10 billion in new spending, €6 billion to the two new wealth funds, which we support, and, to top it all off, over €14 billion in an unexpected windfall to spend on future-proofing our country. Yet, with this budget, the Government has managed to make all this look like a problem, not an opportunity. That is one hell of a trick to pull off. It is a budget with no central theme in which nothing adds up. There is no compelling narrative and no ideas, no plan and no burning desire to put our wealth to good, responsible use. If there is a plan, this is just not it.

The eye-watering corporation tax gains have taken the Government by surprise like rabbits caught in the headlights. The seeds of much of the largesse we are reaping today were sewn many years ago, helped by the Labour Party. This bonanza fell into the Government’s lap. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, was described on “Morning Ireland” today as being a jammy Minister for Finance. “Jammy” is a word that, unfortunately, is underused. It is a great word. It is true that he is jammy, and more power to him, but whereas he needed to use this opportunity wisely, he did not.

Fine Gael tells us constantly that it is the party of responsible economic and fiscal management. It is not, and the evidence shows that. This Government’s record shows that claims of responsible management of the people’s money are wholly unwarranted. I say that for three reasons. Although completely made up to pretend that Fine Gael could let Fianna Fáil back into the house without burning it down, the Government keeps breaking its own 5% spending rule. It will now be a heady 6.9% for 2025. Last year, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil knowingly introduced a health budget that was fraudulent. It was a work of fiction. Only in Ireland would a health Minister responsible for a fictional and fraudulent budget manage to remain in his job. He should have resigned or been sacked. The fiscal gimmickry goes on unabated. Another €4.5 billion was hidden away, described as “contingencies”, and the Government pretends to be taken by surprise every year.

Housing is the greatest workers’ rights and economic issue we face, yet we are seeing the same old tired policies that have driven prices and rents higher and higher, resulting in 4,500 children being without a home in August. This Government lacks the ambition and willpower to build enough homes. Ideology is again getting in the way. For once, the Government does not lack financial firepower. The lack of imagination to transform the housing system is amazing and galling. When plan A fails, Darragh O’Brien resorts to plan A. As the Housing Commission's report reads, "Only a radical strategic reset of housing policy will work." What is the solution for the next few years? To listen to the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, it is to extend the help-to-buy scheme. He wanted to increase its limit to more than €500,000, supercharging expensive homes rather than actually addressing the affordability question.

For generations, developers have been happy to accumulate sites and sit on them. The residential zoned land tax was the measure we were told would stop that, but it is being delayed again. There is no evidence basis for that, only an ideological one, with the Government looking after the people who vote for it. The tax is being fudged. This is a peculiar fudge. When I read the Minister’s remarks, I was taken by how all a farmer who was actively farming land needed to do was to seek an exemption – the farmer would not actually need to get one – and then it would be left up to local authorities, which will only ever dezone or rezone lands under master plans and county development plans that are developed every five years. Will we have a map of exempted sites? What criteria will apply? If land is serviced and zoned for homes, it must be built on. We have no difficulty with exemptions for farm land, but they need to be transparent.

I do not need to remind the Minister of State of the Kenny report, but I will remind her that Labour introduced a Bill to legislate for it in 2021, largely down to the work done in this space by my colleague, Deputy Kelly. We now have the financial firepower to buy up the development sites we have invested in across the country. Let us legislate for the Kenny report and resource the LDA to step in and buy the sites we need. Then we can change the model of development once and for all and build homes in a planned and orderly way when and where they are needed. Private housing supply is being drip-fed into the system at just high enough of a rate to keep it ticking over, but nowhere near high enough to make a dent in the profits of developers and builders. To too many in the sector, housing is seen as an asset to buy and sell, not somewhere to live and raise a family. We need to stop the commodification of housing. The market is doing exactly what the Government’s ideology has set it up to do, namely, create more wealth for asset holders while renters and those trying to have a home of their own get screwed over time and again.

Once again, the Government has made choices. These things do not happen by accident. The Government’s plans for building social and affordable housing raise serious questions. Why are plans still limited to building 10,000 social homes and only 6,400 affordable homes next year? We have the ability, space and capacity to do more, change people’s lives and give people security once and for all. We can build more cost-rental and truly affordable homes. However, the Government is limiting the amount of capital it allocates. The plans for next year are what we in Labour proposed in 2021, and we even admitted then that it would not be enough. That is why Labour has outlined costed plans to bring the targets up to 12,000 social and 10,000 affordable homes per year. It is why we have committed half of the Apple windfall to transforming the Land Development Agency, an initiative that, unlike some others, we supported, into a State construction company to give the State real teeth in the housing market and to building the water infrastructure we need.

The latest wheeze that we read about this week – I am not certain that it found itself into the budget – had to do with measures to encourage living over the shop. We have been discussing this matter for many years. It is time to go back to the drawing board on these issues and do what we used to do. Resource councils with money and staff and they will take over vacant and derelict properties. Dereliction is a disgrace and scandal. It is a form of official vandalism, one almost encouraged by the State by the way we operate and the principle of the primacy of private land. Let us take on those vacant and derelict properties. I note the increase in the vacant levy, but it will be nowhere near enough to disincentivise the hoarding of vacant properties. Those properties need to be brought back into use.

Regarding homelessness, we know that evictions, not immigration, are driving the record levels of family homelessness. The Government will not act to restrict the excuses for eviction, but we know that the cost-rental tenant in situscheme works and allows families to stay in their homes. Across the country, Labour representatives are hearing about people being denied the chance to live securely under the tenant in situ scheme. There is clearly not enough funding dedicated to it. This is why Labour has proposed to increase it by 20% to 1,800 homes next year. Too much of homelessness funding is spent responding to crises when it is already too late. We need to invest in prevention.

A 5% increase in stamp duty will not stop bulk buying, which has increasingly been stripping homes from the market. Why not make it truly punitive? Who is the Government seeking to protect? Do what my colleague, Senator Sherlock, constantly asks the Government to do and extend the increase to apartments as well. Apartments are homes, too.

There is so much cash sloshing around that the Government does not know what to do with it. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have decided to give more tax cuts. That is the perennial Fine Gael answer to a question no one asks. If you cannot get your child an assessment of needs, here is a fiver instead. If you cannot get affordable childcare, here is another fiver and it will be grand. These are performative tax cuts when we need performing public services. Look at the polling. People favour public investment in housing, care, climate, education and public transport over the few euro of their own money the Government is planning on giving them back. Not even the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, the actual representative of working people, wants tax cuts. We need a decent social wage, one that is worthy of a wealthy republic, but we are instead seeing a race to the bottom between the Government parties and Sinn Féin on tax, not to mention on immigration. This never ends well. Who dares to speak of 2007?

I see Sinn Féin has a new policy to give all carers the carer’s allowance. That was dreamed up overnight to take the bare look off a subpar party leader conference speech. It is Labour’s policy; I do not believe it was in Sinn Féin’s alternative budget, which was launched last Thursday. As Sinn Féin’s embattled leader is prone to say, “Here is the thing” – the USC cut that Sinn Féin proposes would cost €2 billion. That is a full three years of non-means-tested carer’s allowance payments for some of the best and most isolated and underappreciated people in this country. With each day that passes with this approach to tax, immigration and whatever you are having yourself, Sinn Féin’s credibility as a self-described left-wing party becomes more discredited. For a left-wing party, Sinn Féin is quite something. It has rarely met a tax it believes is fair or it did not want to get rid of – USC, the local property tax, taxes on the burning of carbon that is killing the planet. The list goes on.

4 o’clock

The €500 million in the Fianna Fáil USC cut of 1% could pay for a full year of targeted child benefit payments to make child poverty history but no, they decided to have a tax cut instead. Labour has no issue with workers' pay going untouched in terms of income tax when they receive a pay rise - that additional piece in terms of the pay rise. That is as it should be. We would allocate €1 billion in a neutral way to do this just this year, but the ever-narrowing of the vulnerable tax base is irresponsible. The same people in the Department of Finance and elsewhere who warn us about the concentration risks of our business tax system - they are right - are the very ones who are supporting reckless decisions on tax here today. Every tax cut comes at a cost to someone. This Government will spend almost as much on tax cuts for next year as it will on new public services and on those who rely on the State for their incomes.

The obsession with cutting the thresholds for inheritance tax is a case in point. The Government will spend €88 million of the money that belongs to working people on giving an even more generous tax break to not only children, but to grandchildren too, of those who stand to inherit very valuable properties, and all in the middle of a housing crisis. I can only conclude that Alan Shatter is living in the head of the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill. That is the cost of rolling out hot meals to every school in Ireland over the next five years. That is the Government's trade-off. This is where this Government's priorities are. They have made a choice. I understand the Government's argument, even if I disagree with it, but it is not consistent. House prices have gone up, then so must the threshold. That is the Government's logic. I get that. However, wages have gone up too, so why does the Government keep the cap on statutory redundancy for a worker who will lose his or her job at €600 per week and not move it to the €1,000 average it is at now? This has not been reviewed in 20 years. Where is the logic? The inconsistency is appalling. The Government has chosen a side and it is telling the 3% of households who will ever stand to benefit from inheritance tax threshold cuts all about it.

What Labour has made clear is that we would not introduce any unfunded tax cuts. There is scope to tax non-productive wealth such as increases to the bank levy and its application to more firms, greater stamp duty on share buy-backs, etc., to get the balance right and, crucially, to take the heat out of the economy. If I were a member of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare, I would be protesting outside here today because its calls for a rebalancing of the tax take with focus on taxing wealth and harmful behaviours has again fallen on deaf ears.

Let me turn now to once-off measures - the most abused term in recent Irish political history. Inflation is slowing but the price of everything is high, and I agree people still need some help. That we need a series of once-off measures at all is an indictment of this Government, an admission of failure that it did not spend what the dogs in the street knew was needed last October to bring weekly social welfare rates and secondary benefits up to scratch. That means the Minister is back now with the temporary bazooka of cash again. The Government needed to increase all core social welfare weekly rates by €25; it did €12. On Saturday, the Minister had €1.5 billion to lash out. Now, it is over €2 billion. On Sunday, the Minister decided he would give us all back more of our own money, and all because he just has not a clue how to spend and invest it. We truly live in extraordinary times. This explains, for example, the Minister's eleventh hour conversion to Labour's idea in our alternative budget of an extra child benefit double payment. That just was not on the agenda until the cash started burning a hole in the Government's pocket last weekend. It is fiscally wrong to keep going with once-off measures. The scattergun measures have, in fact, put a percentage point onto inflation adding an extra €1,000 a year of cost to households and it is those on low incomes who pay the price when costs go up. That is socially irresponsible. What we have in Ireland is a low incomes problem described by commentators as a cost-of-living crisis and this is exacerbated by a failure of regulation, huge energy prices and price gouging in supermarkets. The list goes on. Fine Gael said last year, for example, that it would legislate, after Labour's campaign, to introduce price transparency on groceries. They have not done so. We cannot keep lashing untargeted wads of cash at the problem, but what we can do is pay workers a living wage, get serious about regulating business, put toothless regulators on the side of consumers for once and fix our broken social protection system.

We must fix social protection. Society has accepted there should be a minimum essential standard of living for all citizens but this conservative Government has not. The nature of the internal coalition social welfare battle and pre-budget leaks were troubling. The arguments were described in the Sunday Independentas ideological. I hope they were. They should be. The fake hard men and women in Fine Gael were saying that pensioners and carers should get more of an increase than the unemployed. A warped version of Fine Gael ideology, the deserving poor versus the work shy, is, I suggest, their line for the news. It is dangerous and unbecoming stuff. It was trumped in the end, in fairness, by a bit of decency from Fianna Fáil and the Green Party - not enough decency, by the way, to provide for a pension that should be set at 34% of average earnings. When €20 increases are needed to maintain the value of the State pension, they give €12. There was a time when the old Fianna Fáil would not stand for this but they have drank the Fine Gael Kool-Aid on social welfare.

Where is the €25 cost of disability payment, for example, that Labour and others have argued for? This needs to be explained by a Minister who has limited resources available to her. There is now no difference worth talking about between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. They should just go and merge. Fine Gael says its position on a form of indexation for workers on income tax has moved to Labour's position. Their view on the indexation of social welfare rates has not, and it will not.

I must say my heart leaped when Leo Varadkar, on assuming the office of Taoiseach again two years ago, said he would work day and night to tackle the scourge of child poverty. That rhetoric led us to hope for a children's budget to end child poverty. Last year's budget was not it and neither is this. Everyone knows one cannot and should not break a problems to a child, but Fine Gael did. They have broken an earnest promise to the 30,000 children who have been added to the enforced deprivation statistics since Leo Varadkar made those hollow promises in December 2022. Every child inside that cage of poverty that is so hard to break free from need not become an adult shaped by the long tail and lasting effects and shame and stigma, and the physical and psychological long tail, of growing up with nothing. This can change. There are choices. The unit in the Department of the Taoiseach needs to be made real with a plan, cash and action. Last year the qualified child payment went up a mere €4 a week. Labour has argued that this year it should rise by €15 for over 12s and €6 for younger children, on our way to finally deciding to end the misery of absolutely preventable child poverty by fessing up and saying yes, let us spend €700 million a year on that second tier of child benefit. We welcome some of the moves made today. They should have been done last year. However, let us not just rebrand the qualified child payment as something else; make it matter. Let us agree that all children need every chance in life. Let us invest in DEIS plus. Let us invest in genuinely free education. Let us pass Labour's seven-year-old Bill to end family homelessness. Ending child poverty is within our grasp. It has to be a priority for the next Government and be an election issue. It is by no means a priority, though, in this budget. Let us fight an election on ending child poverty, not on ending the USC.

While we are on the subject of children, Labour, it must be said, is flattered by the Taoiseach's new-found interest in publicly-provided childcare. The problem is there is no sign of it in this budget. I cannot help thinking that the Taoiseach is using Government Buildings as a taxpayer-funded laboratory to road test manifesto ideas for Fine Gael. One journalist at the weekend bemoaned - he was right - the lack of big thinking in politics at present, but this is it - big thinking from the Labour Party leader, Ivana Bacik. It is the Niamh Bhreathnach or Donogh O'Malley moment, as it has been described, that we have been waiting for. Let us end the strange Irish exceptionalism that says we cannot have publicly-funded and publicly-run early years services staffed by skilled professionals in public buildings who are paid well and respected. We are Europeans or we are not. Labour would roll out 6,000 public childcare places in year one across 100 services at a first-year operating cost of €53 million. It can be done. This is the kind of transformational thinking absent from Government. There is no sign of it in the budget and no sign of any meaningful interventions to really bring costs down for parents. We are not serious about an equal start for all children and we are not serious about taking the economy to the next level if we are not serious about transforming our early years education system into the kind of system that is taken as read in comparable European countries.

Just like in childcare, the gaps in terms of skills and competitiveness in Ireland are huge. So are the challenges, especially in the SME sector.

If we are to sustain our economic success and be competitive, we have to invest in future skills, in work training and apprenticeships. I see there is only a 33% short-term cut in apprenticeship fees. Our PRSI levy-based National Training Fund is heading for a surplus of €2 billion, and that is a good thing. Now we see what the Government's plan is to fund third level. It seems it is to keep third level going by raiding that fund at the expense of other initiatives. We want to see free third level for everyone and we need to invest in in-work training too. We have no difficulty with taking some money from the National Training Fund to invest in third level, but it should not only be for third level.

Before handing over to my colleague, Deputy Duncan Smith, I note our view is that the parties of the status quoare simply incapable of fixing the problems we have. The evidence is all around us in housing, lack of progress in offshore wind, anaemic retrofitting programmes, creaking water services and an energy grid not able to meet our current or future demands. The Parliamentary Budget Office report produced last week was very interesting. It states that despite all of this largesse, this Government will invest less in infrastructure than we did in 2008. This is damning. At no point between now and 2030 will those spending plans come close to that 2008 figure. That is truly shocking. Ireland's second century must be an era of investment and that can only be led by parties that believe in their hearts, and know in their minds that only the power of the State has the capacity, the mandate and the authority to do the truly big things we need to see happen, that is, the things that can truly transform Ireland. I note what the Government stated earlier today about the use of money from AIB shares and the Apple tax. Labour will make its case to be part of the next Government, a Government that for once in our history, will have the capacity to truly transform Ireland. We have made it clear how we would deploy the Apple tax money. We have the courage of our convictions and the experience to do so. We would spend €7 billion on housing to seed a State housing construction company through the existing Land Development Agency, with €1 billion of that to support the water network to service land. There would be two-and-a-half billion euro to make major transformative transport projects such as metro, Luas, BusConnects and DART+ happen and €1 billion so the State could invest to make offshore wind generation happen, as well as cutting emissions, keeping homes warm and slashing energy prices and helping to create an industry and new sustainable jobs and businesses. We would fund a street-by-street retrofitting revolution that will matter and deploy €1 billion to create a Sláintecare transition fund, half of which Labour would use to roll out digital health records to make our health service work better for patients and staff alike. This is the level of ambition and clarity of purpose we need to truly change Ireland, an ambition that only Labour has.

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