Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

It is backing business at the expense of workers. That is exactly what it is doing.

The reason this Government - or the next Government if it is returned - is not going to introduce a transformative budget is that it will not break from its reliance on the market. In other words, it will not break from the prioritisation of profit for Apple, corporate landlords, private developers, private health insurers, private hospital providers and so on. Their profit comes before the needs of people affected by the housing and health crises, the crisis in terms of additional needs and so on. What is required is planning, public ownership and putting people's needs first but this Government is absolutely allergic to that,

I will go into a bit more detail now on some areas of the budget. If anything demonstrates that this budget is an attempt to buy the election, it is the Government's treatment of young people. The Government is not attempting to buy young people but is attempting to drive them out of the country. There is almost nothing in this budget for young people because the Government has given up on attracting their votes. Its best hope is to simply drive them out. Let us take the issue of jobseeker's allowance for young people. One of the horrific measures introduced in the context of the financial crash was to separate out and create a new rate for people under 25, effectively cutting the dole for young people and 16 years later, this discrimination against young people continues. In the context of a massive budget surplus, the Government is continuing with this discrimination, leaving some young people, increasingly driven to live at home because of the housing crisis, on €141.70 per week. Then there is the issue of so-called sub-minimum wage rates. Passed by this Dáil well over a year ago, then delayed by a year, was a Bill that we introduced to get rid of these exploitative rates allowing people to be paid less than the minimum wage. The Low Pay Commission unanimously recommended the ending of these sub-minimum wage rates but there is nothing on this in the budget. The Government is going to continue with these sub-minimum wage rates, allowing the legal super-exploitation of thousands of young workers who can be paid as little as €9.45 per hour.

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