Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

There is a level of democratic disrespect in the Government here today. God be with the days when they used say that there were budget leaks. Budgets are not leaked anymore; they are broadcast fully in preview before the debate even happens here. The fact that we have TDs from all parts of the country here representing tens of thousands of citizens, yet the Ministers responsible for this budget had not even the democratic manners to stay in the Chamber and listen to the debate in full, which is a big problem as well.

This is a high-octane election budget. It unashamedly seeks to buy citizens’ votes with their own money. It is a McCreevy mark 2 budget. Universal payments are seen as more about raising poll figures than raising people out of poverty. These once-off payments will disappear like snow off a ditch, and they will not get to the heart of what is happening with poverty.

It is important to realise that the people of Ireland are not stupid. They can see the difference between promises and delivery. I will give a couple of examples. The Government has decreased the middle rate of USC, instead of spreading that decrease over the lower rate and middle rate. This means a person on €100,000 will now pocket significantly more than a person earning €50,000. The electricity credits the Government has promised will be completely eroded by the PSO increases and the carbon tax increase. These once-off payments are like sticking plasters for major problems within society. Nothing is being done about the fact that the electricity prices in this country are the highest in Europe. The electricity credits will not help that in the long run. The Government is giving money with one hand and taking with the other. Last year, the amount of money the Government got from fuel taxes was the biggest in the history of the State. The Government pocketed €3.8 billion in fuel taxes in the heart of a cost-of-living crisis. Today, we will see an increase in petrol and diesel again on the same day we see the price of oil spike as a result of the war in the Middle East.

The Government is trumpeting the fact that there will be bigger investment in childcare, yet childcare providers around the country are closing down on a weekly basis. Parents have to book their children into a childcare centre when their child is born. I agree wholeheartedly with the increase in child benefit for newborn babies. Aontú called for that to be given at the fourth month of pregnancy because parents need that money before the baby is born rather than afterwards.

The elephant in the room in this regard is the shocking level of Government waste. The backdrop to this whole budget has been the children's hospital, the €300 million spent on metro north and not a shovel put in the ground and the 110 electric buses that did not move an inch and a half for a year and a half because there was nobody to apply for the charging units. There is the €20 million spent on ventilators during Covid that never worked. In recent times, we have heard of the "Gucci" bike shed and yesterday we had the "Tiffany" modular homes. We have a Government that has managed to spend more on a 45 sq. m modular home in County Laois than it costs to build a house of twice that size in the middle of Dublin. The level of Government waste is excruciating. There is a bonfire of taxpayer money and none of that has been addressed in this budget. That is a major problem. The motto of this Government is "You will get less for more." The Government will provide less infrastructure for more money into the future.

In terms of the targets we see in the budget, it is very hard to take this Government seriously. It has a bit of the feel of Del Boy saying we will all be millionaires next year. The Government comes up with these targets every year for new house builds, especially social housing, and it never meets them. Last year, the Government was out by 2,500 as regards the number of social houses to be built. At the same time, we are spending €1.6 billion on RAS and HAP payments and washing it down the drain. We are getting nothing for that investment which is disappearing every single year.

On regional development, Ireland is becoming a city state. We have people commuting from Connacht, Ulster and Munster into Dublin every day at massive economic, environmental and emotional cost for their families because they are away from them for so long. Yet, we see nothing about the rebalancing of Ireland in this budget. There is no plan for a Navan to Dublin rail line. There is no plan to bring forward the western rail corridor. There is no plan to open an accident and emergency department in the mid-west to deal with the crisis there. We had a promise of flood defences in Midleton, County Cork, in 2017 and there is not even a planning application ready to go in yet to get those flood defences built. When it comes to investment for IPAS residents, the majority of locations - 87% - in which they are housed are in the hospitality sector. A full one third of hotels outside of Dublin are now taken up with contracts with the State. There is nothing to deal with that. There is no talk about consultation and engagement with communities. The authoritarian approach by the Minister continues. The hospitality sector is on its knees, and we see pubs and restaurants close weekly. There is no talk of a VAT reduction to 9% for that sector.

One of the major problems I find with this Government is that it does not do reform, so the HSE is in major trouble regarding overspend and waste. The HSE spent €2.5 billion on compensation in the past ten years. The number of adverse incidents in the HSE is significantly increasing, which is leading to damage done to patients and high levels of compensation. However, the reason that damage is being done in the HSE is that there are too few doctors and nurses because we are in an international recruitment market and people are being paid better in Australia and Canada. The Australian Government, incredibly, is recruiting more gardaí at the moment than the Irish Government. We need to make sure that in these budgets we provide proper pay, terms and conditions for doctors, nurses and gardaí so they can live in their local communities.

The other issue I want to discuss is capacity. We need to create capacity with regard to doctors, nurses and construction workers. The way to do that is workplace planning, but that means investing in our university sector. It is incredible that right now more than 50% of the students in our medical schools are from outside the EU. The reason is that the medical schools are dependent on the high fees these students pay to keep them going. When these students finish their degrees most of them head home and we have a major problem with doctors working in our health sector as a result. We must make sure we invest properly in the university sector to get the doctors and nurses we need and to deal with falling GP numbers throughout Ireland.

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