Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would like to put forward a question to the people in Ireland and to all the different generations of people who have voted for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and other parties. I ask them today whether their children and grandchildren are for sale because that is what this budget is. The Government is trying to buy the votes of those who have voted for those parties for decades. I will break it down for the people of Ireland who have voted for those parties for years and ask them again why they are going to sell out their children and their grandchildren.

First, there are the fuel costs. The Government has raised the cost of fuel with the carbon tax. What does that mean to people in Ireland? On one side the Government is giving them an increase - and I welcome all the increases being given - but on the other side I want to see people being able to withstand the increases so they do not have to raise their prices. Let us take transport, for example. Everything that comes here and there to every household in Ireland uses transport. The Government has increased a carbon tax for every person who has a vehicle in this country. It includes the haulage sector, the person who goes out working and who has to drive to work because there is no transport network, the taxi service and the private bus operator. The Government has just taxed every single one across the country in carbon tax. The Government has already taken 50% of fuel costs in taxes and it has gone past that now in taxes.

There is also an effect to the raising of the minimum wage, a raise which I welcome. As an employer myself I welcome it but on the other side, one must look at the people who have to sustain the increases. How are they going to sustain the increases in the hospitality sector, for instance? We asked the Government to reduce the VAT rate from 13.5% to 9%. The Government brought them up here all last week or the week before and said it was going to do something for them. They now know that there are two standards to the Government. It will bring them up, hoping for the best, but will send them home. That 13.5% VAT rate means the hospitality sector and all the small cafes and small restaurants that are putting people through college and helping them go through college also now face an increase in wages. While I welcomed this measure, the Government has given the sector nothing to sustain it. What have they got to do now? They must pass the costs onto people coming into their restaurants to eat. They must put up the price of a cup of coffee. The last time the Government raised the VAT rate from 9% to 13.5% it put 70 cent onto the price a cup of coffee. It put €4 onto a plate of food and now the Government has done it again. Not only has the Government crippled the businesses that are trying to employ people in this country it is now putting them out of business. Last year, 615 businesses went out of business. I want to ask people from every one of the Government parties, when they are visiting Limerick or Galway, to go around to the people in the hospitality sector and ask them if they are happy with the Government. They are not going to be happy. The Government parties have come up here for decades doing the same thing but they have destroyed the people who actually put in the work and built communities and villages.

Reference was made to infrastructure but the infrastructure is only built in populated areas. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, might go around Limerick. For 40 years they have been waiting for an upgrade on the sewage system in Askeaton. Two thirds of Limerick, including Oola, Kilfinane and Dromcolliher - I will go through all of them if the Minister of State likes - have sewage systems that are defunct. For decades, the Government has been saying it was going to put money into infrastructure. Now it talks about infrastructure today through Uisce Éireann. I asked Uisce Éireann last month for a breakdown on funding that was put into the scheme in Croom, County Limerick. I got an email back today that €5 million had been spent in upgrading a water pipe to Croom for the surrounding areas. They have been bringing in truckloads of water for the last month and putting it into the pipes to keep water in the pipes at a cost of €200,000. That is what it has cost. Uisce Éireann is leaking at the seams and yet the Government keeps pumping money into it. It is not value for money.

Consider the sports capital grants, again which I welcome.

Every sports capital grant application is done by volunteers, putting the paperwork together to seek funding. Everything they do in their criteria is value for money. Why? It is because they have to meet the Government criteria. However, if the Government does any infrastructure, such as a bike shed costing €336,000 or €1.4 million for a security hut, it goes over budget on every single thing. The children's hospital is an example of the lack of accountability from any person in government. That is a problem.

We now go to the health sector. I welcome the increases that came for the carers but they asked the Government to do away with the means test. Again, the Government failed them. What did the Government do on the other side? For carers who have to travel around the country, the Government decided to give an increase here but to take it back from them in carbon tax. This takes it back from people in their day-to-day living, buying groceries, with the tax on the trucks that bring the food to shops. It is a tax on people driving to work and collecting their children. It is all about tax. This is what the Government has done. It has taken it from the poor to give it to the rich, when it should be the other way around. The Government should be protecting the people. It has no concept of what can be built in a community and what a community can deliver. There is no accountability on the part of the Government.

Let us look at the hospital service and UHL in particular. I have been here for five years giving out about UHL. The Government has now finally set up an investigation into six people in the hospital. Some €56 million has been wasted on legal fees fighting cases, when the Government should just have admitted there was something wrong and attempted to fix it. During those five years, Aoife Johnston has passed away, God rest her soul. The case of Jessica Sheedy in Limerick has been waiting six years for an investigation. During this time, someone is being fully paid while the investigation is going on and the Government has not brought this up. Every time they look at something, it has been delayed. There is no accountability.

Today, I listened to the two Ministers giving their speeches and they mentioned farming. Then they mentioned carbon tax. The same people who are trying to help us with carbon - the foresters - are thrown to the wolves with the ash dieback problem. Eamon Ryan wants to let the wolves run around the countryside. The people who have been affected by ash dieback have been failed by the Government with the importation of trees. These people have been offered a measly €2,000 per acre to get rid of the forestry they have and replant it, after 30 years. The people who are trying to protect the planet have been screwed over by the Government with taxes. Are the children and grandchildren of the people who have voted for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael for decades for sale for the sake of a couple of euros in a budget made by civil servants for civil servants?

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