Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

My contribution will be an overview of the budget and its context. It was a huge opportunity for the Government to examine the fundamentals in our society that need to be addressed. Instead, this budget is the final nail in the coffin for any idea that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party Government has any plans or intentions to address the problems the country is facing. They are throwing money at people and hoping they will not realise that when these once-off payments are gone - even though they are welcome and anybody getting a double childcare payment twice before Christmas will welcome it - there will still not be enough houses, doctors, services or baseline money coming into people's pockets to allow them to live a decent life in this country.

The Government parties have tried to buy the next election, but in the process they have given up any pretence to have answers for anyone struggling to make ends meet. They are giving once-off payments in an attempt to distract from the fact that the Government is playing catch up with itself after decades of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments that have left a State collapsing under the strain of cuts, privatisation and bank bailouts. We have a surplus of €25 billion that could have been used to target any one of the crises that have developed under the two parties' decades of rule. With that money, we could build tens of thousands of homes under a State-run housing development agency. We could develop a world-leading mental health service or eliminate child poverty and homelessness. We build the services and infrastructure this country is screaming out for. Instead, fundamentally, we get once-off payments that might keep some people's heads above water, but when those payments are gone, how many people will the Government leave who will be living pay cheque to pay cheque or social welfare payment to social welfare payment and struggling without the services or homes we all need?

This budget is a last hurrah of five years of failure by this Government to implement the changes the country needs. Housing prices and rents are still going up while the Government plays catch up with the delivery of social housing, which has been abandoned for decades under the watch of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We have a health service with recruitment freezes while the Government allows skyrocketing overspend on what might be the most expensive hospital ever built. We have public services that are falling apart at the seams. The Government has made it clear again and again that it lacks the political will to address these problems. It has given up. It does not have a plan. It had no real intention in the first place.

In his speech, the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, called eliminating child poverty an absolute priority for this Government. More than 250,000 young children and their families are under the poverty line. The rates of children living in material deprivation and at risk of poverty have risen since 2020 under the Government. This budget was an opportunity to try to resolve these issues. It is, of course, welcome that the hot schools meal programme will be extended to all primary school children and that children aged under nine will not be paying bus fares. However, the ESRI published an extremely detailed roadmap for eliminating child poverty in its third annual report on poverty last year. The Government has failed on every single one of the measures that the ESRI studied. There is no significant increase for a qualified child, no significant increase to the working family payment, no second tier of child benefit and none of the measures that everyone knows we need to take to make a meaningful impact on child poverty rates.

Let us not forget that we have record child homelessness, with an increase of more than 60% since the Government took power. The Ombudsman for Children has called child homelessness a traumatic breach of the rights of children. Is that the record of dealing with child poverty that the Government is celebrating? I do not know what world the members of the Government live in when they stand up here and pat themselves on the back when they have failed by every measure to take any real targeted action on child homelessness or child poverty in this budget. It has abandoned thousands upon thousands of children to deprivation and homelessness. Children are spending their childhoods in hotel rooms or emergency accommodation, with nowhere else to live. Children are growing up seeing their parents struggling to keep them fed, keep them warm and keep them clothed as wages and social welfare do not rise to meet the cost of living. The Government is patting itself on the back for leaving the most vulnerable behind while it gives tax cuts to multimillionaires.

Those children need targeted supports. Children on scoliosis waiting lists, on waiting lists for surgery or waiting for additional needs assessments need targeted supports. People with disabilities need the implementation of the cost of disability report. Instead, everybody gets a bump. Whether it is a child growing up in poverty or a multimillionaire, they get the same. These once-off allocations could have been done with the €25 billion surplus and there would still have been enough revenue increases to make real interventions and to make transformational change in people's lives.

In my area, we have staff in a primary care centre on Old County Road telling older people referred from hospitals that they have no idea what they are being referred to the centre for because it does not have a single public health nurse to deal with them. In Dublin 8 and Dublin 12, there are no early childhood checks because there are no public health nurses. This budget will not give Dublin 8 and Dublin 12 more public health nurses. There is a geographical health deprivation in our area in respect of public health nurses, and I have raised that matter time and time again. I have people coming to me concerning broken sewage pipes in the back gardens and on public roads, and they have been told by Irish Water that it cannot help them this year and they will be put on a waiting list to perhaps get help to them in 2025. These problems would have been dealt with under the local authorities by their water workers before the advent of Irish Water. People would not have been left in this situation with Irish Water saying it does not have the resources.

The budget will not change the long-term economic situation for a woman I am dealing with. She has been working for a State-supported entity for the past 14 years and has not had any real pay increases over those years. She went to the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, as the statutory body to assist in resolving workplace disputes and complaints. The service is fully funded by the public through the Exchequer. The Government set it up as a voluntarist approach to industrial relations. The WRC adjudicated that this woman would get an increase from €14 to €14.85 per hour from 1 April 2023, but the Government's State-supported entity is refusing to pay her. The Government's budget and its policies will not fundamentally change her situation.

I am also dealing with a woman stuck in one room in her parents' house. Every TD is dealing with these issues every day in their constituency offices. People have been on the housing list waiting list for 15 to 18 years waiting to get a three-bedroom house or apartment. None are being built so they are still languishing on the waiting list. Thousands of children are also waiting for medical care, surgeries, assessments of need and school places. This budget will leave them where they are. I have lost count of the number of people coming to my office who cannot find a home, cannot make the rent, cannot get anywhere on the housing list or are being evicted. This budget will do nothing for them. The Housing Commission called for an increase in the size of the social and cost-rental housing sectors to 20% of the national housing stock. The Government has budgeted for 10,000 new social houses next year, which is a drop in the ocean and it is not even an increase on last year.

We are a wealthy country but working-class people see none of it. The top 1% in Ireland owns €232 billion in wealth, whereas the bottom 50% of the population owns only €9 billion in wealth. That level of inequality cannot go on. It is ruining people's lives. There is a deep need for change so ordinary people can get their fair share.

Over the past five years, the Government has proved time and time again that it has no interest in bringing about this change. Decades of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments, propped up by the Green Party and the Labour Party, have left Ireland as a country where the rich keep accumulating more wealth and everybody else struggles to get by. What we need is a Government that will not govern for the wealthy. Ireland is one of the richest countries in the world, with budget surpluses of tens of billions of euro. We need a Government with the political will to do something with the money. What this budget has made clear is that the Government has given up. It is not going to resolve the housing crisis. It is not going to fix our health service. It is not going to change anything fundamentally and it thinks that people are stupid enough to forget all about this if they get a tax credit and lump sum. People will not be fooled by once-off payments when they know they still cannot afford a house. They will not be fooled while the Government lets the 1% and the multinationals run up hundreds of billions of euro in wealth and profits and they will not be fooled by a giveaway election budget by a Government that has given up on making any real fundamental change in people's lives.

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