Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Parliamentary Budget Office prepared a paper for us, which stated: "It has to be acknowledged that the political cycle provides little incentive to plan for medium or long-term needs." It acknowledged that point, and that each Government is driven by short-term needs. However, notwithstanding that acknowledgement, the continuation of that approach by this Government is particularly shocking, particularly worrying and unacceptable given the challenges we face.

It is 75 years since we made that wonderful declaration that we were a republic, which obviously is a work in progress. We have in the budget, for the first time, a surreal surplus of €25 billion, including €14.1 billion from the Apple case that the Government struggled gallantly not to take. That enables us to make the republic a reality in the real sense of what a republic means. The background to this budget that makes transformative action necessary is our declaration of a climate and biodiversity emergency in May 2019. In previous budget speeches, the Taoiseach, the former Taoiseach and various Ministers told us the world was burning but all of that type of language is gone, which is interesting in itself. We declared the emergency and then we had the Covid pandemic, both absolutely requiring transformative action but there is not a sign of that.

We had the Housing Commission report earlier this year but it was never discussed in the Dáil. The commission stated: "Housing must be a unique national priority, supporting social cohesion and economic development." It went on to say that the problems in housing have arisen due to the:

...failure to successfully treat housing as a critical social and economic priority, evident in a lack of consistency in housing policy. Inconsistency undermines confidence. A consequence of these policy failures is that Ireland has, by comparison with our European partners, one of the highest levels of public expenditure for housing, yet one of the poorest outcomes ... Only a radical reset of housing policy will work..

Did we get that in this budget? Absolutely not. The Government parties have continued to put their heads in the sand by renewing the help-to-buy scheme, which is pushing the price of houses to extraordinarily high levels. There is no increase in targets to the most minimal of requirements that should be considered.

The number of people in homelessness has been normalised. We now have 14,486 people who are homeless. Any sensible government would say that is a policy failure. That total of 14,486 includes 4,316 children. More than 50% of renters need help from the State to rent, while rents continue to rise at 2.5 times the European average. When I mention homelessness of more than 14,000, I am not including the hidden homeless. Surely that is an indictment of our Republic. The Government claims that its housing policies are successful, even though the commission that it set up is clearly telling us that they are not. To tell us that the help-to-buy scheme is going to be extended is an absolute mockery. That we would need to give Government help to consultants and those earning good salaries, including TDs, to enable them to buy a house is totally unacceptable. I repeat the word "mockery".

If we were truly interested in being a republic, or in working towards it, one of the most basic things that we would have introduced in this budget is a cost-of-disability payment. I welcome the various social welfare increases, although I might come back to that because they are not being benchmarked or placed in context but the one thing that would make a difference, a cost-of-disability payment, is completely ignored. The abolition of means-testing for carers did not happen. The means test is still there, even though we went to the trouble of having a referendum to tell carers that we thought they were wonderful for minding people who needed care. The Government said it was there for them, yet it retains the means test. We are awaiting a judgment in a Supreme Court case. A mother was forced to go all the way up through the courts and such is the importance of the case that the Supreme Court took charge of it, as I understand it. We are waiting on that. I worry that it might not be the ideal case to test what is being tested. Nevertheless, it is worth reading the judgments to date from previous court hearings and what was said about the burden that mother has to bear.

Let me briefly refer to direct provision. I heard comments earlier today on direct provision but the Government's policy on it, as distinct from its policy on people from Ukraine, is absolutely wrong. The Government has used a divide-and-conquer mechanism whereby some people coming to our country are good and others are not. We decided a long time ago that direct provision was not acceptable. When I say "we", I am referring to the Day report in 2020 and the White Paper on Ending Direct Provision from the Government in 2021, which proposed going down the road of building not-for-profit centres. That has not happened. Not alone has it not happened but we have the Taoiseach of the country telling us that direct provision applicants are causing the homelessness problem or are part of it. It is shocking, divisive politics that is absolutely unacceptable. I am sure the Minister of State does not agree with that and I would love to hear his voice on it. As we talk about that, 6,500 individuals are still in direct provision, although they have refugee status and they cannot get out. Yesterday, I was in contact with the Minister for children again about a person who is living in a car, having been thrown out of direct provision in Galway to make room for other people. That is how cracked the policy is at the moment. That person is working full time, doing 12-hour shifts and is living in a car. The answer from the Minister in a letter to this person was to go to Dublin and get emergency accommodation. That would mean leaving their job, and then we castigate them for not wanting to work.

With regard to indigenous industries, I despair with this budget. The Government has not even begun to consider the importance of indigenous industries, even though it has been warned by every organisation that deals with fiscal rectitude that we are overly reliant on a small coterie of foreign direct investors and we need to broaden our tax base, incentivise indigenous industries and look after our SMEs. None of that is happening at all. I think of seaweed, wool and of the fishermen in the coastal areas that have not been mentioned who are still waiting on a policy relating to sustainability for sprat and stopping the big boats from going in there.

I will finish on infrastructure. I welcome that the budget mentions infrastructure but there is no plan or pathway. I come from a city where the sewage treatment infrastructure is collapsing. We have a plant that is functioning very well but the issue is with the collection and the pipes. One of them is in imminent danger of collapse and I referred to all of that last week. We cannot have balanced regional development or even balanced development within a city and county without the sewage treatment plan in Carraroe. None of that is happening. If the Government is finally taking a step, I welcome that.

Finally, in the two speeches given today there was not one single mention of the homeless. The 144,486 homeless people were not mentioned. We had a Minister talking about hope and how important it is to give hope. The best way to give hope is to give shelter. A home is a basic human right. That is the best way to give hope, or at least to give a pathway to that, knowing that Government realises its policy is wrong and needs to be changed. It is not hope that I am taking out of today but hopelessness.

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