Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The international media has been describing Ireland as a country with more money than sense over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, very few people would be able to disagree with that statement, including anybody who has seen the scandals in relation to the bike shed, the waste of money and the lack of cop-on in relation to the security hut, the €225 million of Exchequer funding that has just gone to waste in a number of rail projects and the modular homes that are twice the price we had bargained for. There is also the national children's hospital and the delays and increases in costs we are seeing occur there. It is clear that there is a real problem at the heart of this Government in spending people's money well.

It is always easier to spend other people's money and we saw that approach yesterday. There was a real urge just to splash the cash and not care too much where it goes as long as the Government could tick those boxes and say everybody got a little bit. What we saw yesterday was a Government in election mode. It was not a Government in an investment-in-the-future mode. It was not a Government thinking about its role in directing positive change for this country and having a vision for it. What we saw was a Government trying to buy off small cohorts of people one by one.

I would love to know what the discussions were when all the Ministers were sitting down with their officials looking at the budget and how they worked out where they would prioritise. Did they think about what they would give new parents, ask if a €240 bonus would keep them happy and then tick that box and move on? There was a missed opportunity here to do something really positive that would leave a legacy. It is a huge amount of money just to fritter away and not leave a legacy behind. While people will welcome and appreciate the few hundred euro extra in their pockets because many of them are struggling, what they got yesterday will not make a blind bit of difference to them in the long run.

I will give a few examples.

I am going to talk about the baby boost. It is absolutely incredible how the Government is able to spin the figures. Everywhere in the media and in every forum where a Government representative is talking we hear about a €420 baby boost. The reality is that parents were entitled to €140 so the increase is actually €280 and only approximately 60,000 parents will be able to avail of that in any given year so it is actually quite a small amount of money. The reality is that the money, while it will be welcome because the birth of a baby is a very expensive time in any family's life, will be gone in the blink of an eye and those families will then have to worry about childcare. How they are going to pay for childcare? Are they going to be able to get childcare, even if they can afford it? Are they going to be able to get flexible and age-appropriate childcare for their children? That is really where this Government has missed an opportunity. It would have been so much better, and the Social Democrats would have been absolutely delighted, had the Government announced that it was going to invest heavily in a public childcare system, something that will be strong and be there for years, a new model of childcare based on what we have in education. It would be something that parents could rely on rather than the current approach which is just to give bits and subsidies to the private sector. It is really unfortunate that the Government has not done that. The Green Party wants to see a public childcare system and apparently Fine Gael wants to see it as well. I am not sure what Fianna Fáil's position is on it, although I did hear that the Tánaiste said it was a hare-brained idea. However, at least two thirds of the coalition want to see public childcare so why did they not put it in the budget? Why did the Government not invest in it? It is something that would make a huge difference to parents. It would be transformative. The Government has a huge amount of money available to it. It should make transformative changes rather than frittering it away with payments of a few hundred euro here and there that nobody will notice or remember in six months or a year.

Finally I will refer to the other aspect of my spokesperson role which is climate and the environment. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, was talking earlier about the 6.8% reduction in emissions that we saw last year. I am going to welcome any reduction in emissions but I want to bring a dose of reality here. First, a 6.8% reduction is not sufficient and second, the reduction that we saw last year was not primarily from any Government policy. That reduction was there because we had a twelvefold increase in the electricity that we were taking from England and those emissions were not counted in our accounting system. The other primary driver was the fact that fertiliser use fell, which was welcome, but that was driven by high fertiliser prices. We need to see a much greater focus on climate but we also need to get rid of the spin. The last thing we need is the public thinking that this Government is making progress on the climate crisis. We are certainly not making the kind of progress that we need to see and it is not just me saying that, but the EPA and the Climate Change Advisory Council. It will be clear to anybody who can read any of their reports that the Government is not doing enough when it comes to climate, nature, biodiversity and our environment.

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