Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." I have never felt those words to be more relevant than when sitting here this week listening to the announcement of the budget and to some of the commentary that came from Government benches in respect of it. I cannot help but feel that we have been here before. This budget reeks of the infamous 2007 budget. The so-called giveaway budget of 2007 promised everything but delivered nothing but disaster in the years that followed. We had been told that it was transformational and was the biggest giveaway in decades, but what exactly did Bertie Ahern's 2007 budget bring us? It brought us a housing crisis, economic collapse and a generation of people paying the price for the Government of the day's short-sightedness.

Now, with another election around the corner, the current Government seems to be following the same playbook. We have flashy handouts and one-off payments to win votes, but no real solutions to the structural problems we are facing and the erosion of the tax base. There are energy payments going to people with second homes. Over the past three years, those people have received close to €100 million in such payments. Compare that waste of money, and that is what it is, with the false argument that happened last weekend as to whether people being paid the jobseeker's allowance would receive an extra €12. It was suggested that these people are somehow undeserving. There are 125,000 people in receipt of jobseeker's allowance. Some 72% of them on the payment for less than a year. That brings us to 35,000 people who were scrutinised over the weekend as to whether they were deserving or otherwise. A breakdown of that figure shows that most of those involved constitute one-parent families. A large proportion of those are people over 50 whose jobs became obsolete. That became the focus. That €80 million payment to second homes is for me is the biggest waste, as are the bike shelter and any of the other scandals that have come to light over the past couple of weeks.

Let us look at the facts. With record breaking corporate tax receipts flowing to the State, we had the potential to do something truly transformative. Instead of investing in long-term solutions that will improve the lives of ordinary people, we have been given a budget full of temporary one-off measures that will be eaten up by this time next year. Each Minister singularly focused on their own domain, and nobody that I could see was pulling in the direction of what this country needs, namely what were the great crusades of the past and what are the simple solutions for us all collectively. The Minister of State can look up to the sky all he wants but that will be the legacy of this budget.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the area of disability services. Families all over Ireland are crying out for support. Parents of children with additional needs have been waiting years for access to basic services like speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and respite care. These families have been let down time and again by a system which refuses to provide the care and support they need. What does the budget offer them in real terms? There is cash to help them out, undoubtedly, but that will be going to privatised services and will do nothing to address the structural needs we need to cater for at State level in order to provide the type of decent and consistent accommodation that people with disabilities and their families need. What is happening amounts to an attempt at privatisation by stealth.

Instead of committing to long-term investment in public services, the Government has thrown a one-off payment to families and left them to fend for themselves. That is not transformational; it is abandonment. We see the same pattern across the board. In housing, where the crisis continues to spiral out of control, the Government has chosen to subsidise landlords with a €1,000 renter's tax credit rather than increasing housing construction targets to actually solve the problem. In energy, where households are struggling with soaring bills, the Government has offered lump sum payments that will be swallowed up by the same corporations and is doing nothing to tackle the root cause of the crisis. The budget undoubtedly had the potential to be historic and to finally address the longstanding issues in housing, health and public services, but instead it is an absolute missed opportunity and in a very short space of time that will be proven to be correct. It was a budget designed to buy votes, not to solve problems.

In the midst of it all we have seen €9 million allocated for phone pouches. The €9 million has become a trigger for many people across society. It had only been announced before we had educators ringing all our phones to highlight that this was the answer to a question nobody was asking. It is insulting at a time when families are waiting years for access to disability services in schools and thousands are struggling to find a place to call home. I do not doubt for a second the issue of mobile phone use at primary school level is a problem. It is one that is being addressed by parent-teacher councils and school leaders. They have been providing solutions off their own backs for the last decade or more. Despite this, we have a Minister who has decided to give €9 million and yesterday was not able to answer the question of how much each device would cost per student. The Minister said it was €20 or €30. That €9 million could have been used for a DEIS plus scheme to recognise that inequality happens on a scale and many students feel it differently from others depending on where they are. If we had invested that figure in a DEIS plus scheme, we would have got 150 extra teachers or two for each of the 70 schools that should have been included in the scheme. Instead we got the pouches and it has become a trigger point for further waste.

The question we need to ask ourselves is this: what will be the legacy of a budget like this? When the money is gone and the once-off payments have been eaten up, what will we have to show for it? Will we have solved the housing crisis? Will we have built a healthcare system that supports everyone, including those with disabilities and additional needs? Will future generations have been left a fairer, more equal society? The answer is “absolutely not”. I do not doubt for a second that one-off payments will make a difference to people’s immediate lives - of course they will - but the legacy of a budget like this could have been transformational. However, the Government has chosen for it not to be.

In the brief time I have left, I point to another factor lost in this budget. For the best part of two or three years I and others have been coming into the Chamber to ask for some sort of collective responsibility when it comes to the city of Dublin. We all remember how Deputies across the Chamber, when things got bad, lined up to derail the city. One Fine Gael Member referred to the city being full of drug addicts and looking dirty. The Taoiseach, when he first came to power four or five months ago, stamped on the table and said he was going to get in front of the problem. He commissioned a task force he told us would take 12 weeks to deliver its report. We are now approaching 21 weeks since he made that statement. I am very aware the task force report has been presented and the Taoiseach has not yet read it in the course of three weeks. There was nothing in the budget about enacting the recommendations of that task force. There has been more bluster and more spin. We are going to go into an election and the city will still be left without any sort of leadership. It is another opportunity lost.

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