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

I echo the 75% of people in a poll published at the weekend who said this budget was an attempt to buy the next election. This budget was a give-away budget to hide from the electorate that the Government has given up on making any real or structural change in the country. It ignored calls made across civil society, by the Dáil and by people living in poverty, in deprivation, on low pay and fixed incomes that there would be targeted relief. I have no problem with universal cost-of-living payments to help everyone make ends meet. People will welcome it. They want to get over the hump and Christmas is coming but when you make those payments without any real investment in services or any targeted relief for those who need it, you leave people further behind in the long run. This budget put the electoral chances of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael ahead of the most vulnerable in our society. This Bill is typical of a budget that ignored those who most needed help. We needed a targeted effort to get help to those on the sharp end of struggling to afford energy costs and who are in fuel poverty. We needed a State-led campaign to retrofit the houses of those who cannot afford it. We need permanent changes to social welfare schemes to guarantee nobody experiences energy poverty.

The Government failed to make those changes because time and again it has proved that it is ideologically incapable of intervening in the economy in a structural way. It throws money at voters and hopes the market will sort out everything in the end. That belief has been proven wrong time and again. That belief is why this country’s housing, health and public services are in the state they are.

Energy poverty has been exacerbated by some of the worst energy prices for years. In 2019 Ireland was in the top five countries for energy hikes. By 2022 there were 377,415 people unable to keep their homes warm and some 453,918 who had gone without heating and 469,218 people in utility arrears. The ESRI estimated that 29% of the country experienced energy poverty in 2022. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul estimated that it could peak at over 40% of the country experiencing energy poverty. While vulnerable people were unable to heat their homes, pay their bills or keep themselves warm, giant energy made tens of billions of euro in profits while Irish household energy costs rose at twice the EU average. In 2022 the ESB Group's profits rose by €679 million. Bord Gáis Energy’s profits rose by €948 million, SSE’s rose by €1.5 billion and Energia’s by €178 million. That is nearly €9,000 profit for every person who was unable to keep their homes warm across just four energy companies.

On top of energy poverty the budget did nothing to make any real State intervention for people experiencing deprivation or poverty. Deprivation rates are going up. More than 559,800 people are living in poverty of whom 176,900 are children. Those people needed targeted help. Instead, successive budgets have failed to keep social welfare and pensions in line with inflation. Furthermore, it is now clear that the Government has broken its promise on to implement the living wage for 2026. Ireland has some of the highest instances of low pay in the EU. This Government’s failure to implement its own policies on the living wage and its insistence on maintaining a voluntarist system of labour relations will make in-work poverty worse.

This is a budget that prioritises votes over people struggling to make ends meet. If the Government does not make targeted and permanent increases, once the once-off payments are gone, many people will be left further behind. I raised this two weeks ago. The household benefit energy benefit payments have not increased for four years. It now barely covers the standing charges. That is four years of some of the sharpest energy price increases eating into a vital lifeline for people. The Government again failed to extend the fuel allowance to those on the working family payment. That is something we have called for time and again.

I know the Government increased the budget for social housing retrofitting but my colleague on Dublin City Council, Councillor Pat Dunne, who has 13 years experience of dealing with the maintenance and regeneration of social housing, just cannot see how an additional €90 million will retrofit 250,000 social homes next year. The Government also failed to reform its retrofitting plan which leaves thousands of people living on social housing waiting years for improvements and leaves those on low pay or renting out almost completely.

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