Eoghan Kenny (Cork North-Central, Labour)

Over 225,000 children live below the poverty line in this country. How are families meant to get out of poverty in Ireland in 2025? Food is getting more and more expensive. Food is not an optional extra. It is an everyday basic need. People are working to the bone. Parents are skipping meals to ensure their children are fed. Coming into winter, once again energy costs are going up. Heating one’s home, cooking meals and refrigerating food are all basic necessities and people are being continually squeezed more and more. How is anyone meant to get out of that situation? If you are constantly working just to tread water, where is the hope for better coming from? Wages have not nearly kept up with inflation. Everyday basics get more and more expensive. Running a car is getting more and more expensive. Insurance costs are exorbitant. The NCT has gone up in cost. Road tax is more expensive if you have an older car. What are you supposed to do if that is the only car you can afford?

When it comes to housing, rent in Ireland is incredibly expensive. Getting a social home has a years-long waiting list. If you can get a mortgage, you will pay huge repayments and it could take 35 years before you will finally own your own home in your 70s. The future that successive governments have presented us with is incredibly bleak. Since 2016 a paltry total of 99 homes have been purchased under the tenant in situ scheme by Cork County Council. That is under 100 homes purchased in a nine-year period. That figure is quite pathetic.

The Government parties have presided over this housing crisis for nine years. In those nine years, they have seen homelessness figures soar along with the number of young people stuck living in their parents’ homes. They have removed an eviction ban, failed to meet construction targets and seen house prices rise and rise again. Every time we raise the issue, the Taoiseach and the Government refer to hot school meals and the free books scheme as long-term budgetary measures. He is trying to fool the people into believing that these long-term measures are working for every single family but I want to say they are absolutely not. In the middle of August, a very distressed and deeply upset mother came to me about the price of a laptop for the school where her child was going into first year. The cost of the laptop was €500. She could not pay it. I considered sending her to the credit union but that should not be a measure we have to take. A loan was not the solution. We had to apply for an additional needs payment. That parent had never applied for a social welfare payment in her life. In Nenagh, we visited The Lunch Bag during our think-in. It is one of the biggest producers of hot school meals. It is a fantastic company that has brought huge employment to the area. However, at a well-informed meeting with The Lunch Bag, we heard how the regulations and red tape introduced in late August mean that a significant number of schools, and therefore children, cannot get a hot school meal in some instances which can leave some children without a hot meal all day. The Government should not disingenuously claim both of these things as long-term budgetary measures because they are absolutely not. This is what we are seeing: children going to bed hungry. The Government is being disingenuous about a free books scheme that is not working because a majority of schools now use ICT equipment.

The Government is spending its time drafting a budget to give tax reductions to the food and catering industry while mothers and fathers are struggling to put food on the table.

The Government is focused on market supports while those who keep these industries working, the workers, are more often than not trying to get by on a minimum wage that has not nearly kept pace with inflation. It is simply a fact. If we want to socialise and spend our time off in these businesses, we need to treat those who work in these industries with the basic dignity of a wage that can support a decent standard of living so they can support their own children. That will not be achieved through tax cuts for large companies.

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