Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Solidarity)

This is a budget of austerity at a time of plenty, which is incredible. No exaggeration, but this budget is going to make life for ordinary people harder at a time when we have a very large budget surplus and when €1.7 billion is being given to corporations in various forms of corporate welfare. If an alien had come down here at 1 o'clock today and listened to the budget speeches of the Ministers, they would have thought that this must be a country where ordinary people are doing great, where there is no cost-of-living crisis, where workers are getting on just fine and where companies must be really struggling, hence the need for a budget to help them out. Of course, that bears no relationship to reality.

The reality is that we have unprecedentedly high levels of corporate profits. The corporations are doing great. The developers are doing great. The corporate landlords are doing great. All these corporations are profiting from the crises affecting ordinary people, namely the housing crisis, the health crisis and the general cost-of-living crisis. It is ordinary people - workers, carers, disabled people, renters and young people - who are struggling. One in five children is growing up in enforced deprivation and having multiple experiences of deprivation in this State. One in three families struggle to pay their energy bills. Something like 50% of families find it hard to put enough food on the table to feed their children. Yet the Government, at a time of plenty, has decided to make their lives harder. That is not just some generality; it is based on the facts of what has been presented to us in the budget documents.

Let us take the case of a worker. Having checked the tax tables, a worker on an average income will be slightly worse off next year just in terms of income tax. When we take into account that all the once-off cost-of-living measures that were given last year in an attempt to buy the election are all gone, for an average working couple with two kids that is over €1,000 gone. The average family with both parents working will be worse off to the tune of well over €1,000. That is at a time of plenty. Students will be worse off next year. At a time of plenty, they will pay €2,500 - an additional €500 - for a supposedly free third level education. However, the Government has the gall to try to gaslight us and students - it is getting some headlines for this - by saying it is going to reduce student fees by €500. In reality, it is increasing those fees by €500. There is nothing for parents of young children in the budget. The Government parties ran in the most recent election on the promise of a cap of €200 a month on childcare fees. However, people are going to continue to be pay €200 a week in childcare fees. We hear that 2,300 new childcare places are promised at a time when 62,000 children are on childcare waiting lists.

There is nothing for renters in the budget, while the Government has legislation coming which will allow rents to be hiked faster, harder and higher. Life is going to get harder for renters. Possibly the worst and most disgusting element of this austerity budget package in a time of plenty is the attack on disabled people. It is an attack that will amount to about €1,400. The Government is stealing €1,400 from the pockets of disabled people. The Disability Federation of Ireland claims that this budget is a betrayal of disabled people and states that it will strip away vital supports and lead to a deepening of poverty. It points out that the past three budgets have recognised the extra cost of disability through the disability support grant, which is now gone. It is not spare cash; it is what keeps the lights on and the heating running for carers. A measly €10 is eaten up by the cost-of-living crisis, and there is no move to meet the election promise to scrap the means test for carers.

On the other hand, this is a great budget for fast-food giants and major hotel chains. How much is the Government giving to them? It is putting €681 million into the pockets of these in one of the greatest acts of corporate lobbying scammery that has ever been carried out. We could call it "Operation get behind the small café", but the vast majority of this money is not going to small cafés. It will go to the big chains, which are already making big profits. This has been a big exercise in them lobbying and then getting their way, with ordinary workers paying about €200 from their own pockets to cover the cost of this cut.

Developers are also getting a VAT cut. That is great. This is the new way that corporate welfare is being done. There is a VAT cut for developers of €390 million. On top of that, they get an enhanced deduction for certain costs in the construction of apartments. The latter will cost another €125 million. There is also a tax break for corporate landlords in the form of an exemption from corporation tax on cost-rental income worth €20 million. I thought the whole idea of cost rental is that the rental is equivalent to the cost. Where exactly is the profit meant to be coming from this? It highlights that profiteering is happening in the cost-rental sector, which makes sense of why cost rental is so unaffordable.

Most people do not know this, but well-paid employees of multinational corporations here who earn up to €1 million a year get 30% of their tax back. That is great. There are nine people who are in receipt of that who are on more than €3 million a year. It is a tax break for some of the richest people in our country.

I am sure there are more measures of corporate welfare that I could go into. I will finish on this point, however. Heather Humphreys is not here today; she is no longer a Minister. If she was, I am sure she would be sitting over there nodding along and voting the budget through. She would be in favour of all these austerity measures; she did plenty of them herself. She would be happy enough. However, she is not here and I would say she is not happy enough now because she is standing in a presidential election. She is standing against one other candidate, an Opposition Independent candidate who has united the left behind her.

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