Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to say a few words. I absolutely agree with the contribution of Deputy Charles Ward. Nothing would have prepared me for the extent of, and the damage done by, the defective blocks issue in Donegal. I thought I knew it from listening to colleagues speak on the issue, including my previous colleague, Thomas Pringle, as well as members of Sinn Féin. Nothing prepared me for the extent of the disaster and what people have gone through and continue to go through. I fully support Deputy Charles Ward in that regard. Not only are there defective blocks and concrete, there is also defective understanding and a defective compensation scheme. They are all defective.

Today is the anniversary of the Creeslough explosion. While it is absolutely not an election issue, I promised at every opportunity to repeat what they asked me to repeat when I met them in a private capacity in Donegal. They said that they feel abandoned, both nationally and locally. I just want to put that on record.

With regard to the budget, I cannot believe that we have utterly failed to learn from the pandemic and the declaration of the climate and biodiversity emergency in 2019. Over the years, the Government has acknowledged the planet is burning. I searched in vain in the two speeches to see whether there was a recognition of not alone the emergencies we have declared, but the necessary transformative action. While I do not expect any budget to sort out those crises, I expect a budget to be put in the context of the challenges and the existential treat posed by climate change. I also expect the budget to be put in the context of public health infrastructure so that we are prepared for the next pandemic.

It is very worrying that I see a continuation of the business-as-usual model when transformative action is needed. More than 16,300 people are homeless and there is no recognition or framework put in here with regard to how that crisis was caused. The Housing Commission said that we need a radical reset of policy, yet we are fiddling around adding more pieces to a jigsaw with no overall picture. Indeed, the figure in this budget is €2 billion for HAP and one or two other schemes. Not only should HAP be phased out – not overnight because people are utterly dependent on it now – but the Government is still using the language that people are being adequately housed in social housing. Such a twist of language leads to a huge problem of trust for people on the ground regarding what is being said. If a person is in receipt of HAP, he or she is not adequately housed in social housing. The Government is twisting language on its head. The most fundamental human right is the provision of a home for our people in a so-called Republic.

In respect of this plan, I will pick out some aspects. While there are some good points, colleagues will forgive me if I highlight the amount that is missing. The Government made a solemn promise to do away with the means test for carers, but that has been utterly reneged on. I will read out some of the figures for carers. They relate predominately to females, which might go a long way to explaining why we and economists continue to ignore them. The number of people in unpaid positions just increases. Between 2016 and 2022, the number of people providing regular unpaid care increased by more than 50%, up to nearly 300,000 in 2022 and rising all of the time.

I will not go into the other figures. We have not abolished that. The opportunity was not taken. I know the Minister of State's, Deputy Moran's, heart and soul are behind abolishing that and I do not know why it is not happening. I do not know how we can go with economists telling us we have a growth economy when we are not valuing the number of carers doing unpaid leave. Then we were promised a cost-of-disability payment. I could go back over all the reports that set out the need for that. It is not even mentioned in the budget.

One of the major solutions to the housing crisis is to make a commitment to build public housing on public land. It will not sort out the problem but it will go a long way towards a solution and will also send a strong message that the Government is in the middle - i lár an aonaigh - as regards the solution. The prices, ultimately, will have to come down. Instead of that, we are allowing public land to be used for a mixture of housing and there is no analysis of that solution to the amount of people on a waiting list. In Galway city, the wait is between 15 and 20 years.

In Galway, as we speak, 64 patients are on trolleys. There are 40 in the accident and emergency department and 14 in wards. We play around with numbers all the time and talk about the billions of euro going into health but ignore the fact we have failed to train enough people to work in our hospitals and are reliant on agency staff, which cost much more.

The Minister of State is putting his head down and I do not blame him, in a sense. These problems come up year after year and we need to put out the message they are not inevitable. A republic worth its name has to recognise that the neoliberal ideology to date has created these problems. We cannot keep going on. The latest EU report on climate change pointed out we are failing to recognise we cannot continue with the same unsustainable growth approach and also do something about climate change. It is not possible.

Violence against women was mentioned by Deputy Coppinger. There is an increase of some €11 million in it. It is a drop in the ocean compared with the figures. Despite our third strategy for zero violence against women, the figures keep rising. It is a crisis and, at a conservative estimate, costs €2.5 billion to the economy every year. Every year since 2016, I stand up here and point this out. Perhaps the economists could put a specific value on it. I am told it is €2.5 billion. We could save money for the economy by stopping it.

There is not one single line about or commitment to public childcare, which is the solution to the problem of people paying two mortgages for years, one for a house and one for childcare. The previous Government with the Green Party went some way to reducing the cost, and I always praised it for that, but the answer is public childcare. Otherwise, people cannot work. They need to do that and not have to pay a second mortgage.

Regarding the Irish language, there is an utter failure to recognise there is a housing crisis in the Gaeltacht. Tá an Ghaeilge agus cúrsaí tithíochta fite fuaite lena chéile. Tá méadú suarach ó thaobh airgid d’Údarás na Gaeltachta. Níl ach breis is €2 milliún i gceist.

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