Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

-----because soaring house prices and rip-off rents are hard-wired into Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's housing plan. It is not a bug in the system; it is a feature. Incompetence alone does not explain the housing crisis. It is not by accident that we are in this situation; it is by design. Over a decade into this housing crisis, and we have politicians in government wringing their hands, saying that they are doing all they can to solve it while the crisis gets worse. Every single year the crisis is getting worse. What are we being told now again? It is the old Fianna Fáil tune. We are being told now that we need to give more money to investors and developers and that if we just give them a little bit more, then the housing crisis will be solved. Tax cuts are the big idea from Paschal. We are going to vote tonight, with no information really, on a quarter of a billion euro in tax cuts to developers for the sale of apartments. It is going to cost us a quarter of a billion euro next year. If the apartments are not being built at the minute, then they cannot be sold by next year, so this is dead money. This is money for apartments that are already under construction, and I am sure the developers are laughing their heads off and looking at what they are going to do with this huge bonanza they are getting for apartments that are already under construction. The idea of bringing in a quarter of a billion euro tax cut with no information and no detail and to be voted on tonight is absolutely ridiculous.

I engaged extensively on this issue a number of years ago and we were told - we had briefings from the Department and we engaged with industry - that it would be difficult to administer but, crucially, it would not move the dial on house prices and it would just get pocketed by developers. If this cut is applied to apartments that are already being built, then what is the point of this next year? There is no provision in the resolution that it only applies to apartments that are being built from tonight on - that start or commence. It seems that it is available to ones that are nearly finished now, but maybe that is the intention because we have seen the priorities of this Government over and over again.

The Government comes in here every single year and says that this is the budget that is going to fix the housing crisis, that this is a housing budget and all the rest. What happens? Every year the crisis gets worse. House prices, rents and homelessness figures increase and more and more people lose hope for the future of this State.

On health, we now have a health system where people are afraid to go into the hospital. We have loved ones who are left for hours on end on trolleys or in chairs, where places of healing are described as war zones and where a person goes through the doors of University Hospital Limerick or St. James's Hospital or many of the other hospitals, and they are expected to stay 12 or 14 hours on a chair before they are even seen, before they even can get onto a trolley or before they are discharged home. People should not be afraid to go into hospital or to bring their loved ones to hospital, but that is the reality. Despite the huge effort of our healthcare staff, that is the reality. That is why the first thing this budget should have done in health is to provide the €2 billion in capital funding to make our hospitals safe, to drive on the elective hospitals and to guarantee a second emergency department in the mid west. However, this budget again falls way short in relation to all of that.

Níl meas madaidh ag an Rialtas seo don phobal teanga nó don Ghaeltacht agus ní raibh le fada an lá. Is í an tAire Gaeltachta is measa a bhí againn riamh atá Fine Gael ag cur suas le haghaidh Uachtaránacht na tíre seo. Shíleamar uilig go mbeadh athrú intinne nuair a tháinig Aire ó Fhianna Fáil chun tosaigh, ach feicimid sa cháinaisnéis seo go bhfuil Gaeltacht arís fágtha ar leataobh.

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