Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

Excuse me. Labour is the party of jobs. We have a proud record, uniquely in opposition, of job creation. We have a proud record of standing for workers' rights. We do not take economic growth for granted. We welcome measures to support innovation, Enterprise Ireland and the development of AI. We absolutely welcome these, but these positive moves the Government has made are overshadowed by what is clearly the worst political choice in this budget of bad political choices. Its VAT cut for hospitality and hairdressing has to be the worst choice made in this budget, with one of the longest run-in times in history. Nobody could say the Government had not time to change its mind. It seems extraordinary to us in the Labour Party that this crazy VAT cut is the one election promise it decided to keep this year. It was a VAT cut the Labour Party uniquely opposed. We did not include it in our manifesto or budget last year, nor in our budget for this year, because we do not believe in narrowing the tax base in this way with no evidence the reductions will be passed on to consumers or will save jobs. This VAT cut will cost €232 million in 2026 and €681 million in a full year. Let us look at what the Government could have got for that. It will cost more than introducing a €25 cost-of-disability payment, which the Labour Party pushed for. It will cost more than abolishing the means test for carers, which we have also pushed for, more than capping childcare fees at €50 per week, and more than extending the back to school clothing and footwear allowance to every child in the country. The Government has made a political choice to reward businesses with the highest turnover that will benefit most from this cut, with zero evidence of any positive impact on job retention or consumers. Worse again, many of the massive food chains that will benefit most are franchised to private equity firms, lots of which feed the pensions of people not living in Ireland. Others are owned by individual franchisees but they are posting record profits. We have looked into this. Let us take a sample of those franchisees operating individual McDonald’s branches in Ireland. One operator’s most recent financial reports recorded accumulated profits of €8.48 million. Another saw a post-tax profit of more than €13 million in one year. These are the winners. The winners are companies with high profits in a sector paying the lowest wages with the most exploited workers, and feeding nutritionally poor-quality food, mostly to those in Irish society who have the least. In other words, the Government's VAT cut is a direct wealth transfer to faceless fast food multinationals. It is a whopper, in fact, and a big fat nothing-burger for the rest of us. It is not a spice bag or a snack box. It is a smack-in-the-face box for most communities. It is a eurosaver for those at the top, but there is nothing for hard-pressed families or small independent businesses.

Just as the Government caved to lobbyists on the VAT cut, so it has caved to the demands of landlords and developers on the housing package. Instead of a winter blitz on vacancy and dereliction, as the Labour Party proposed, it has proposed a new tax. We welcome the derelict property tax, but it seems it will not take effect until after 2028. We would have increased the vacant homes tax to ten times the local property tax. By contrast, what we saw announced yesterday will be ineffectual in driving the change needed to address the scourge of vacancy and dereliction. Instead, there is a tax package for developers and speculators, worth €500 million in just one year, and the Government has kicked the can down the road on the residential zoned land tax. Its allocation on so-called temporary housing solutions is an admission that our shameful rate of homelessness will go up, with more evictions and more children to add to the 5,000 who are in homelessness.

Last year in our children’s charter, the Labour Party developed a pathway for giving every child the best start in life and ending child poverty. That certainly kicked Fine Gael into gear. Nearly every speech the Tánaiste made during the general election was peppered with references to addressing child poverty. That was welcome but no sooner was the election over than the Government dropped that, too. We are seeing no second-tier child benefit in this budget, no reduction in class sizes and post-primary schools excluded from the hot school meals programme. When it comes to wealth transfers for developers, it seems the Government is happy to name its price but, despite announcing it twice now, it will not or cannot tell us how much it will put into DEIS Plus. We want to see DEIS Plus rolled out, but we are not seeing any detail on this.

Childcare has been a real damp squib. Deputy Marie Sherlock has pointed out that the Government is funding 2,300 additional places through the building blocks programme, but about 50,000 children are on waiting lists and there is no sign of that promised monthly cap on fees to €200 for childcare. It is bankrolling a system that receives generous public funding, but with no guarantee of places and no universal access for hard-pressed parents.

On the issue of energy and the climate crisis, we are again seeing far too little. More than 300,000 people are in arrears on their electricity bills. A further 185,000 people are behind on their gas bills, but Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Lowry Independents and Deputy Healy-Rae have kicked them to the curb. In the months leading up to this budget, we have seen eye-watering profits for major energy companies while they hike their prices for consumers. The Government was perfectly happy to issue blanket energy credits in recent budgets to everyone, even to those who did not need them, but now, suddenly, there is nothing left in the kitty to help families most at risk of poverty.

Climate action is a real afterthought in this budget. That is very disappointing. We are really seeing the impact of the Green Party's departure from Government. We heard the usual performance just now from the Minister of State, Deputy Healy-Rae. We have certainly seen a Healy-Rae-shaped dent in funding to the climate Department, which has been reduced from last year’s allocation at a time of climate crisis. Yes, investing in our grid is long overdue. That is welcome but the increase in retrofit funding is completely inadequate. It is just as well the Government has built up its rainy day fund so much because these funds will have to pay the upcoming flood of fines we will face for missing our emissions targets.

There is nothing here for nature or biodiversity, no transition to sustainable energy and an effective cut in active travel measures, when inflation is accounted for. Much of the public transport measures are already baked in but on the inception of this Government, I described its public transport policies as summed up by the phrase "‘Roads, baby, roads". We are certainly seeing more road building in this budget. First up, however, on the schedule of works is a resurfacing of the boulevard of broken promises because never before has a budget document been so disconnected from the commitments made last year in the programme for Government. This budget is even more disconnected from the manifestos on which Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael canvassed voters for support less than one year ago. That is strikingly evident.

What is also strikingly evident, when I travel the country and meet different families, communities and households, is how insecure people are feeling about the future.

We in the Labour Party acknowledge the global climate of instability and uncertainty, such as the brutal genocide in Gaza, Russia's brutal war in Ukraine and the threat of Trump's tariffs ever pending and ever looming. We acknowledge that global insecurity, but at a time when we are seeing record budget surpluses and when the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and the Minister of State, Deputy Canney, all boasted about the healthy state of the public finances at a macro level, this is when we should have seen a measure of security for people in this crucial budget and a commitment to giving security to families who are so hard pressed in a housing crisis and a cost-of-living crisis.

People feel insecure and I know the Minister of State is aware of this because he hears it too. He hears it from an older generation who are fearful for their own future in a creaking health service with lack of provision for nursing home care and care in the home. We are hearing it from young adults and teenagers who are fearful of not having any future in this country and, with the housing crisis, fearful of never having the prospect of owning or even being able to rent a home of their own. We are hearing it from parents who are insecure about being able to find decent childcare and early years education for their children. They are desperate to secure places for children with autism and children with additional needs where there is simply so little available for them. There is a great deal of insecurity. Workers are squeezed by soaring prices. Social welfare and social protection rates have not kept pace with inflation. For years now, we have recommended indexing social protection to provide security to people who are vulnerable.

As I know the Ministers of State will acknowledge, our State finances are dependent on the whims of multinational companies and the billions of euro in taxes they contribute. That level of reliance on what has often been described as windfall taxes also generates an insecurity and instability for many. What the Labour Party, as a constructive party of opposition with a proud record on workers' rights and job creation, wanted to see in this budget were provisions for financing public services into the future and financing to secure futures for workers, families, parents and young adults looking to buy a home of their own. Instead, we see a lack of provision for the future and security and a lack of provision for housing, care, climate and work. We fear this is what will result from this budget. People will feel that common thread across generations persisting - a common thread of an uncertain future and an insecure present. We are a wealthy economy but a poor society, ravaged by a housing crisis and spiralling costs of living with nothing to address those spiralling costs for families and households.

In these times, people look to the Government for increased security, improved public services and that minimum, essential standard of living that will give them the security they need. They will not find that security in this budget.

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