Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

Is cúis díomá dom nach bhfuil mórán ama agam freagra a thabhairt do na hAirí. The budget was, to put it mildly, a huge disappointment. In fact, for many people who I have been speaking to, "stunned" is the only word I could use. In a budget of billions in extra spending, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independent TDs have not just managed to deliver nothing for workers and families; they have actually managed to make them worse off. Ordinary households have been kicked in the teeth in the Government's hope that they will forget about it in the next election. My hope is that that game is over for such cynical politics.

On justice and migration, the areas that I cover, the budget suggests the well-versed failures will continue. Once again, there is a commitment to hiring an extra 1,000 gardaí, just as there was in previous budgets, but, as previously, that target is set to be missed. There were 750 recruits from Templemore in 2023, with just 631 last year and the numbers are unlikely to be much higher this year. The Minister says the most important thing is getting people to apply to join the gardaí, but the reality is that high-profile recruitment campaigns have made virtually no difference to the overall numbers of gardaí. Large numbers of people do apply to join but this is not translating into increases in the overall number of gardaí. Rather than action to tackle the recruitment and retention crisis, in this budget there is actually a 13% increase in the Garda overtime allocation, despite serious concerns already about the existing dependence on overtime to deliver routine policing services.

A number of things clearly need to be done. The training allowance must be increased to the level of the minimum wage, as Sinn Féin outlined in our alternative budget. The capacity of the Garda training college has to be increased. There has to be an improvement in pay progression and long service incentives have to be looked at.

On asylum policy, the Government is again set to spend obscene amounts of taxpayers' money on a dysfunctional system, enriching a new crony class. The Irish people are facing heavy financial implications because of Government failures and decisions, the high costs associated with the delays in processing, the chaos in the system, the failure to end or even tackle profiteering and the Government's decision to sign up to the EU asylum and migration pact.

There is, of course, also the decision to support the extension of the temporary protection directive. There is clearly a long way to go to sort out the mess, crack down on profiteering and bring costs under control, but apparently there is no recognition of that among Government Ministers. The difficulty, if we are going to tackle this, is that the budget announced yesterday is not even a good start.

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