Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)

I welcome the opportunity to make a contribution in respect of the budget. The people who were really celebrating on Tuesday when the announcements were made were the landlords, the developers and the vulture funds. This was a budget for them. The Government might as well have just handed the biro to them and let them write the budget. Not unlike the previous speaker, who is a Fianna Fáil Deputy, I was of course disappointed with the budget because the it favours those who are on high incomes, have big investments and multinational corporations over ordinary people.

On the social protection budget, while the Minister, Deputy Chambers, was on his feet announcing a €2 billion increase in measures for the social protection budget, his colleague in government, the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Calleary, was issuing a press statement congratulating himself for achieving €1.15 billion in additional investment. You are all over the place. The people at the business end of this do not deal in billions and millions. Many do not even deal in fifties or twenties. There are very fine margins. Many people on a fixed income like pensioners are in the bracket of the 300,000 in electricity arrears. We know what older people are like. In the main, they want to pay their bills if they can. Sometimes, they need a bit of a hand. Some €10 is an absolute slap in the face. In the face of rising costs, in the same breath as you put up the cost to fill your car with diesel or petrol, you offer people €10. It will not keep pace with the rising grocery costs or the rising cost of living. The people who sit around the Cabinet table or near it think by saying the cost-of-living crisis over that it will magically be over for people; it is not. If you were listening to your own constituents, you would know there very much is a cost-of-living crisis. If you did not want to listen to your constituents, like the Government representative in my area, who has no office - no one knows where he is and no one can find him - bury your head in the sand, stick your fingers in your ears and not listen, the facts tell us the cost-of-living crisis is not over. There are 300,000 people going into the winter in arrears on their electricity bills. One in five children - over 225,000 - lives in families below the poverty line. Those facts tell us the cost-of-living crisis is not over. When people look to the Government, they look for a hand up. They are not looking for a handout. They want to be able to heat their homes and buy food for their families - basic stuff. They see the continuation of the red carpet for vulture funds and Ministers coming out with their hoovers to make sure the red carpet is nice and clean for all the lads coming to get all the benefits of this budget. There are no benefits for people living in poverty.

The Minister for Social Protection made an announcement last month that there will be a target set for the reduction of child poverty. That is possibly a good thing but when the mask slips it slips all the way down to your ankles because you will tell us your acceptable level of child poverty and moving towards an acceptable level of child poverty. You are quite prepared to live in a State where kids go to bed hungry and cold. That should not happen when we have surplus. There should not be a recession-style budget in a time of plenty. Now is the time people cannot heat their homes. As we saw in the Barnardos report, parents are having to reduce their portion sizes or skip meals. It is a damning indictment of the Government and its policy that in a time of plenty, children go to bed hungry. It tells you everything you need to know. That the Government is okay with this tells you everything you need to know. The Government is not coming to plead the poor mouth as it sometimes does. In fact, we had to sit and listen to Government speaker after speaker and Minister after Minister tell us we have never had it so good, clapping themselves on the back for all for the good work they are apparently doing. That does not manifest itself in my constituency office. It is not what my constituents tell me. When they come to me, they speak about needing a small amount of help. They ask me fairly simply questions such as does the Government listen? Does it know? Does it care? Unfortunately, we see every year in the budget exactly how much it listens and how much it cares. There is €10 a week for people who are dependent on the State, pensioners, people on a fixed income who worked their whole lives.

The Minister said he would introduce a measure for lone parents and it would benefit all lone parents. Of course, it will not. As I said, when the mask slips, it slips all the way down to your ankles. Not all lone parents are solely dependent on social welfare but they are over-represented in the group most at risk of not just poverty but consistent poverty. The Minister was very loose in his language. We have seen no costings from the Department of Social Protection. Before the election, you told us you wanted to abolish the means test for carers. Now that the election is over, that has slipped down the priority list. It remains to be seen how much has been put against that budget. By my reckoning, at the current pace of delivery by the Government, it is about 30 years. That is not the lifetime of a government but six governments.

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