Holly Cairns (Cork South-West, Social Democrats)

Further changes have been announced at Cabinet today. The Tánaiste, Deputy Simon Harris, becomes the Minister for Finance, his sixth position in Cabinet in nearly a decade. The Minister, Deputy Helen McEntee, becomes the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade; the Minister of State, Deputy Hildegarde Naughton, has been appointed to the Cabinet as the Minister for Education and Youth; the Minister of State, Deputy Emer Higgins, has been promoted to Minister of State for disability; and Deputy Frankie Feighan will be Minister of State with the Department of public expenditure. I want to sincerely wish them all well in their new roles. I welcome that the gender balance at the Cabinet table will improve somewhat. I especially congratulate the Minister, Deputy McEntee, on being the first female Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Infamously, earlier this year more men named James were appointed to the Cabinet than women. Even with this change, the number of women at the Cabinet has just been restored to where it was at the last Government. That is important to note. It is high time we saw more progress and more diversity in general at the Cabinet table.

People watching at home today will see some changes to the Cabinet but will they notice any change in their own lives after this reshuffle? There are so many people out there who are under enormous pressure and they want to know what these changes will mean for them. Will a new Minister for Finance signal a new approach from the Government that intends to take the cost-of-living crisis seriously and provide supports to those struggling with that crisis? Will targeted energy credits now be introduced? Will we see more action to get transparency and accountability for soaring grocery prices? Will we finally see the Government take on supermarkets and force them to publish their profits? Will the scourge of child poverty finally be tackled? Last year the number of children living in consistent poverty doubled. Will those children finally be lifted out of poverty so they have a chance of reaching their full potential?

What will it mean for those desperately trying to keep a roof over their heads and the tens of thousands of people who are locked out of home ownership? We had a housing plan last week that delivered more of the same. Will changes to the Cabinet today mean any change in approach there, so the delivery of social and affordable homes is finally turbocharged? What I increasingly notice when I speak to people about housing is the despair that so many people feel. People feel trapped and they feel helpless. They have run out of hope that things will change for the better. Will this change at Cabinet signal anything to them that change is coming or is it just going to be business as usual?

The issue of disability services is something that the Social Democrats feel very strongly about. Ireland is a wealthy country but we continually fail disabled people. The treatment of disabled children and their families is simply outrageous. Just today we have had new figures that the number of children overdue an assessment of need has now exceeded 18,000. When those children are finally assessed, what will happen? They will be put on waiting lists of up to 13 years to get critical therapies and supports. They are, therefore, waiting to get on another waiting list. It is truly shameful. I do not think that anyone in government would actually disagree with me on that but if they wanted to radically change that today, they could have appointed a senior Minister for disabilities, someone at the Cabinet table whose singular focus is disability services and improving them, someone who is going to take on the huge waiting lists for assessments and services, someone who will guarantee that every child has an appropriate school place and, crucially, someone who will ensure disabled people are treated with dignity and can live full and independent lives. Unfortunately, that decision was not taken today. It is a missed opportunity.

Will today's Cabinet appointments help us reach our climate targets? As everyone knows, we are on course to miss them by a country mile. The Minister has, for the first time, actually acknowledged they will be missed. Incredibly, he does not seem to want to do anything differently, or nothing that I can see. We are on course to miss our targets and incur billions of euro in fines from the EU for doing so. Perhaps the new Minister for Finance will act rationally and invest that money into climate mitigation, public transport, renewable energy, retrofitting, and sustainable agriculture instead of using it to pay the enormous fines we could have avoided.

I could continue for the rest of the day to list areas that need reform and investment because the truth is the country is not working for too many people in too many ways. However, it does not have to be like that. We are a wealthy country with so much potential that has yet to be realised. The crises we face in housing, in healthcare, in disability services, in childcare and in nature are not inevitable. They are not written in stone. They can be tackled and they can be surmounted but we need an acknowledgement from Government in its new incarnation that what they have been doing is not working, that the wrong political choices caused all of these crises and that the right ones can resolve them.

For people out there who are watching at home and feeling a huge disconnect from the words they hear from Government Ministers and from the reality they see in their own lives of strained family budgets, of overdue bills, of threadbare public services and a lack of critical infrastructure, it is important to note that real change is possible. We saw in the recent election of President Catherine Connolly that this change is at our fingertips, that her hopeful vision for a new Ireland resonated across the country and that this vision can become a reality. The Social Democrats will continue to do what we have always done, which is to propose constructive and progressive solutions and continue to work to hold this Government to account, to work towards a change of Government and, ultimately, to work towards a change of approach.

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