Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to speak on budget 2024. One hundred years ago, in April 1923, W.T. Cosgrave presented the first ever Budget Statement to Dáil Éireann. The budget was introduced just as the Civil War was ending, and the Government had a job on its hands to convince people both of its financial competence and the benefits of Irish statehood. Finishing his speech in this Chamber, President Cosgrave said, "When ordered conditions are restored, and normal life prevalent, we can safely anticipate a marked improvement in the economic condition of the country." Within a few months, a young engineer from Drogheda, Thomas McLaughlin, returned from Siemens in Berlin and started talking to the Government about a hydroelectric scheme for Ireland. Despite it representing one fifth of the resources available, the Government took the bold decision to fund the project at Ardnacrusha. It was the start of Ireland taking control of its own economic destiny. Today, Ireland is fully in control of her own destiny. We have our problems - every country does - but we are able to shape the kind of country we want to be. In a world of 200 countries, Ireland is consistently ranked in the top ten or 20 by almost every measure, but we can do more and can do better.

This is the fourth budget of this Government’s term. It is a €14 billion package in total, helping people, families, businesses and farmers with the cost of living and setting aside billions of euro for years and generations to come. This level of investment is only possible due to the hard work of the Irish people, the ingenuity of Irish business and some good political decision-making along the way. We should not take this position for granted. Not so long ago, this House was voting through budgets that reduced, not improved, people’s standard of living.

Inflation is moderating but the cost of living continues to rise. The bills coming in the door have not fallen and it is still more expensive to do the weekly shop or to keep the car running than it was two years ago. We are helping people and their families by putting more money in their pocket with measures for the most vulnerable and the squeezed middle. This includes a tax package that rewards work and allows people to keep more of their hard-earned money; a pensions and welfare package so that older people, carers, people on disability payments and lone parents get the help they need with rising costs; a focus on children that involves reducing school, college and childcare costs for families and improving access to those services; a package for businesses to help with higher costs, like wages and energy to protect jobs and ensure they do not have to pass all these costs on to the consumer; one-off measures to help households with high energy costs this winter, including three €150 energy credits; tax credits to help struggling mortgage holders, renters and small landlords; more investment across the board in healthcare, education and transport to further reduce costs and improve access to the services people need; new climate actions, including a record budget for retrofitting and funding for microgeneration and the just transition; a significant package to better resource An Garda Síochána, help to attract new recruits and build stronger, safer communities; and a record level of investment to drive regional development and help rural Ireland to prosper.

Tá a fhios agam go bhfuil an costas maireachtála fós ag méadú. Níl laghdú tagtha ar na billí atá ag teacht isteach agus tá sé níos costasaí fós an siopa seachtainiúil a dhéanamh. I mbuiséad 2024, táimid ag cabhrú le daoine agus lena dteaghlaigh. Táimid ag cur airgead ar ais ina bpócaí chun cabhrú leis an gcostas maireachtála. Tá pacáiste maith cánach, cúnamh le costas seirbhísí cosúil le cúram leanaí, agus leas agus pinsin méadaithe chun ioncam daoine aosta, breoite agus faoi mhíchumas a chosaint san áireamh. Táimid ag cur deontas nua ar fáil do ghnólachtaí freisin chun cabhrú leo déileáil le costais níos airde agus pacáiste cánach chun cabhrú leo fás agus infheistíocht a dhéanamh sa todhchaí. Soláthraíonn an buiséad €100 milliún chun an Ghaeilge a chur chun cinn mar theanga bheo i bpobal na Gaeltachta agus chun úsáid na Gaeilge a spreagadh sa timpeallacht.

A Cheann Comhairle, when it comes to any household budget, there are always three elements, namely, how much you are paid, how much you get to keep after tax and how far the money goes. This budget makes progress on all three fronts. Yesterday, the Government accepted the recommendation of the Low Pay Commission to increase the national minimum wage by €1.40 to €12.70 an hour, an increase of 12.4%. That is well ahead of the projected rate of inflation of 3% next year, just like last year's increase of 7.8% in a year in which inflation averaged 5%. It is a big step towards achieving a living wage, a policy initiative I took as Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Around 150,000 people will benefit and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, more will benefit from knock-on increases. For someone working 39 hours a week, it translates to a pay increase of €54 a week, or €2,800 per year. This is making work pay and helping those who get up early in the morning. In the coming weeks, we also hope to finalise the terms of a new public sector pay deal, which will be important for our existing public servants and also for the ability of the public service to remain an attractive place to work in a tight and competitive labour market.

The second element of any household budget is how much you get to keep after tax. I believe middle-income earners in Ireland pay too much tax and USC. It is simply not fair that the average full-time worker is hit with the highest rate of income tax and it is not fair that the tax system erodes so much of any pay increase they get or money earned from overtime worked. In the past ten years, this Government and the last have shown you can manage the public finances well while reducing income taxes, increasing public spending and growing jobs. It is not just about putting money back in people’s pockets; it is also about keeping the tax system competitive when it comes to the international battle for talent and skills. In that context, someone earning €40,000 or €45,000 today pays €3,000 less in income tax and USC than they did in 2014, and from next January, they will be paying even less. That is a significant saving and it is not a one-off; it is recurring and it happens every year. Budget 2024 gives working people more than €1,000 back through USC and income tax cuts, new tax credits and other measures such as energy credits. We will continue to campaign for income tax and USC cuts in the years ahead, provided we can afford to do it.

The third element of any household budget is how far your money goes. We need to reduce the cost and broaden the scope of services available in Ireland, and the budget contains a combination of recurring and one-off measures to help. I am not going to list them all but there are some very important ones, such as a 25% reduction in childcare costs from September, thus meeting our commitment to reduce the cost of childcare for families by 50% over the course of the Government; free schoolbooks for junior cycle students in post-primary schools; the extension of hot school meals to 900 more primary schools; a €1,000 reduction in the student contribution fee; and a €1,000 increase in the postgraduate tuition fee contribution.

A Cheann Comhairle, when I became Taoiseach again last December, I outlined my desire to make Ireland the best country in which to be a child and to reduce child poverty. That is something we can do. The minimum wage and knock-on increases will help, as will the abolition of fees for low-income part-time students, such as many lone parents and people with disabilities. Over the past decade, Ireland has made significant progress in reducing child poverty and promoting child well-being. Almost 50,000 fewer children are living in consistent poverty than was the case ten years ago, notwithstanding a rising population. After years of progress, however, last year, poverty rates increased for the first time in a long time, due to the sharp increase in the cost of living. Our objective in this budget is to restore the purchasing power of people’s incomes and push poverty rates back in the right direction. By focusing resources on those early years, we can empower people to make the most of that start through education, equal opportunities and good jobs to work towards a better future. It is not just about social welfare payments, though they are important.

The new child poverty and well-being programme office in the Department of the Taoiseach has published an initial plan identifying policy priorities for acceleration and investment in the years ahead - actions that will make a difference - in income, services and employment. We have already introduced free schoolbooks for primary schools and free GP care for all children under eight and extended the hot school meals programme. We have also abolished inpatient hospital charges and reduced the cost of school transport and public transport for young people. Budget 2024 builds on that with a €12 weekly increase in all social welfare payments, a double month of the child benefit, a €100 lump sum for families receiving the increase for a qualified child on top of that, a €400 lump sum for families in receipt of the working family payment, an extension of hot school meals to hundreds more primary schools, a €100 increase in the home carer and single-person child carer tax credit and a €200 increase in the incapacitated child tax credit.

In simple terms, if we think of, for example, a lone parent with two kids struggling to get by on social welfare, that family will receive €480 in bonus payments before Christmas, a Christmas bonus, a further bonus in January, and an extra €20 every week when we take into account the adult increase and the increase for two qualified children. I thank the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, for her work in putting together this year’s welfare package. In the round, some families could benefit by several thousand euro. To give another example, somebody renting who has one child and is earning the minimum wage will benefit from a €2,800 increase in pay, €450 in energy credits, €750 from the rent tax credit, €140 extra in child benefit payments and possibly a range of other measures. That is more than €4,000 back into the pocket of that family - not a small sum.

As is always the case on budget day and after budget day, we will hear claims and counter-claims and people will focus on one aspect of the budget and say it is not enough, or say something else was left out. I understand that is how criticism works on budget day. While people are entitled to their own opinions, however, they are not entitled to their own facts, and one of the differences in the budget this year is the publication that was released yesterday, Budget 2024: Beyond GDP - Quality of Life Assessment. This is all about the process of equality budgeting and it is significant to draw the House's attention to page 12, for anyone interested in the facts as to how this budget impacts on different people. It shows the impact of the budget on different deciles. Those who benefit the most are in the poorest 10% of the population and those who benefit the least are in the richest 10%. When we break it down by household, the type of household that benefits the most is a household headed by a lone parent. These are the facts; anything else is opinion.

A Cheann Comhairle, I believe improved pay and terms and conditions can go hand in hand with jobs growth, but I am also very conscious of the need to help businesses as these reforms are phased in. Along with higher energy bills, there is a lot to deal with, and we want to make sure those added costs are not all passed on to the consumer. I was very keen, therefore, to support the push by the Minister, Deputy Coveney, for a new grant, the increased cost-of-business scheme, ICOBS. It will help about 130,000 small and medium-sized businesses with grants worth up to €20,000 and we expect it to be paid in the new year.

There is also a good tax package for businesses that will help them to grow into the future. It includes new capital gains tax relief for angel investors in innovative start-ups, improvements to the employment investment incentive scheme, an enhanced research and development tax credit and an increase in the VAT registration thresholds for services and goods for very small businesses. We can be relied on to back business and jobs to ensure a strong economy.

We have to step up our level of ambition on public infrastructure to keep pace with a rapidly growing population and economy. Next year will be another record year for public capital investment. To put it into perspective, we are now investing four times as much in public infrastructure every year as we did ten years ago. Extra funding alone is not enough. We need to get better at completing projects on time and on budget. Far too many important capital projects are taking far too long, including schools, housing, hospitals, Garda stations and public transport projects. Housing for All is working and, much like Project Ireland 2040, we are focusing on implementation to make sure the initiatives we have committed to are implemented quickly and effectively. Next year we are making additional funding available for homeless services, for our social housing building programme and for some of the vital schemes to help people to buy their own homes. The capital budget for housing will be a record €5.1 billion in 2024. The difficulty will be our capacity to spend it, but I believe we will. We built 30,000 homes in Ireland last year. We want to build more this year and more again in 2025. I am increasingly confident we will exceed our target for this year and next. We are extending the help-to-buy scheme until the end of 2025 and extending its eligibility criteria to those availing of the local authority affordable purchase scheme. We will examine extending it to the first home scheme as well. The rent tax credit is a simple and direct way to put money back in renters’ pockets. It is straightforward to apply for, so I would encourage anyone who has not done so to apply as soon as possible. They have three years in which to do so. In 2024 it will be worth €750 for an individual, €1,500 for a couple and €2,250 for three people sharing. It is per renter and not per property. For every renter, there has to be a landlord and therefore we need landlords. The budget introduces some tax concessions designed to keep them in the market for longer.

Recent severe weather events highlight the need to intensify our efforts to stop global warming. We must be the generation that turns the tide on climate change and biodiversity loss. As I have always said, we should not see climate action as an obligation or a burden. We should embrace it as an economic and social opportunity. It is about warmer homes, cleaner air, less time commuting, more remote and home working, more time with family, more jobs and greater regional development. Budget 2024 provides record funding to ramp up our retrofitting programme and ensure we have enough highly skilled people to meet the demand. Not only is retrofitting the right thing to do from a climate point of view, it will also mean lower energy bills and warmer, more comfortable homes for thousands of families, including some of the poorest, who will receive a 100% grant to retrofit their home. I want Ireland to become energy independent by harnessing our untapped renewable energy resources. This is our moonshot for the 21st century. Recalling Ardnacrusha and the spirit of the Free State, it is our Shannon scheme 2.0.

Budget 2024 enables the Government to continue its work in building stronger and safer communities. It provides for the recruitment of up to 1,000 trainee Gardaí and 250 Garda staff specialising in ICT and other administrative functions. There will be an increase in the Garda training allowance, which will apply immediately, and additional investment in fighting the epidemic of domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. We are reinforcing this record level of investment with tougher laws being led by the Minister for Justice, Deputy McEntee, and making provision for longer sentences for serious crimes against individuals.

Rural Ireland is at the heart of this Government’s work programme. So much of this budget - from extra funding in capital infrastructure, to extra funding for business - is about sustaining our rural communities. We are continuing the 20% transport fare reductions until the end of next year. We are increasing funding for the local improvement scheme to improve access to homes, farms and outdoor amenities. We are also increasing funding for rural transport Local Link services, which have proved extremely popular. The national broadband plan will also be fully funded. More than €700 million is being made available for farmers participating in agri-environmental actions, including through the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES; areas of natural constraint, ANCs; forestry; organic farming; and other schemes. On the tax side, we are improving several reliefs designed to help with farm succession. Accelerated capital allowances for farm safety equipment, which the Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, has prioritised, are also included.

We should not forget that Ireland only became a wealthy country relatively recently. Other wealthy countries have a lead of several decades on us when it comes to infrastructure. Some of our neighbours started their metro systems in the 19th century. We will only start ours in the next few years. We need to get better at executing big capital projects. With this in mind, we are establishing two funds for the future - the future Ireland fund, and the infrastructure, climate and nature fund. They are designed to achieve long-term benefits, avoid a stop-start approach to investment and provide additional capital for climate action and nature restoration. It means we will be able to continue investing in vital infrastructure and avoid cutbacks in the future if the economy takes a downturn.

I remember when I was first appointed to government 12 years ago, the first thing I was asked to do was take €400 million out of the budget for the then Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport. I never want anybody, no matter what party, to have to make those kinds of decisions again, and have to increase income taxes or cut welfare payments, public pay or public investment. That is what the establishment of these funds is about.

Before I finish I will take a moment to comment on the proposals coming from the other side of the House. We know the drill at this stage. The Opposition parties put together a long list of ways to spend the money available. Long before we publish the budget, they say we made the wrong choices and the package does not go far enough. We also know that they will never say we have spent too much money. The idea of responsible public finances is a concern exclusive to this side of the House. However, there are a few surprises from the Opposition this year. Sinn Féin proposes no less than 19 separate tax increases. Sinn Féin is a seriously high tax party. These are tax increases amounting to almost €3 billion, while the economy is still grappling with a cost-of-living crisis. Business is hardest hit in its tax plans, but also retirement savings, and not just for the wealthy. Sinn Féin would leave income tax bands unchanged, resulting in income tax rises by stealth, especially for middle-income earners, more of whom would pay the 40% tax rate every year. Buried once again at the back of its alternative budget is a massive €330 million cut in the level of tax relief on pension contributions. Sinn Féin has done this before to make its figures add up, without explaining what it would mean in practice and for whom. We are left to guess, but it almost certainly means that ordinary private sector workers and many public servants would lose out by thousands of euro every year, creating the wrong incentives to save for retirement. They should be pressed to explain this policy. A common theme running through Sinn Féin’s policies is a failure to plan for the long term. That extends from pensions to enterprise and to climate. Where is its enterprise policy? Where is the package to help businesses to deal with increased costs? Sinn Féin pays lip service to the concept of climate action, but ducks all of the hard decisions. It would go against the advice of the Climate Change Advisory Council, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action, and Nobel prize-winning climate scientists by refusing to outline a trajectory for carbon tax. In fact, it even wants to suspend it. Sinn Féin is definitely Ireland’s climate-sceptic party.

Sinn Féin opposed Ireland joining the European Union and the Single Market, opposed EU citizenship and opposed the euro. It opposed the ratification of major EU free trade agreements, and boasts that it has done so.

It opposed our low corporate tax rate, which helped secure so many jobs and so much investment for Ireland. Sinn Féin advocated and believed that Irish unification could be achieved by force. Sinn Féin wanted to burn the bondholders and reject financial help from the IMF and ECB after the financial crash. Sinn Féin even flirted with zero Covid in 2020. For 30 years, Sinn Féin got all the big calls wrong. It will do so again. The next big threat might not be external; it might be an internal one, taking the form of a radical change to our long-standing and successful economic and foreign policies. This is not the change we need; it would be change for the worse. Steady and safe change is better for Ireland.

I am conscious that we are well into our second year of war in Europe and that there are many other pressing issues around the globe while we talk about our budget. The events in the Middle East over the past week are of serious concern. The loss of life is appalling, as is the impact on people going about their daily lives. We condemn attacks on civilians unequivocally, no matter who perpetrates them. A few years ago, I launched the most ambitious expansion of Ireland's international presence ever undertaken, namely, Global Ireland 2025, with the aim of doubling our impact across the globe. We have seen how effective we can be as a small country working through international forums and providing humanitarian assistance to some of the poorest countries in the world. Look at what was achieved during our time on the UN Security Council and at the work our peacekeepers do. In this budget, we are increasing funding to Irish Aid by €60 million, reaching record highs. Total official development assistance from Government will amount to €2 billion. In doing so, we are tackling the root causes of conflict, malnutrition, climate change and irregular migration. That is a good use of public funds.

I commend the budget to the House.

Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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The budget is a fair, progressive and ambitious response to the needs of Ireland today and in respect of the challenges it will face in the years ahead. It marks a decisive moment when Ireland signals its intention to build and protect public services well into the future. It is a signal to those who invest in Ireland that we are serious about delivering our radical investment plans. It gives a commitment to those who work hard and pay taxes to fund services today that those services will be there when they need them. It provides direct aid to families at a time of need while moving forward with the modernisation and expansion of a range of services they rely upon. At a time when most political noise is devoted to parties trying to exploit problems, the budget shows a Government focused on tackling those problems.

It is a simple fact that each of this Government’s budgets has been progressive. Each has prioritised helping those in need and building sustainable public services and each has shown our unmatched commitment to tackling the most urgent challenges of this generation - action on climate change, action on housing and building a last peace and reconciliation on our island.

Given the aggressive and dismissive tone of Opposition contributions to this debate so far, it is important to address the most fundamental issue for any budget, which is the underlying economic situation. This budget shows again a Government which has been capable of steering Ireland through often dramatic economic challenges, protecting services and helping families. Our core economic policy remains a balanced approach built on the pillars of creating jobs through active trade with the world, encouraging investment by being pro-enterprise and pro-European Union, and investing in skills, services and infrastructure. Many of these elements are in stark contrast to the core positions of much of the Opposition who, for 50 years, have been consistent opponents of the policies which have created jobs, funded social services and built our infrastructure. No matter how many soft photo opportunities are arranged and cynical reassurances given that nothing will change, the bottom line is there is a radical difference on core economic policies between parties here.

Each budget in the past three years has shown a Government capable of dealing with dramatic economic and social challenges. We came into office when the fastest moving recession ever recorded was under way, allied to the greatest public health crisis for a century. Hundreds of thousands of people faced the prospect of losing their jobs and of their companies losing their business. We overcame that deep challenge and Ireland was one of the most successful companies in recovering quickly from the pandemic. We also faced the challenge of dramatic disruption in our most important trading relationship. Through a programme of direct aid and seeking new opportunities, we have succeeded in mitigating the impact of Brexit far more than expected. We cannot let our guard down and must maintain this work but by any fair measure, we have achieved a lot. For the past year and a half, we faced an international situation that could not be more grave in terms of economic and political instability. Inflationary pressures not seen for more than 40 years emerged through a combination of disruptions to trade and the impact of a brutal imperialistic war against a European nation. We have succeeded in keeping inflation in Ireland below that in much of the rest Europe and provided direct aid to families with the biggest price rises. Today’s inflation is roughly half what it was last year. Projections show it will fall further next year and the year after.

In the avalanche of press releases from the Opposition in the past 24 hours attacking the failure to spend more in every area, what has been missing is recognition that their demands will have a direct impact on driving up prices further. This reflects the stark divide between parties that want an honest debate on public policies and those that prefer to cynically ignore fundamental issues. It is the difference between the politics of substance and the politics of soundbites. We are happy to stand over our policies and the focus in our plans but we have a right to respond to the relentless attacks of the past 24 hours.

The main Opposition party has produced what it claims to be the most extensive and comprehensive alternative budget. It contains no economic analysis because they would have to admit the success of our approach. It contains no multi-annual figures because this would require that party to be more specific. The word “business” is missing from the document, and it has nothing whatsoever to say about employment creation. A claimed party of the ordinary worker has not one word to say about the dramatic reduction in unemployment. When it comes to protecting our economy and services in the face of a potential recession, Sinn Féin yesterday supported the principle of putting money aside and attacked the act of doing so. No matter how often Sinn Féin members say they have everything fully costed or have shown the alternative, it is not true. It is like when we see the leader of a party which has opposed every European treaty and trade agreement, while obsessively attacking the European Union, trying to keep a straight face when she tells an interviewer that Sinn Féin is pro-European Union. The growing level of entitled arrogance of this party was seen over and over yesterday, perhaps most starkly when a senior spokesperson told a female Minister of State he would put manners on her. That was not a slip; it is the type of thing we are seeing more and more often.

The budget shows starkly the profound difference in economic and fiscal policies between us and those in the main Opposition party. We believe in creating quality jobs; they have nothing to say about job creation. We believe in supporting enterprise; they have nothing to say about supporting enterprise. We believe in using exceptional revenue to protect public services in the future; they want to spend it all now, irrespective of the impact on inflation or future services. We believe in a strong European Union that helps us to compete in the world; they are relentless Eurosceptics. We believe in setting out concrete plans across several years; they believe in policy soundbites focused on today. We believe in taking sustained action on climate change and biodiversity; they oppose every concrete step to implementing this action. We believe in sustained action on housing, including home ownership; they are consistent in opposing all new actions to help homeowners.

It is a natural and reasonable feature of politics that the Government is subject to intense scrutiny. At some point, people will get around to providing a fraction of this scrutiny to substance, rather than the rhetoric of the self-proclaimed alternative government.

At some point, the intimidation of legitimate journalism with lawsuits and the practice of disappearing when difficult questions are asked will not work any longer. We may even reach a point where the rest of the Opposition stops cowering in the face of online bullies and challenges a party which sees them as mere vote fodder. When this happens, a lot will change.

Seo cáinaisnéis a chuireann feabhsuithe móra suntasacha ar fáil agus a leagann bunchloch chun na feabhsuithe seo a chosaint go ceann i bhfad sa todhchaí. Cuireann an cháinaisnéis seo cúnamh díreach ar fáil do theaghlaigh ag am nuair atá siad faoi bhrú agus cuirtear infheistiú ar fáil chun dul i ngleic le dúshláin roimh ár dtír. Is buiséad tomhaiste agus inbhuanaithe é seo a léiríonn dul chun cinn dearfach do gach grúpa. This balance is reflected in the fact we are implementing significant targeted improvements next year while also avoiding the inflation threat which a significant further increase would cause.

Throughout this Government’s programme, we find the substance of both addressing the needs of today and implementing changes to prepare for our future. This was shown again yesterday. The Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, announced a range of tax reforms which represent a highly innovative response to making sure that Ireland generates the businesses and products needed to remain competitive. Many of the sectors which employ the most people today did not even exist 25 years ago. Through our tax, education, research and investment policies, we made Ireland a world leader in these sectors. However, we cannot take anything for granted and we have to assume that the pace of change will continue to speed up. That is why our new measures for early-stage companies and for research and development are so important. Allied to our major investments in critical research programmes, training and infrastructure, we are putting in place the foundations for jobs and growth well into the future. As the Minister will show in the Finance Bill, we are taking action to make Ireland a secure place to create and invest in new companies.

More fundamentally, this budget marks a decisive moment in terms of protecting public services and vital investment plans well into the future. Anyone who pays even the slightest attention to the international situation knows that further economic shocks are highly likely to occur sooner or later. The question is whether Ireland will be prepared. As a result of the new investment funds that we are creating, Ireland will have in place a major buffer to protect public services and investment plans. Using money that we know with a high degree of likelihood is not a long-term and secure basis for increasing spending, we will create funds that mean we can expand services and plan investments with much greater efficiency and certainty.

The larger fund is what economists term a counter-cyclical investment fund. In normal language, this is about investing money to make sure that you can cope with difficulties when they emerge in the future. The other fund is about underpinning both general capital investments and, critically, funding our achievement of carbon neutrality and enhanced biodiversity. These funds show that Ireland is doing things differently. We are determined to show that we can underpin major improvements in public activity not just today, but well into the future. As well as increasing available funding due to their investment activity, they will also strengthen confidence in our economy and public finances. This will have a direct impact on our ability to borrow at better rates, reducing interest payments and increasing the funds available for public services.

The investment fund means there will be much greater security for the major capital plans which we have set out and will build upon. There has always been a conflict between the need to prepare annual budgets and capital investment projects which operate over many years. By providing this extra security, there will be a number of vital benefits. It will help to build the capacity and maintain confidence to deliver the plans, and it will encourage long-term innovation. I will address the environmental element of the fund later but I note here that it will ensure that Ireland becomes a leader in sustainable action on an existential issue.

These funds represent a dramatic innovation and they will define how this budget is remembered. I have been attempting to find out what the main Opposition party’s position is on these funds. There was no credible guidance in its pre-budget proposals and there is even more confusion after yesterday. That party’s two spokespeople managed to say everything and nothing, and to do so at length. Deputy Doherty told us that Sinn Féin is in principle in favour of a long-term fund but in practice thinks the money should be spent now. Deputy Conway-Walsh said that Sinn Féin is in favour of long-term investment in climate action but that the money should be spent in the short term. Therefore, Sinn Féin is both in favour of establishing funds to meet future needs and against actually putting money in these funds. It wants an each-way bet. It says it is against inflation but it is also in favour of pumping far more money into the economy.

The funds which we announced yesterday will be seen as a moment when Ireland took decisive action to both invest in urgent actions and to protect its future.

For the first time in 40 years, a sustained period of inflation is being seen internationally. Major increases in energy costs due to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine have come on top of continued disruption to supply chains and other pressures driving up prices. Most of these pressures are not domestic, something that has been confirmed repeatedly by independent surveys and the fact that Ireland’s inflation rate has been consistently below that of many other countries. However, the fact that prices are going up because of international factors is largely irrelevant to families trying to cope with the rising cost of essential items. Therefore, it is absolutely correct that we should intervene to help, both in terms of cost increases which are likely to be permanent and those which will most likely be temporary. This is exactly what we have done in this budget.

Every family will benefit through a range of measures and the largest amount will again go to those most in need. The permanent increase in core social protection payments of €12 per week is a major financial commitment but it is both sustainable and essential. A range of improvements in other social protection schemes will be implemented. I am proud that, as a Government, we have yet again delivered a major social protection budget. The tax relief contained in the budget is fair and ensures that people are not penalised because they benefit from the increase in the minimum wage we are implementing or are pushed into paying higher rates because of average wage increases. These are sustainable tax reductions which provide significant relief but do not undermine our tax base, which ensures that we do not rely on windfall receipts to fund public services. As these progressive measures on social protection and taxation show, the desperate attempt by those wedded to ideologies of the past to try to paint us as somehow right-wing does not stand up to the most basic scrutiny.

To address the exceptional increases in energy prices, a new series of special payments will be made to benefit every household in the country. The unprecedented series of increases in interest rates seen in the past year and a half means that many people have faced steep increases in their mortgage payments. No honest person could ever commit to fully offsetting all interest rate increases but there is a lot that can be done and we are doing so. It is low and average earners facing major increases who will receive this special payment of up to €1,250.

As part of our commitment to both expanding access to childcare and making it more affordable for families, for the second year in a row we will fund a reduction in childcare costs by 25%. This is already, and by some distance, the Government which has provided most for meeting the costs of childcare and other costs faced by families. Families will receive a double payment of child benefit this December, and child benefit will now be paid up to the age of 18 for those who remain in full-time education.

Taken together, all of these measures demonstrate that this is a budget for families. Across Government, other measures will be implemented to help make services more affordable and accessible.

This budget also reflects the fact that delivering more homes is a core priority for us. The only way to deliver housing for all who need it at prices which they can afford is to build and renovate more homes and directly help people at critical moments for them. Action is required not on one area, but on every type of housing. Our population has risen faster than at any time in our history and new homes are required in every part of our country.

When Housing for All was published, the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, was met with the angry cynicism of Opposition claims that there was no chance that its targets would be met. Through his relentless activity and willingness to find new answers to long-standing problems, he has delivered more new homes than promised and is pushing to go much further. A new era in social housing has begun, with over 11,600 new social homes provided for next year. A sustained effort to aid people in buying a new home has seen 45,000 benefit from our various housing schemes. From increasing support for apprenticeship to fast-tracking public services for new housing, an intense programme to increase the capacity to build new homes has been implemented. According to the CSO, by the end of last year, the Minister’s actions had led to an increase in house completions by over 40% since 2019.

We will not stand still, however.

Much more must and will be done. Next year, an unprecedented €6.6 billion will be spent on delivering housing. This marks an increase in every sector. It includes extra investment in homelessness prevention, support for older people and people with special needs and in various affordable house and home schemes. Direct help is being provided for the rental sector. To help renters, the tax credit will be increased by 50% to €750 and specific action will be taken to increase take-up of this benefit through increasing awareness. Funding will go towards protecting renters and to ensuring that core standards are enforced.

We also need to maintain as much supply of rental properties as possible. There are many layers to the absurdity of the Sinn Féin idea that you can remove almost all rights of those renting properties and reduce their income but expect to maintain the supply of rental accommodation. A number of proposals are being implemented which will reduce pressure on rents and reward long-term supply.

Given Deputy Ó Broin’s prominence in the media and his pretence of being a housing visionary, it is remarkable that Sinn Féin has not actually published a full housing policy. It is just a series of policy soundbites. This is not surprising as it is a repeat of Sinn Féin's behaviour when in control of the housing portfolio at Stormont. After two years of a housing crisis there, it produced nothing but a consultation process. Sinn Féin has, however, proposed abolishing nearly all affordable home schemes and believes that the only priority for Government should be social housing. It also proposes the abolition of help-to-buy scheme, the first home scheme and the vacant and derelict homes scheme under which grants are available to people to renovate houses. We could not disagree more with Sinn Féin on its position in respect of affordable housing and also its position that it should only be social housing and nothing else. We must have more social housing. We are delivering a step change in the provision of social housing, but people have a right to seek their own homes. It is right that Government should seek to help those on modest incomes who want to afford a home.

If those in opposition is sincere in wanting to see more housing built, then we look forward to their support for the new planning legislation which will address the unacceptable delays and costs that stand in the way of many reasonable developments. As part of this, Sinn Féin might reverse its policy of near systematic objection to housing proposals in Dublin where it has led the charge in delaying thousands of homes of all types which could already be under construction or completed.

We will continue our commitment to increase the range, quality and accessibility of health services. Given the negativity which so often surrounds such a large and complex public service which is caring for a rapidly rising population, proper perspective demands that we also acknowledge major steps forward. I am sure the House would agree that the dramatic improvements in both diagnosing and treating major diseases, especially cancer and cardiovascular disease, is a success which must be acknowledged. So too is the vital reform involved in getting a new public-only contract in place, with over 800 consultants already having signed up to it. Through the extension of free GP care, the abolition of inpatient charges and other measures, the cost of accessing healthcare is being pushed down. For context, up to 60% of our population now hold a GP or medical card. Taken together with increased provision and improved quality outcomes, this is genuine progress.

As we have emerged from the pandemic, a major backlog in treatments has had to be addressed. I commend everyone in our health system for their work on this and the fact that waiting times are now so much better than in the system we were told we should copy, which is that in the UK. Next year, the National Treatment Purchase Fund will move further on this. A range of important improvements in other services will be delivered. The extra funding provided for child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, reflects our commitment to extending this vital service.

The provision for education also demonstrates a sustained commitment to reducing costs, developing supports and preparing for the future. This year’s historic move to the provision of free textbooks for primary schools will be extended to the junior cycle of second level schools, benefiting over 200,000 pupils and families. Relief in respect of school transport costs will be extended and hot meals will be provided to a further 900 primary schools. That is in addition to meals already being provided to all DEIS schools. There will again be an increase in teacher numbers, with the pupil-teacher ratio remaining at an historic low. The hiring of 1,200 special needs assistants will continue our commitment to supporting those with special needs. Critically, we will push forward with our programme of developing and modernising our schools. Some 500 school building projects will be funded next year.

Playing our part in tackling the climate emergency and protecting our natural environment is central to our work in government. While we may have many debates about specific measures, we are united in our commitment to action. In this budget, we have shown our willingness to put in place transformative levels of funding. This Government will be remembered as one which dramatically increased Ireland’s sustainable energy sector, developed comprehensive environmental renewal programmes and helped communities to benefit from the transition to a low-carbon economy. The environmental element of the fund announced yesterday reinforces this and will ensure that action will continue and will grow, irrespective of the international economic situation.

I very strongly reject the idea that meeting essential environmental goals must be at the expense of farmers and rural communities. Farmers have shown time and again that our largest indigenous industry is willing to embrace change and innovation. The challenge is to work with farmers and the wider agrifood sector to implement a range of innovations which can make an industry that is already less carbon intensive than those in the vast majority of countries go even further. Research is ever more conclusive that we can have both environmental sustainability and strong beef and dairy sectors if we move from research to action and work in partnership on planning and implementation.

The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, has very skilfully negotiated the CAP strategic plan and other measures to secure core farm incomes in the years ahead and to add very significant national funding to aid transformation. The budget includes over €700 million in agri-environmental funding. Specific funding for schemes on organics, forestry and dairy-beef will benefit thousands of farmers and the wider sector.

We will continue to ramp up measures to both improve the condition of our waterways and show that we can have low levels of pollution without there being any justification for the full removal of higher permitted levels of nitrates. The cross-departmental initiative on tackling water pollution is an important initiative, the impact of which will begin to be felt next year.

I have already separately addressed my Department's plans for next year. However, I will make a few comments here. The extra €60 million for overseas development aid will make an important difference in a range of areas, but, most importantly, in developing our long-term commitment to helping less developed countries to finance urgent climate adjustments. At COP26 in Glasgow in November 2021, I pledged that Ireland would provide at least €225 million per year in climate finance to developing countries by 2025. The budget provision of a total additional €42.5 million in climate finance ensures that we are on schedule to meet this commitment. We will also be increasing our support for humanitarian aid. Unfortunately, the need for this aid remains as strong as ever.

This Government is determined to address the unmet need for much deeper engagement, understanding and reconciliation between different communities on this island. Supporting the Good Friday Agreement and pushing forward with the shared island initiative are priorities for us.

It is remarkable that in the past 24 hours the Opposition has been angrily attacking the capital allocation for defence when the detail of this has not been outlined. That will come, and there will be further developments in respect of the national development plan in that context. What I can say is that at €1.23 billion, the 2024 defence budget is the largest ever, allowing us to further enable progress on the modernisation and transformation of our Defence Forces and providing for an increase of an additional 400 personnel.

This funding covers the full year costs of extending enhanced healthcare to all Defence Force personnel. All enlisted personnel have access now to secondary private healthcare, something which officers had up until now. That is a significant step in itself. This budget also supports a greatly enhanced Defence Forces recruitment campaign and more human resources supports, which are essential in the journey towards getting our Defence Forces numbers where we want them to be. It is worth pointing out that the starting rates of pay across our Defence Forces are higher than those of other comparable sectors in the public service. Leaving school, one is at €36,000 or €37,000 of a starting rate of pay on enlistment. On commissioning as a cadet, a school leaver will be on €41,000. Also on commission, a graduate will be in receipt of €46,000, with the rate of pay rising very quickly thereafter.

The progress that has been made in increases in allowances and for equipment needs to be acknowledged in the debate on the Defence Forces. There are capital projects worth €120 million under way right now, right across the country. I have been to all the barracks. The physical manifestation of this investment in infrastructure, equipment, new ships and aircraft, including the Airbus C295 which was delivered some months ago, can be seen.

During the Government's term to date we have worked with the people of Ireland to overcome a series of profound challenges. As a country, we have come through them strongly. We are generating the resources to implement a sustained series of measures in the next year to help families with rising costs, to develop essential public services and crucially, to make sure that we have the resources we need to not just improve services today but to protect them in the years ahead. It is a balanced and fair budget. Without stoking further price rises it involves a significant increase in public spending and reductions in personal taxation. The investment funds which it puts in place serve the interests of both those who need action today and who want services to be available to them in the future. They will sustain improved supports for people and action on critical challenges like housing and the climate emergency. I commend this budget to the House.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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It will come as no surprise to anyone who takes an interest in Irish political life that the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach spent a disproportionate amount of their time ráméising about Sinn Féin. Had they any confidence in their own actual budget and performance in government, they would have structured their remarks rather differently. It is small wonder because the budget comes at a time where we have a major crisis in housing, we have a crisis in health services and the soaring cost of living is writ large, impacting on the daily lives and aspirations of workers, families and especially on our young people. This should have been a housing budget, first and foremost. It should have been a budget to kick-start a transformation of our health service and to make life affordable again, with ambitious action to cut living costs. Instead, the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste are not here. They had much to say, they talk a lot but listen very little. They took their responsibilities to make real and lasting differences in these areas. They essentially kicked for touch with an auction budget that does very little really to improve people's prospects in the long term.

Of course, it is 13 years since a Fianna Fáil Minister for Finance introduced a budget. We all know the reason for that hiatus. The party of the Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin, crashed the economy. Deputy Micheál Martin sat in Cabinet when the Government decimated public finances, drove the housing market off a cliff and scattered our young people to the four corners of the globe in search of work and opportunity. Therefore, he will have to excuse us and those who suffered at their lack of good judgment and good governance if we take his homilies on economic prudence, prosperity and advancement with a very large dose of salt.

They say that a week is a long time in politics. Well, 13 years is a lifetime. There has been more than a decade to change and build a fairer, better and more equal Ireland. Budget 2024 is the fourth budget from this Government, the eighth budget co-authored by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil joined at the hip, and of course the 13th budget from Fine Gael since it came to power in 2011. Every one of those budgets represented a chance to deliver change, to put ordinary people first, yet all we ever got is more of the same: a budget in which ambition, imagination and vision are decidedly absent and there is a recycling of broken promises that created and embedded problems. This budget is just the latest chapter in a story of failure written by parties and by a Government devoid of ideas, out of touch with the challenges that face ordinary households, lacking in energy and now increasingly running out of time.

We had a housing crisis before this budget and we will have a housing crisis after this budget. Our health service was under enormous pressure before this budget; our health service will be under even more pressure after this budget. Life for so many was unaffordable before this budget and life will be unaffordable after it.

I frequently remind the three men, only one of whom is here, who lead this Government that they came to office saying they would fix housing. That was their pledge. If ever anyone needed proof as to why you should never allow those who created a problem to try to solve it, then the proof is in this budget. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have provided it in spades. People are crying out for affordable homes, to be able to put a secure roof over their heads. Hundreds of thousands of renters are ripped off every month. More than 12,000 people live in emergency accommodation including almost 4,000 children who grow up without a place to call home. Sky-high house prices mean that so many of our younger generation are locked out of homeownership. They look, therefore, for a better life and a better chance in Boston, Toronto and Perth, far away from their families, their friends and their communities. The housing crisis has now literally seeped into every facet of our society and our economy. It is little wonder that employers struggle to hire workers, hospitals struggle to hire nurses and schools struggle to hire teachers. Yet the Taoiseach claims the Government housing plan is working. On the watch of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, housing has gone from crisis to emergency to full-blown social disaster. If this is their definition of success, God help us should we ever see one of their failures.

To look at the budget announced yesterday by the Ministers, Deputies McGrath and Donohoe, you would think that housing was not an issue at all. You would imagine that everything is rosy in the biodiverse garden. Nothing to see here; move on. However, the reality is that those caught up in this housing disaster cannot move on. They are stuck, unable to get a mortgage and trapped in the nightmare of the private rental sector, and more adults than ever find themselves unable to move out of the family home. Last night, I listened to one young man in his 20s talking about how at his age, his parents were married, had a home and they had two kids. However, for him, his life is on hold. This budget should have been and could have been about changing things for that young man and for his generation. It was an opportunity to change direction, an opportunity to provide the necessary investment for a massive scaling up in the delivery of affordable and social homes that people need, and an opportunity to act decisively to finally tackle extortionate rents, but the Government has chosen to squander that opportunity.

Incredibly, it has not provided a single cent of additional capital funding for affordable and social housing while the situation gets worse by the day. Last year, budget 2023 provided €2.6 billion in Exchequer capital for housing. Budget 2024 provides exactly the same, with no ramping up of targets that were already too low, and well they know it, and no ban on soaring rent increases. Incredibly, this budget is doing nearly twice as much for landlords as for renters. Another big transfer of public money into the coffers of landlords is not the big idea needed to address the dysfunctional and exploitative private rental sector.

There simply are no excuses anymore. There are no excuses for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael anymore in housing.

The longer they have been in government, the worse housing has become. Renters and aspiring homeowners will be stunned that there was no increase in capital spending and there were no new targets despite the Government having the money to make a decisive intervention. You see, there is no real determination to get to grips with this crisis. Frankly, at this stage the Government is negligent and reckless, not to say incompetent. Those who are in desperate need of housing will today scratch their heads in frustration. They will ask: where is the urgency? Where is the pace? Where is the ambition to fix housing? They will not find it in this budget.

A Sinn Féin Government would be different. That is true. The Taoiseach and Tánaiste commented on that. It would be absolutely different. We would introduce a housing budget, a defining budget for our times. We would deliver the investment to drive the biggest house-building programme in the history of the State. For this budget, we proposed an additional investment of €1.7 billion to deliver 21,000 affordable and social homes. This was way above the Government's target. That is the scale of ambition - and more - that will be required to fix housing, but the Government does not get it. It seems to me that they do not want to get it, quite frankly, at this stage. It is laughable that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil claim to be the parties of homeownership without ever bringing forward a credible State-led plan for affordable housing.

Mairead Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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Hear, hear.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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The gloves need to come off now when it comes to tackling and ending the housing crisis, but once again this Government has failed to land a punch.

In this budget, the Government has confirmed beyond doubt that Fianna Fáil- and Fine Gael-led Governments are bad for the health of ordinary workers and families. They certainly threw the Minister for Health, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, under the bus, did they not? It is astonishing that there was not one mention of health in the Taoiseach’s very long, very expansive speech. There was not a mention of health. There was not an additional cent for new hospital beds. The Minister's big promise of 1,500 additional beds was torn up. Was this perhaps in punishment for the massive cost overruns that now plague the health service? The Government has allocated even less than last year, simply for the system to stand still. The capital budget will be outstripped by inflation.

Let us remember that whatever the internal dynamics of this Government are and whatever the views and rivalries are, it is not the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, who will feel the pain of all this.

David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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Hear, hear.

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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It will be felt by the hundreds of thousands of people who are waiting to get a hospital appointment, by the children living in agony as they wait and wait for life-changing spinal procedures and by the older people and sick people being left on trolleys in overcrowded and unsafe hospital corridors. One would not think that we have a recruitment and retention crisis across the health service, spanning GPs, doctors, nurses, speech and language therapists and all forms of specialists. We have to ask ourselves where the funding is for an action plan to solve this. Where is it, gentlemen? Allocating €100 million for new measures is a drop in the ocean. It is no surprise to us that a senior Government source is quoted in the media today as saying that health was not a priority in this budget. That much is very obvious.

For our part, we proposed an investment of €1.3 billion, which would deliver 1,800 additional hospital beds over three years, expand theatre and diagnostics capacity, deliver more home care and expand training places for healthcare professionals. Now, that is a plan. That is what a plan looks like. This would help to ensure that people receive the right care in the right place and at the right time. The Government’s health budget demonstrates that the Government has thrown in the towel on solving the health crisis. It is bad for our health, bad for patients and bad for front-line workers. Their failure to invest means that the crisis in our health service will continue. Chronic waiting lists will continue. Overcrowding will continue. That is certainly the case for University Hospital Limerick, UHL, which has experienced the most serious overcrowding on record and where more people are being advised to stay away from its emergency department.

This failure extends into services for some of the most vulnerable people in our society. It is cruelly ironic that the budget was introduced on World Mental Health Day because the allocation in this area is truly shameful. We have a mental health crisis. Young people, families and communities are crying out for services, resources and help. They were looking on yesterday hoping that this help would come from the Government. Yet, if there is any new mental health funding, it is buried in a paltry allocation of €7.5 million, which is spread across several sectors. So, what do the Members of the Government say to those young people and their parents who are suffering because child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, are on their knees and getting worse? What do they say to those who age out of the system at 18 years when they are still in need of treatment and care?

I would put it to the Taoiseach and Tánaiste if they were present that it is very dangerous for the Government to pay lip service to the area of mental health and not to deliver the funding and resources that are necessary to achieve the radical overhaul that is required. That is why Sinn Féin outlined that mental health services require an investment of more than €70 million next year. We need ambition and energy to deliver a world-class, modern, fit-for-purpose mental health system in Ireland. Treading water and skirting around the edges of the problem will not get the job done. Those who are living with mental health challenges will feel abandoned and very badly let down by the Government today.

I say to the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste, who are in absentia, that a real sign of the lack of fairness that is hardwired into this budget is found in the area of disability. I think the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan, raised this particular area. Since yesterday afternoon, we have heard countless voices of people living with disabilities and their families and carers. They have expressed a clear sense of abandonment and of being let down, forgotten and left out in the cold. Not enough has been done to protect people living with disabilities who are at risk of poverty. The allocation that was provided needed to go much further to deliver on the Government's own capacity review.

There is no guarantee that pay inequality will be addressed for workers in this sector, who are critical to the quality of life of those who are living with disabilities. Therefore, can people living with disabilities be given clarity? Will the cost-of-living package they got last year be delivered again this year? What is the actual funding for the provision of new services, or is there any? What action will the Government take to meet the demands of section 39 workers as services are now on the brink of strike action?

The cost-of-living crisis continues as workers and families are being hammered by soaring bills in every area. Instead of bringing down the cost of fuel, incredibly, the Government decided to increase the cost of petrol and diesel at the pumps last night. This will make it even more difficult for families to get out and about to work and school and go about the business of life. It will be especially hard for those who are living in rural towns and villages who cannot rely on public transport. It seems to me that for all their talk, the Government is hell-bent on penalising people. It never seems to stand back and realise that in order to make this just transition, it needs to enable and encourage people to make a change by providing them with options, such as better transport options. However, they keep beating the same drum. They keep following the same failed plan and they keep expecting different results. The Government is in a cul-de-sac that will not yield success or progress at the pace we need it.

I welcome the fact that Sinn Féin managed to move the Government on mortgage relief. It was certainly not easy. We had months and months of resistance from both the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael McGrath, and the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, towards my colleague, Deputy Doherty. Yet, it beggars belief that the Government has managed to take a good proposal and make an absolute hames of it by excluding hundreds and thousands of homeowners who have seen big increases in their mortgage repayments.

Families are still forking out a fortune in childcare fees. The Government has proposed a cut of 25%. It is a great headline, but parents will be baffled by how it will not kick in until next September. That is almost a year away. Parents are under pressure with childcare costs today. It is a sly political sleight of hand that the Government has delivered. Parents cannot afford to wait another 11 months for the relief they so badly need.

The climate crisis is real and immediate and it demands visionary measures and plans from governments across the world. In our alternative budget, we have set out ambitious plans to ramp up investment in climate action significantly. The Government, for all its big talk, has come up with meagre allocations right across the board. We proposed a core capital increase four times larger than the increase allocated by the Government yesterday. Budget 2024 cements this Government's woeful lack of leadership and delivery on climate change. We proposed a radical overhaul of the national retrofit programme that would make the retrofitting of homes actually available to and affordable for ordinary households. In contrast, the Government has chosen to double down on a deep retrofit scheme that can only be accessed by those who happen to have thousands of euro at their disposal. It leaves out those who do not have that kind of money, who may be living in older and more energy-inefficient homes and who need all their income simply to make it to the end of the month. The Government's scheme is so lacking in basic common sense that it defies reason. It is almost as if the Government is trying to make climate action a luxury that only the well-off can afford.

I have said repeatedly, and we are all in agreement, that Ireland can achieve energy independence by harnessing our abundance of renewable energy resources, particularly wind energy on the west coast. Such an achievement would utterly transform our economy, create the green jobs of the future and ensure that Ireland becomes an international hub for clean energy. Where in the budget is the investment to make that vision a reality, to deliver a fit-for-purpose planning system that drives efficiency to get renewable energy projects off the ground, and to develop our ports and grid infrastructure to the levels needed to realise this opportunity? Again, there is no vision, no ambition and no pace.

When Deputy Varadkar returned to the office of An Taoiseach last December, he said that tackling child poverty would be one of his main priorities. The Ministers who wrote this budget must not have received that memo. There is little recognition in it that the cost of raising a child has skyrocketed, leaving many families at risk of poverty. The qualified child payment will be increased by only €4 per week, far below what the Children's Rights Alliance and many other organisations said was the minimum required. In addition, there is no increase for the core rate of child benefit. It is still below the 2008 rate, which was cut by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments. No increase has been made since 2016. Families are under savage pressure and the core rate needs to be increased. I welcome the extension of child benefit to 18-year-olds in further education, but let us face it - much more is needed. It is not enough to talk about tackling child poverty. The Government has to act decisively to make a real difference. Promises made and promises broken only serve to compound the problem.

Last week, I raised with the Taoiseach the Government’s woeful handling of the nitrates derogation. The changes will place significant financial pressure on farmers who made an effort to implement measures to improve water quality only to have the rug pulled from under them. We still have not been told when the Taoiseach will meet the European Commissioner. I remind the House that the commitment made by the Taoiseach to farmers was that this meeting, when it happened, would be about maintaining the nitrates derogation in full in the here and now. It was not a commitment about some renewed effort for a future date. When I put this matter to the Taoiseach last week, he changed his position. In doing so, he broke his promise to farming organisations. Just like the agriculture measures in the budget, he is big on rhetoric but wholly inadequate in delivering for family farmers and the rural communities that depend on them.

On social media yesterday, the Government made a big play about the tax cuts it had delivered. Fine Gael went all out to convince working people that this was great for them. What the Government did not tell people was that its tax plan benefited those at the top far more than it did ordinary workers and families. The tax package delivered by the Government yesterday would benefit someone earning over €200,000 by more than €890 while someone earning €35,000 would benefit by just €320. Where is the fairness in that? When the Government says it is putting money back into people's pockets, it is ensuring that the most well-off are getting a bigger share of the pie once again. lf anything sums up the utter madness of the Government's tax measures, it is that this budget provided more for landlords than it did for renters. A nurse will now be taxed more than a landlord. I want someone to explain to me how that is fair and how it will encourage nurses to stay working in our health service. The absence of fairness and equality continues.

Budget 2024 is a budget straight out the playbook of parties wedded to failure. This Government, led by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, is jaded and out of ideas. It is so locked into the past that it is standing by and refusing to seize big opportunities for Ireland. Its lack of vision is off the charts. We recall that, when the policies of the previous Fianna Fáil Government pushed the State to financial and economic disaster, it was workers and families who picked up the tab. It was workers and families who carried the burden of Fine Gael-inflicted cuts and austerity in the years that followed. The mantra from those parties was that tough decisions had to be made. Somehow, it was always ordinary people who took the hit when those tough decisions were being implemented. The message from Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil during those times was that people would have to wait for recovery to see the necessary improvements in housing, health and the provision of public services. Here we are at a time of record surpluses, yet the message is again to wait. Time and again, we hear it from Ministers. The Government tells us that the housing crisis cannot be fixed overnight when it has had more than a decade to do so. It repeatedly promises to end the scandal of overcrowded hospitals, yet it refuses to provide the essential resources and investment. Today, it has the money to make a difference, but it is still unable to get the job done.

The penny has dropped for more and more people. The bad choices made by governments in successive budgets are why an entire generation are locked out of opportunity, prosperity and homeownership. An entire generation are worse off than their parents. For generations, people rightly expected that if they got jobs and worked hard, they could get ahead and build happy and secure lives for themselves and their families. This expectation has been shredded by successive Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments. Ordinary people wake up every morning and see that the Ireland shaped by these parties does not work for them.

It does not have to be this way, though. Our country is bursting with talent, ideas and energy. We have everything we need to renew the social contract and build a fairer and stronger Ireland. We need a new Government that will break the cycle of these stagnant budgets. The most prudent use of public finances - the most fiscally responsible thing to do now - is to invest in our country and public infrastructure in order to drive economic growth and back our people in taking Ireland to the next level. Ba cheart cáinaisnéis tithíochta a bheith ann. Ba cheart don Rialtas infheistíocht a mhéadú agus spriocanna chun tithíocht shóisialta agus tithíocht ar phraghas réasúnta a chur ar fáil a leagan amach. Faoi rialtas Shinn Féin, cuirfidh an cháinaisnéis tús leis an gclár tithíochta is mó dá bhfacamar riamh sa Stát.

The appetite for real change among ordinary people grows by the day and, despite the challenges we face, this appetite is fuelled by the hopeful belief that our best days are yet to come and that if we reach bravely for tomorrow and push beyond the boundaries of the past, there is no limit to our bright future. I want everyone who feels abandoned, let down and left behind by this budget to know that we in Sinn Féin see you, we hear you and we are working hard to change things for you.

This budget demonstrates again that it is in fact Government inertia, apathy and lethargy - that claustrophobic fixation with doing the same things over and over again - that presents the big threat to Ireland's future. Change is not only desirable; change is now essential. This budget shows once again that while change is beyond Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, change remains within the grasp of our people. It was this failed Government's fourth budget and ordinary workers and families simply cannot afford a fifth. The Government is out of touch, out of ideas and out of time. Sinn Féin is the party that wants to end the housing crisis and will end the housing crisis. We will fix housing. We will make housing affordable again. We will deliver for a generation that has been held back and has been denied its chance of a good life and a decent future by the stifling politics of parties that have passed power between them for over a century. We need a general election and a government for change that will put workers and families first, with nobody left out and nobody left behind. That is a vision of Ireland worth believing in, worth working for and worth achieving.

Deputies:

Hear, hear.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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We all want the same things for ourselves and our families: a secure home, a decent job, clean air to breathe and a healthy environment. We want to know that if we or our family members get sick or injured, we will be able to access the care we need. We want to know that everyone in our community will have a guarantee of the decent standard of living which should be so achievable in a country like ours, which has resources the envy of so many of our neighbours. However, that is not the reality in the Ireland of 2023. Insecurity is the reality in the lives of far too many people here. Nearly 13,000 people are homeless and nearly 4,000 of those are children. Many more people are in hidden homelessness; they are still couch surfing or sleeping in childhood bedrooms well into late adulthood. One in five workers is still on low pay.

Even those with good jobs and their own homes are unable to access decent public services. They face long waiting lists for services for children with autism, disability services and they are unable to find a crèche place or home care services for older relatives. Far too many have fallen victim to the lack of public infrastructure that is endemic here and which has resulted from a free market ideology that is content to rely on laissez-faireeconomics and hope for the best. Accordingly, we see unaffordable housing, overwhelmed health services, creaking public transport infrastructure and stalling capital investment programmes in housing and in climate infrastructure too. Over recent weeks, we have heard from so many constituents crying out for political solutions to the problems that hold back our communities. They did not get those solutions in yesterday’s budget. Instead, it appears that the budget was an attempt to find an electoral solution to the very different problems holding Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael back. A few euro here and there, but nothing to show for it sustainably. It is a budget that in truth perpetuates both inequality and insecurity. It is a budget that will not address the real cost-of-living crisis that is biting hard in so many households. The cost-of-living crisis has not gone away - far from it - but a comparison with last year’s budget shows there are fewer supports in this one for those most in need.

A key test in the long term is whether this budget will provide sustainable supports for families and communities. The short answer is "No". People look to the Government for improved public services for the security they and their families need, but when they look at this budget, they see that it gives many a touch, but it will give no one a real helping hand. The Government has delivered more than €14 billion in spending and tax measures, though as my colleague, Deputy Nash, has pointed out, there is more in the tax package than there is in social protection measures. The Government has also failed to address the glaring gaps in public services, the chronic shortage of housing, the lack of childcare places and of autism and disability service provision. As Deputy Nash has said, this budget bribes people with their own money, but ultimately leaves them worse off without the security net of strong public services.

Last Thursday, we in the Labour Party published our alternative budget, with an emphasis on building those strong public services. We outlined radical but realistic plans to address the real economic insecurity which is impacting people’s lives. We sought to put an end to the Hibernian paradox of a rich country which is poor at the same time. We are a country running budget surpluses that are the envy of Europe, but with public services that are an embarrassment within Europe. Last week I met a constituent of mine and of the Minister for Transport who is paying €1,200 a month in childcare, which is €300 a week. Her friend in Germany has a crèche fee of €30 per week. Despite this, our constituent considered herself lucky to have a crèche place for her child at all, in a country where childcare and early years education has always been the poor relation within our care system. Our Labour Party plans would have offered real change, not just in childcare where we have a costed package to cap fees at €50 per week and build towards a publicly funded model of childcare, but also in our cost-of-living package which would have supported all households who are feeling the pinch, lifted the boats of those with least and crucially provided for sustainable improvements to public services. Instead of a plan like that, a plan which would have delivered an Ireland that works for all, the Government chose to give a wad of once-off payments with no lasting, sustainable change. On the issues the public are most concerned about - the cost of living, housing, childcare and elder care, healthcare, jobs and climate - the Government lacks ambition. Its budget lacked any mechanism to deliver real change.

Nowhere was that more evident than in the lack of provision on housing. I have said it before, but housing is the civil rights issue of this generation in Ireland. It is a workers’ rights issue. Lack of housing is hindering our economic growth and hampering our public services. On that point both ICTU and IBEC agree. Ireland must build at least 50,000 homes a year to address this crisis. We know that and the Taoiseach said earlier that the Housing For All targets are set too low, yet in this budget housebuilding targets remain unchanged. If the Government's financial allocations for next year do not reflect the real, established need, it will have fallen at the first hurdle, because even if its housing plan is implemented in full, it will meet just two thirds of the real need. This lack of ambition and urgency will perpetuate and worsen the housing crisis for years to come. We have all been lectured on how the crisis will not and cannot be fixed overnight, but since Fine Gael entered government, 4,599 nights have passed. That includes 1,202 nights since this Government was formed. How many more are needed? On the Government's current trajectory, there will never be enough.

What was needed in yesterday's budget was decisive action on housing, but what we got was just more cosmetic fixes. This was effectively the first Fianna Fáil budget in over a decade, but some things never change. At a time when rents are skyrocketing and rental properties so hard to find, the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, announced tax breaks worth €160 million a year for landlords without a shred of evidence this policy will deliver any increase in supply or improved conditions for renters. It is reminiscent of the Government's evidence-free policy on lifting the temporary ban on no-fault evictions earlier this year. This move will not address rising rents or tenancy uncertainty. It is also just wrong. How is it justified to treat the taxation of working people as different from the income generated by landlords? Let us look at it this way: a student renting a bedsit in Rathmines, in the constituency the Minister and I share, will be paying more tax on earnings from his or her part-time job than the landlord will be on the rental income from a house on which the mortgage may well have been paid off, that is to say, a passive asset.

It is fundamentally wrong that people paying rent will be paying more tax on income generated from their labour than a landlord will pay on income generated from a fixed asset, and one that is increasing in value. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have caved in to the wrong demands here. All they have offered renters is a measly rent credit that is inaccessible to those whose tenancy is unregistered or who are afraid to engage with their landlord in case they lose their home.

On vacancy and dereliction, something we in the Labour Party have been leading on, we have also seen far too little from the Government. Instead of a winter blitz on vacancy and of an emergency empty homes fund like the one we proposed, the Government chose to just offer a minimal increase in the vacant homes tax. What was announced yesterday will be ineffectual in driving the change that we need. The Government has even delayed the residential zoned land tax. Last-minute measures on vacancy are simply inadequate. We need far greater State investment here, especially given the level of vacancy and dereliction in our communities. It is a scourge on our urban centres. I know the Minister, Deputy Ryan, agrees with me on this. We have over 160,000 vacant properties around the country and yet we are going to see another wasted year when we will not have the sort of really significant investment required to tackle the problem.

It is not just on vacancy or renters' rights that this budget has failed. In this budget, 10,200 new HAP and RAS tenancies were announced. While the 74,000 existing such tenancies will continue, we have no detail on where these promises are coming from. Again, there are plenty of rhetoric and misleading figures but very little substance. Most surprisingly and disappointingly, there is nothing in the budget to provide for the necessary big push on house building, on supplying the 50,000 new homes that are so badly needed every year. Everyone agrees that what is needed to unlock the housing crisis is the speedier delivery of new homes. The Taoiseach made an extraordinary statement earlier to the effect that the difficulty in housing will be the Government’s capacity to spend the housing budget, as if he is a bystander, but the Government can fix the capacity issue. Where in this budget is the Government's plan to kick-start a massive construction recruitment programme? We in the Labour Party provided for this in our alternative budget but all we see from the Government on this is hand-wringing over a lack of capacity. That is not good enough.

The Government's hand-wringing and inaction on the housing disaster affects every facet of Irish society. Ms Phil Ní Sheaghdha of the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, INMO, said that young nurses and midwives are spending up to three quarters of their monthly income on rent. We cannot fix the HSE while this continues because it is contributing massively to difficulties in recruitment and retention. At the same time, we learn that the HSE is sitting on hundreds of vacant properties which could be renovated to provide accommodation for healthcare workers. One example is the empty hospital in mine and the Minister's own community on Baggot Street. That building is still lying empty. It is a blot on the landscape but it could be used to offer overnight beds to so many people.

It is not just the housing disaster that is wrecking the health service. Where is the Minister for Health, Deputy Donnelly? Where are the measures in this budget on health? There is simply nothing here. We have a huge gap in the health budget. This budget does not allocate enough money for the health service, just like last year's budget. As Deputy Duncan Smith said, there is no real money for new services and no new health initiatives at all. What of the money needed for the national cancer strategy and the funding needed to fully staff our health services? Where is the promised funding to restore pay parity to the community and voluntary sector workers who are about to go on strike next week?

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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Hear, hear.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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Section 39, section 10 and section 56 workers have been denied pay parity for far too long. We are going to see a massive impact on the community and voluntary sector and on the people who rely on that sector from next week if this is not resolved. It is a glaring gap in this budget.

There are glaring gaps on housing, pay provision and on health, but there are also two other glaring gaps. One is the lack of any overall provision for public sector pay increases. At least €1 billion extra will be needed next year for pay rises. We have accounted for that in our alternative budget but where is it in the Government's budget? The other glaring gap is the failure to increase income supports in line with inflation. If you were poor yesterday, you will still be poor after this budget and we are no closer to meeting the pension promise of a State pension rate equal to 34% of average earnings. This budget provided no permanent increases in the fuel allowance, the living alone allowance or child benefit. It did not provide adequate increases in social protection generally, unlike our alternative budget. It looks likely that we will have to have another spring package of supports when the shine wears off this year’s one-off payments.

Most shamefully, this budget includes simply inadequate measures to tackle child poverty. In a country where 90,000 children are living in poverty, we see the poorest parents getting an increase of just €4 per week. On childcare, we see far too little and the changes made are delayed for too long. I have already spoken about the Labour Party's proposal. The Government has been boasting about the so-called 25% cut to fees, but that is delayed until next September and it is an average cut. My party colleague, Senator Marie Sherlock, published examples last night of what the change will really mean. It will not have the impact the Government is claiming it will have on the pockets of parents and the increase in core funding will simply not go far enough to deliver the pay rises called for in the Big Start campaign from SIPTU.

There is grave concern too about the education budget more generally, not just in the early years area. As Deputy Ó Riordáin said, we see no reduction to the biggest class sizes in the EU, no restoration of leadership posts, no clarity on a DEIS+ model, and leaving certificate students have been left out, inexplicably, of the free books scheme.

On climate, we see failures too. The proposed infrastructure, climate and nature fund aligns with the proposals we have put forward but the conditionality that will be attached to draw down will be crucial to how it will work. The Taoiseach spoke of offshore wind energy as the moonshot for us. He referred to Ardnacrusha and the need to deliver massive State investment in building capacity in renewables but what I am hearing from the stakeholders and those engaged in trying to roll out both onshore and offshore renewables is immense frustration at the foot-dragging and lengthy delays on the part of Government in building the necessary infrastructure in order that we can achieve that moonshot. The private sector is increasingly frustrated by this. There is no answer in this budget to the question of whether we will see the funding to drive State-led investment in and delivery of the offshore wind energy that is so badly needed.

We are also seeing a lack of ambition in the context of retrofitting, public transport and cycling measures. Where is the radical plan to increase the use of public transport like Labour’s €9 climate ticket? Where is the massive investment in cycling infrastructure that Senator Rebecca Moynihan and all of us in the Labour Party are calling for?

I am out of time, although I have lots more to say. I will conclude by stating that the proposals announced yesterday may provide some short-term relief but they will not address the long-term insecurities faced today and into the future by so many families and households across our country. In truth, the budget will perpetuate insecurity and inequality. It will not deliver an Ireland that works for all. It is failing and will fail on housing, care, work and climate. It will leave too many public services unfunded, too many homes unbuilt and it will leave too many people behind.

Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats)
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I have been wondering who this budget is designed for. When the Ministers for Finance and for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery, and Reform sat down and thought about the people they wanted to help, who did they think of? One would imagine it would be the young people who are locked out of buying their own home and who cannot even afford to rent; the more than 500,000 adults in their 20s, 30s and 40s living in their childhood bedrooms who feel a sense of panic because their lives are passing them by; or the young couples who are postponing having a family because they cannot afford to live together.

I have looked through the document hoping to find any indication that the Government is finally going to try a new approach in respect of housing and that it is going to target resources where we really need them, namely, in the delivery of affordable homes, but there is nothing, zero. There is no new capital for the biggest social catastrophe of a generation. Is this an oversight or, finally, an acknowledgement of failure? Has the Government given up on delivering affordable housing and instead just blatantly introduced a budget with more support for landlords than tenants or first-time buyers? It is just incredible that there is twice as much funding in the budget for landlords than the tenants who are paying them record rents. It is a clear demonstration of where the Government's priorities lie. This is not a budget for renters or first time buyers, so who was it for?

Unfortunately, its not a budget for struggling families either. The Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman, did follow through on his commitment to reduce childcare fees by 50%. I welcome that, but the savings will not be introduced for another year.

This is a budget that could have gone so much further for families. Where was the vision and the ambition? In our alternative budget, we in the Social Democrats proposed radical reform. We proposed €500 million of capital funding to begin investment into a public model of childcare. The State needs to shift its perspective on early childhood education and care, viewing it as a public good rather than a private commodity. We also budgeted for the extension of parents leave for the first 12 months of a baby’s life. This would mean an additional 12 weeks of paid leave split between parents. Not only that, we would increase the rate of maternity, paternity, parent's and adoptive benefit from €262 per week to €350 per week. This is a measure that would make a massive difference to parents who often struggle financially when a new baby is born, especially when their employer does not top up their maternity or paternity benefit. We know that many employers - around 45% - do not do so. New parents should be entirely focused on enjoying time with their babies, not worrying about bills. The Government's budget increased parent’s benefit by just two weeks, but we know that increase was required by an EU directive. The increase is just the bare minimum that was legally required. This is another missed opportunity.

The budget is also certainly not designed for low- and middle-income workers. In fact, it is higher income earners who disproportionately benefit from the tax measures. I will give an example. The Government obsessed about USC cuts for months in advance of this budget. The Social Democrats were criticised for saying that we would not cut the USC. After all that talk, what did this 0.5% USC cut amount to? It meant a cut of €10 per year for low-paid workers earning €25,000 and a cut of €235 for those on €70,000, a figure that is 23 times higher. After all the column inches about tax cuts, not least those written by Fine Gael junior Ministers, that is what all of the fuss was about. The Social Democrats believe there should be a tax package in the budget but that it needs to be fair. Crucially, it should not pull valuable resources away from investing in public services which make a meaningful difference to people’s cost of living and quality of life. We would increase tax credits by €225 each, a saving of €450 for every worker no matter what you earn, and increase the tax bands in line with wage inflation. Because we recognise that those at the very top do not need further tax savings, we would also introduce a third rate of tax of 43% on incomes over €100,000. More than 90% of workers would be better off under our tax plan and, crucially, the benefits would be shared much more equally.

What has this budget achieved for the most vulnerable in society? We know those on fixed incomes, including pensioners, one-parent families and disabled people, are finding it especially difficult to get by. Price increases have been relentless, and there is no end in sight. The cost of goods and services in Ireland is now nearly 50% higher than the EU average. We know that an increasing number of pensioners are afraid to turn on the heating because of their sky-high energy bills, that parents are choosing between feeding their families and heating their homes and that more and more disabled people are living below the poverty line. What is the Government’s answer to this enormous crisis? Instead of providing sustainable support, it deploys a three-card trick. The trick goes something like this. It abjectly fails to adequately increase core payments for those most in need, while pointing at temporary one-off measures as evidence that their interests have been protected. Nobody should be fooled by this cynical approach. Temporary supports are not the answer to a persistent cost-of-living crisis. They will not provide sustainable relief to those who can no longer afford the extortionate cost of necessities like food, fuel, energy and rent. The Social Democrats proposed a €25 increase in weekly core social welfare rates because that is what is required to respond to this crisis. Instead, the Government has increased rates by just €12 – less than half of what was needed.

This budget was not designed for the most vulnerable, and nowhere is this more clear than on child poverty. The Taoiseach has claimed that eradicating child poverty is a priority of his, yet one of the worst measures in yesterday’s budget was the unconscionable decision to increase the payments that are targeted to the most disadvantaged children by a pathetic €4. The single biggest determining factor as to whether you grow up in poverty in Ireland is growing up in a one-parent family. We know that 70% of the families made homeless since March are lone-parent households. What has the Government given them? It has given them €4 a week. Four euro in a €14 billion budget when addressing child poverty is supposed to be the Taoiseach’s special project. Yesterday, the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform announced research funding to improve understanding of child poverty. We have mountains of research. We know which children are most at risk of poverty and what policy measures actually work. What we need is action, and the Government failed to act.

Disability services were also shown the cold shoulder to say the least. The parents of children with disabilities have to fight on their behalf from the moment they are born. They do not get anything they are entitled to without a fight first. The only thing people are guaranteed from the State is waiting lists - waiting lists for assessments of need, waiting lists for therapies and waiting lists for school places. There are no supports and no services, just queues. Despite this huge crisis, the figure in this budget for investment in disability services was €64 million. I have an honest question for the Ministers. Is that a typo? Mere hours after the budget was announced, the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, was announcing a €195 million package for disability services but her short list of expenditure left €87 million of that unaccounted for. So what is the number? How much is the Government spending on disability?

Week after week in this Chamber we raise the crises facing the disability sector and every time we get the exact same rhetoric back from Government. Of course it cares and is doing everything it can to improve the lives of disabled people, and how dare we question that. In the context of this budget, I will question that. It has been ten years since the Fine Gael-Labour Government axed the mobility allowance and motorised transport grant. It is ten years since the Taoiseach promised disabled drivers a replacement scheme and still, we have nothing. The Government had the opportunity to provide the funding to make long-term improvements to disabled people’s lives, and it passed. If it is not going to fund the sector now, with such a high surplus available to it, then I have no faith that it will.

We in the Social Democrats would have put our money where our mouths are. We allocated a total package of €534.1 million for disability services. We would have introduced a €30 weekly cost of disability payment in addition to increases in core social welfare rates. We would also have made provision for pay parity for community and voluntary workers who provide so many of these services, and we would have ensured adequate funding for the huge capacity gaps that exist in services. This was all missing from the budget. It seems like the Government forgot about disability services. I presume it has the same excuse for mental health, because the phrase "mental health" is used three times in the budget. There is no detail, no funding, no nothing. Does the Government actually think that is good enough?

This budget had the power to be transformative and to tackle some of the major problems facing the country in areas like housing, healthcare, disability, climate and education. Instead of radical reform, what we got was minimalism and tweaking around the edges from a Government that is out of ideas for the future of this country. I am still wondering, who was this budget for? The Government claims it is a budget for housing, for child poverty and for struggling families, but where is the proof?

Jennifer Whitmore (Wicklow, Social Democrats)
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I have always tried to be constructive when it comes to climate, the environment and nature. I hope the Ministers agree with that. It is an area I am passionate about and an area where I have spent my entire adult life either working or studying. Yesterday's budget was the most disingenuous ever when it comes to matters of climate and nature. Everyone was so happy to see the headline-grabbing figure of €3 billion for a climate and nature fund.

What people did not see was the fine print which indicates that this will not be in place until 2026, three years from now. We are in the middle of a climate crisis. We are in the middle of a biodiversity crisis, and time is running out. I heard one of the Ministers say that this fund is scheduled for introduction in 2026 because the Government wants to future-proof it. The way you future-proof against climate change and mitigate and adapt for climate change and for the biodiversity loss we are seeing is by investing now, not by setting aside in a bank account €3 billion that will come into play in 2026. You invest now. Unfortunately, that is not what this Government is doing. You invest in wind energy. We have huge potential in this country. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications has spoken about it. There is huge potential when it comes to offshore wind. You make the State a major player when it comes to renewable energy and wind energy. You make sure that in 20 or 30 years' time, when the benefits and finances are being reaped from that resource, it is the State that accrues those benefits, not developers or overseas corporations but the State that has a major stake in that offshore wind resource. Have we not learned from setting aside our fisheries resource? We just give our resources away to other entities, countries or corporations and then people suffer and our finances suffer. You invest in wind energy. You invest in solar energy. You invest in public transport. You invest in national parks. I am not talking about paper parks; I am talking about national parks where biodiversity, not farming, which is the case at the moment, is the key priority. You invest in communities. You invest in farming.

What is happening with the nitrates derogation? What is happening to the supports for those farmers who the Government has walked to the cliff edge and is just going to stand and watch fall over? We knew, and the Government knew, that this was coming down the road for these farmers. Where are the supports for them? Two reservoirs in Wicklow in the past week have had algae blooms, namely, Blessington and Roundwood. The crisis is here and it is now. The Government is budgeting far too little, and 2026 is far too late to deal with this. The Government needs to invest now. The clock is ticking and the Government is not moving fast enough. The Minister is pretending that this climate fund is the answer but that is not the case. He needs to make sure that investment is brought in now so we can mitigate against all those issues coming down the track.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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This was a good budget for those the Government represents. The landlords got a significant tax break. The corporate tax avoiders got an extension of their research and development tax credit, or tax break in reality, and the multimillionaire angel investors got a bespoke tax break. It was a bad budget for people with disabilities, for children and for those on hospital waiting lists.

I want to focus on a few specific measures that illustrate the character of this budget. The most striking is the €160 million tax break for landlords; twice what has been given to renters. The Nevin Economic Research Institute, NERI, has correctly said that the landlord tax break will go down as one of the worst tax initiatives ever. It is almost entirely a dead weight. In other words, the whole premise of the tax break is that it is necessary to keep the landlords in the market, but the vast majority of those who will benefit from this tax break would already have stayed in the market. It is €160 million that has been handed over to the landlords which could instead have been used to build houses to fundamentally address the question. The whole premise of the tax break is based on a lie. It is based on the idea of a flood of landlords out of the market when the CSO figures indicate that that is not happening and that from 2016 to 2022, the number of occupied dwellings rented from a private landlord increased by 7% to over 330,000. It is based on the idea that we have to make this dysfunctional market work and the only way to do that is to hand more and more money over to landlords, as opposed to recognising that the issue is people having a home. If people want to leave the market that is fine, no problem. The State should buy the house so the people get to stay in their house. They get security of tenure, the landlord gets to exit the market if they want and the State gets a very important asset for public housing.

The second issue is also in the area of housing. The budget report states: "Following on the investment in 2023 [which was €65 million], a total amount of €70 million is being provided for the remediation of homes affected by defects in 2024." The Government has agreed to an inadequate redress programme for homes affected by mica, which is estimated to have a cost of more than €2.7 billion. The Government has agreed to a redress scheme for those affected by defects in apartments and duplexes which is estimated to cost around €2.5 billion. That is over €5 billion that is necessary. I just do not understand where the money to make this happen is coming from. I asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. He said not to worry because the interim or emergency funding for apartment defects will be coming on stream before the end of the year. The figures indicate that the Government does not actually intend to pay out on these redress schemes next year because there is no money provided in the budget to do so. I want to hear from the Minister on this. People from the Not Our Fault campaign were outside today protesting in the rain and making the point that it has been 266 days since the Minister acknowledged the problems with apartments and defects and promised a redress scheme and yet the money has not been provided in this budget again.

I will conclude on the issue of healthcare. A senior Government source told The Journalthat health was not a priority in this budget. That is written all over the budget document. That is incredible. Almost 1 million people are on hospital waiting lists and there is no provision for any extra beds in our health service. That is just scandalous at a time when we are running a significant surplus. It is absolutely scandalous not to address the core issue behind the crisis in our health service. There is no significant mention - a couple of words about mental health but not the funding - of the €500 million we need to be invested in our mental health and no reference to funding trans healthcare appropriately. There is nothing there in terms of healthcare.

Yesterday, I raised the scandal relating to the delay in funding the cuts to the cost of childcare but foster carers have been treated even worse. After having no increase in payments since 2009, it was announced that there would be an increase but most of the increase is not going to happen until the end of next year. It is a scandal to announce that in a budget now and not to deliver.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Faced with an utterly catastrophic housing and homelessness crisis and with unprecedented resources available to it, this Government did absolutely nothing in its budget to deliver additional social and affordable housing. It has decided, in its bloody-minded way, to stick to a plan that has left us with record and ever-worsening numbers of people in homelessness and where rents are absolutely stratospheric and unaffordable for the vast majority of young people of working people, as are house prices. The Government did not use the billions available to it in order to expand, accelerate and increase the delivery of the public and affordable housing we need to resolve the housing crisis and the housing misery being suffered by hundreds of thousands of people. This is, as Deputy Paul Murphy said, exemplified in the contrast between the treatment of hundreds of thousands of people paying extortionate rents and the treatment of landlords in the budget decisions that were made yesterday. There is €88 million for all the renters crucified by unaffordable rents and double that amount in a tax break for the landlords who are charging those unaffordable rents.

You could not make it up. It is not rhetoric when we say this is a landlords' Government. It brazenly demonstrated that yesterday. There is twice as much for landlords as for crucified renters.

The mortgage interest relief is a sick joke compared with the mortgage interest hikes being suffered by tens of thousands of people. I was talking to a single mother yesterday whose mortgage interest payments have increased by €7,000 in the past year because of the banks and the ECB having ratcheted up interest rates ten times. She is paying €7,000 more and the Government is going to give her back a maximum of €1,250. Where on earth is a single working mother supposed to get the rest of the money to pay those mortgage interest hikes? This is being done by banks that are recording staggering, obscene, record profits and the Government refuses to act against the profiteering of the banks and vulture funds. It is simply unbelievable.

There are many other points I could make but I want to give a shoutout to another group. In the past week, PhD researchers marched to the Dáil and demanded they get a stipend and be recognised as workers who are holding together research and innovation at our third-level institutions with their teaching. Some of them get no pay, while others earn less than the minimum wage. They asked for a stipend of €30,000, and there is not a cent extra in the budget for research, innovation and science but a 3% cut. Multinational corporations, however, which are recording extraordinary profits, have been given a new research and development tax break worth €27 million on top of the €750 million a year they get from that break.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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It does not work like that.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Government is backing the corporations and forgetting about the thousands of postgraduate researchers holding our universities together.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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I am going to start with an observation on the reaction to yesterday's budget. When the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, concluded his statement, Fianna Fáil Deputies sprang to their feet and gave him a standing ovation. It was quite loud and lively. The reaction from the population of this country to the budget has been rather different. In the main, it has been to stifle one giant national yawn. People know this could and should have been a budget where they would get real change. Instead, what they got from the Government was spare change. Very few lives are going to be transformed on the basis of the announcements from the Ministers, Deputies McGrath and Donohoe, yesterday.

I want to make a few comments on the issue of housing. Last week, MyHome.ie issued a report, buried within which was a fact that was commented on very little. It stated that one in ten of the population of this State is an adult who lives at home with their parents. They are the locked-out generation who cannot afford to own or rent. What did they get from the Government yesterday? They got a tax break that increased by €250, provided they get no other State supports on their housing, but landlords get a tax break of €600, rising to €1,000, four times the size of the increase for the young worker. That is disgraceful.

The vacant sites tax has gone up. It was three times the local property tax and had very little effect. It has gone up to five times the local property tax, but I predict that will have very little effect either. The Government has gone from giving a tap on the wrist to a slap on the wrist, but speculators are still likely to make more money by leaving properties idle, letting the price rise and pocketing the gains rather than worrying about paying out the few bob on the vacant sites tax. A popular definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. The Government had market solutions and has stuck with market solutions. It is an insane approach to tackling the housing crisis.

In health, there is the lowest increase in years, at €808 million. Will it be enough even to cater for the increase in the general population, let alone the increase in the ageing population? The budget for new health measures next year was cut by €150 million. That is a recipe for the waiting lists to grow.

I might comment now on two groups, the first of which comprises people who want help with their mental health. Between 5% and 6% of the budget is dedicated to mental health, less than half what is the case in more than one or two European countries. There was no change in yesterday's budget, despite the demand for these services increasing in a post-Covid climate, or at least a post-Covid peak climate.

The second group comprises our transgender population. The healthcare that is provided for them is the worst in the European Union, ranked 27th out of 27 countries. We are at the bottom of the league and have the longest delays in any EU country. The average length of time you have to wait from asking to see a specialist to actually seeing a specialist is, if you are lucky, two and a half years, but you can have to wait up to ten years, whereas the average in the EU is far less than that, and in many countries it is less than one year. We need to invest in a GP-led, informed-consent model, but that investment was not in yesterday's budget.

Turning to climate, the UN Secretary General has stated we have gone from the era from global warming to the era of what has been called global boiling. The US climate scientist Zeke Hausfather stated last week:

This month was, in my professional opinion ... absolutely gobsmackingly bananas ... JRA-55 [I am not quite sure what that refers to but it is obviously some key climate measurement] beat the prior monthly record by over 0.5°C and was around 1.8°C warmer than preindustrial levels.

If that is not a warning, I do not know what it is. What does the Government do? It sets €3 billion of its new infrastructure, climate and nature fund aside to tackle issues, not now but in the future, and on the basis not of a sane, rational way of doing it but of the insane logic of the market. There is €29 million for public transport. The Government needs to invest 20 times that sum to make public transport free, which is what should be done. It was done in Spain and Germany as an experiment last year and it was wildly successful. It should be done throughout Europe, including in this State.

We need retrofitting of every home to at least B2 standard by 2030. That will not happen on the basis of piecemeal market changes but only with a State construction company installing and delivering insulation and solar panels.

Peter Fitzpatrick (Louth, Independent)
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I am sharing time with Deputy Canney. I congratulate the Minister, Deputy McGrath, on his first budget. It was framed as a budget for children, workers and the planet. Measures include improved availability of early learning and childcare places, the expansion of free hot school meals to primary schools, and additional support for children with a disability or children experiencing disadvantage. The energy credits and one-off financial cost-of-living supports, totalling €2.7 billion, should aid many in the short term, but it is hard to ignore the fact inflation is increasing the cost of living. I would like to touch on a few points that do not come close to meeting society's current needs.

The first relates to housing. A prosperous country with full employment and budget surpluses should not be looking at the highest ever recorded homelessness figures. Approximately 12,000 people in Ireland are homeless, of whom 4,000 are children, and while children were supported in this budget with anti-poverty measures such as reduced childcare fees and the free schoolbooks initiative, more needs to be done on providing for the most basic of needs, a home. People in my constituency are waiting a minimum of 11 to 16 years for a council house. The number of people who cannot afford to rent in the current rental market means there is an increase in homelessness and in the number of people on the housing lists. The current targets for all types of houses are inadequate, yet there is no change in the target plans for social and affordable housing.

When faced with an acute shortage of rental homes, which shows little sign of abating, this must serve as a wake up call to the Government to come up with an innovative idea for the provision of more homes. While the Government increased the rental tax credit to support renters, we need to reduce or freeze rent to affordable levels and stop the profiteering of vulture landlords who are likely to gobble up the €750 credit with rent increases. At the same time, landlords who stay in rental markets are in line for tax credits of €600, €800 and €1,000 for every tenant. This benefits landlords and developers allowing them to charge extortionate rent, make extortionate profits and receive a tax break. The right to housing comes before the supposed right of vulture funds and others to maximise their profits. When it comes to corporate landlords we should take property into public ownership and turn it into public housing on the basis of affordable rent. The Housing for All plan is completely dependent on private markets and global vulture funds. These corporations are getting massive public funds, like the housing assistance payment, HAP, and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, payments. This encapsulates the disaster of a for-profit market and the communities driven approach to the housing crisis. This is why the crisis is getting worse day by day. Proper resources and investment are required to deliver social and affordable houses to reduce the share of the rental market run on a for-profit basis. We need to fund councils to buy, build or acquire social and affordable houses. We need to fund the tenant in situscheme and the cost rental scheme. While I acknowledge the increase in the vacant home tax rate to five times the property tax charge, we need to provide funding for the refurbishment of vacant or derelict homes to convert them to useable accommodation. This would significantly address rising homelessness. In addition, in County Louth, there are 562 people on the waiting list for housing adaptation grants. We need considerable investment in the expansion of this scheme, as funding ran out in August 2023.

Second, I would like to discuss health and mental health. The controversy about health overspending was apparent in yesterday's budget announcement. In last year's budget we saw the biggest expansion of access to GP care in the history of the State. In this year's budget the Government is funding a range of measures to reduce waiting times for patient care and to improve access to community diagnostics. However, nothing was mentioned regarding dental services or GP fees. I also raise an issue highlighted by a GP in my constituency, which reduces patient access to GPs. The issue relates to Revenue plans to change the current system in which GPs pay their taxes. This will not result in any increases to Revenue, but it will make GP partnership and relationship with the general medical services list very difficult, and result in GPs being reluctant to take up the general medical services list.

Recruitment of additional staff was mentioned. However, the freezing of administration posts within the current health system and the reluctant industrial action was not mentioned. Lack of funding and lack of negotiation is likely to affect service delivery negatively.

While the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform ensured increased support and additional funding for mental health services, social and inclusive service and older people and health well-being initiatives, there is a growing a sense of apprehension about the future of mental health funding. The increased demand for mental health support and services is evident throughout the country. Mental Health Reform, the national coalition group working on mental health in Ireland estimated that an additional €150 million to mental health funding in budget 2024 was essential to improving access to timely and effective mental health care. However, what percentage of the health budget will go to mental health? It is likely to remain stagnant at 5% to 6%. There is currently a disparity and lack of services within mental health such as child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS. Waiting lists are skyrocketing. Little was mentioned about the mitigation of constraints to enable the recruitment and retention of staff, such as nurses, GPs social workers and psychiatrists to satisfy demand. More needed to be done than was stated yesterday.

At this point, I will touch on carers and people with disabilities. The €12 per week increase on all social welfare rates in the new year, the one-off double week and one-off payment of €400 before Christmas were welcome. However, those with disabilities incur additional costs of between €9,000 and €12,000 per year. It is difficult to understand how the cost of disability payment, acknowledged and introduced for the first time in budget 2023 at €500, has not been continued. The one-off payments do not me close to covering the cost, nor do they provide access to the additional support required by carers. There are approximately 250,000 paid carers documented as having second jobs to survive. To be above the poverty line, you need €380 per week. An increase of €12 does not cut the mustard. Carers do a fantastic job, and the State is saved a fortune. They need access to respite, better funding and to better services.

Finally, I will touch on education. While the reduction in fees and contributions alongside the increase in grants is welcome, I was disappointed to see that there were no measures to tackle class size and teacher supply. As has arisen many times in this Chamber the lack of non-permanent, full-contact jobs is resulting in a recruitment and retention crisis. How are we to provide an impact on children's lives when we do not invest in education, labour and infrastructure or invest in student mental health services? There was no evidence of assessments of needs being prioritised. The free books scheme in junior cycle will help many families, but what about those in senior cycles?

I acknowledge the measures introduced by the Government yesterday. People will definitely benefit in the short term, but I would like to urge investment in the numerous classes of society to provide basic rights and reduce poverty in the long term.

Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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I will set out a few different things in the budget, which I would like to comment on. First, I welcome the tax relief for mortgage holders. However, I cannot understand how somebody with a mortgage of less than €80,000 is getting no relief. That is something we need to look at in the Finance Act. I welcome that additional funding is going into childcare supports. We will wait to see the details of it, but some of it will not come until September 2024, which is an issue. I am disappointed with the help to buy scheme. I accept that it is being extended for first-time buyers of new houses, but I believe we have a cohort of people in this country who are brave enough to go out and buy a secondhand house. They should also be facilitated with access to the help to buy scheme. These people are not relying on the State. They are trying to do something for themselves and we need to encourage them as much as possible. I have an issue with the deferral of the residential zoned land tax. A number of months ago the Taoiseach gave me a commitment in the Dáil that residential zoned land tax will not be applied to functional farms or R2 zoned lands. I will hold him accountable if there is any deviation from that because that is important.

There have been few additional income supports for agriculture in general. While the sheep welfare scheme has been increased, the carbon tax on fuel will affect most farmers again. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul and they will at best end up in a neutral position. I will spend a few minutes talking about infrastructure and the infrastructure fund being proposed with the windfall tax. I personally believe it is a good idea to create a rainy day fund, but not really a rainy day fund. It is a fund that gives us the capacity to plan long term, and not on an annual basis, to deliver infrastructure. I spoke this morning about sewerage scheme. The rail network, including the western rail corridor, needs to be developed. We need to extend the rail line from Athenry, north to Tuam and to Claremorris to open up the west of Ireland for rail connectivity for freight and commuters. We need to do that as a matter of urgency if we are talking seriously about having balanced development in this country and not just pay lip service to it.

We also need to develop our hospital infrastructure. A number of years ago I first heard that the regional hospital in Galway was to be developed into a centre of excellence for the west of Ireland. What does that mean? It certainly does not mean Portakabins. It does not mean labs in old buildings that are not fit for purpose. It does not mean we still have Nightingale wards with a number of beds and a bathroom at the end. We still have that in Galway, a centre of excellence. Investment of approximately €1.5 billion is needed in Galway if we are to provide a proper centre of excellence to help Sligo, Donegal, Mayo, Roscommon, Leitrim and Clare. That needs to be done, not talked about and not going through processes. It needs to be driven. We have the money to do it. We need to put a project team in place to make sure it is delivered quickly and in a way we can see over five or ten years, and that people are accountable if it is not developed.

We need to speed up the process by which houses are being connected to broadband. They fell behind because of Covid. The investment going in now is probably not enough, but we need to make sure the pressure is kept up so we reach our targets.

In the education system, it is important to remember we have set up the technological universities and still have not delivered science, technology, mathematics and engineering, STEM, buildings and other infrastructure required across the region, including in Galway, to make sure these technological universities can deliver what they are supposed to deliver and have the infrastructure and facilities to give the best education to people in the region.

As a member of the Committee on Disability Matters, I will speak about the budget and disabilities. I am saddened that I have not seen any place where transport supports are being put in place for people with disabilities. We removed two schemes more than ten years ago with a promise we would bring in a proper scheme, but it has not happened. We have a primary medical certificate application process which is not fit for purpose, for which the appeals board has resigned and a new appeals board has not yet been set up. People keep talking about this. The Ombudsman, Peter Tyndall, before he retired, said in his report called Grounded that it needed to be dealt with as an emergency. I thought in my heart of hearts that, in this budget, schemes would be put in place to serve people, especially in a rural constituency like Galway East or the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach’s constituency of Mayo, where people with disabilities living in rural areas are grounded. In fact, they are imprisoned in their houses, waiting for somebody or a taxi to come and bring them someplace. It is important we rectify this. We have time to do it. I do not know what is going on in that situation.

I had a call today from a mother who looks after her son, who is now 26. She gave up work when he was born because he was born with a disability. She has brought him everywhere and done everything for him. She has been on carer’s allowance and, lo and behold, the Department of Social Protection contacted her about six months ago with a review of that allowance. It was reduced to about €65 on the basis that her husband had decided to go into business and do a bit of work. That woman brought her child to national school, secondary school and third-level education and is there for him morning, noon and night. What did she get after 26 years? She got what she called today a kick in the arse. Excuse the language but it is disgraceful in this day and age that we treat people like that. There is an onus on all of us as politicians. I have said a number of times in the disability matters committee that I am ashamed of some of the things I see happening to people with disabilities.

I heard the Minister, Deputy Ryan, talking earlier about people with autism. I have put forward an autism Bill that James Reilly introduced to the Dáil. It is in the children’s committee and I hope to God we get that Bill into law before this Dáil falls. If we do not legislate for people, we will end up with budgets upon budgets with all promises but no action. It is time we put the legislation in place to give people with disabilities the rights they are entitled to.

Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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The next grouping is the Rural Independent Group. Deputies Mattie McGrath and Michael Collins have seven and a half minutes each.

Michael Collins (Cork South West, Independent)
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The Taoiseach and Tánaiste spoke today about the Opposition giving out about the budget before it was announced. The funny thing is this is one of the most leaked budgets in the history of the State. It is a common practice now. We all knew most of the details of the budget beforehand, so it was easy for us to criticise it if there were criticisms to be made, and there were.

There are green shoots in the budget also, but I look to the Government to address the crisis the hospitality sector is going through. Cafés, restaurants and bars throughout the country are struggling, especially in rural areas. They depend on summer turnover and find it difficult to continue during winter. They were hit with the mini-budget last September, when the Government put up the VAT rate on hospitality from 9% to 13.5%. These people are struggling and the Government did not care. It had a chance in this budget to turn it around. It used the September mini-budget to crucify them further and try to squeeze more out of them.

I am astonished to think the Taoiseach and Tánaiste spoke without a word on the fishing industry. We have looked at the fishing budget and I think it is almost halved. There you have it. That is why nobody is speaking about fishermen here. They are the forgotten people of society, both inshore fishermen and those who head out on trawlers for weeks on end to try to make a living. The budget has dropped, which means we may not see any improvements in Union Hall pier in west Cork. The promise made by the Fianna Fáil Government has not been delivered. They blame the council and the council blames them. There is a right little game of tennis going on between the two of them. Caught in the middle are the people and pier users of Union Hall. It looks like many other piers could be sidelined because of the massive budget drop. That is why it is not being mentioned.

Various farm groups are unhappy today. There is bit of an increase in farming in relation to an old goat or donkey on top of the hill because that keeps the Green Party happy, but the real farmers - suckler farmers, sheep farmers and the dairy sector - have been hit again. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil do not care because they are keeping their buddies happy in government. Hit the farmer. The farmers told me recently they are treated like environmental terrorists. They are the people who put food on our table. Are Government members asleep at the wheel? Do they not understand what farmers do for the country? Have they turned their back completely on them?

We have a Senator in west Cork who tears his Government apart every day of the week but he is a Senator in one of the Government parties. If he has a problem, why does he not walk away from them? It is an insane situation. We see Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael fighting each other in west Cork, and when they come up to the Dáil, they are locked in arms and kissing each other. They will not make fools of the people of west Cork. They codded the people with their nitrates and their carry-on. The Taoiseach and the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine did nothing on nitrates. They stood idly by and let it happen.

This was an opportunity to look at carers not being means-tested. A huge number of people are doing great work, keeping their loved ones at home and working hard. Deputy Canney mentioned it and it is a huge issue. Still they are means-tested. It is not on your ability to deliver a service that saves the State money; it is based on what your husband is doing. If he has a good job, tough luck. You do not get anything. That is an awful situation people find themselves in.

Unfortunately, we could be here for hours talking about the roads budget. It has been cut and cut. A report has come in and the Government has stood idly by on that report. Did it think nobody would hear about it? Transport Infrastructure Ireland said the lack of funding for roads has led to deaths. The Government blames the motorists. There are 2.2 million vehicles on the road but the Government blames the motorists for the road deaths, rather than the Minister who was told not to lower the budget but failed to heed the advice. It is astonishing the Government stood idly by on that basis.

The Government put a carbon tax on people. We put in our budget proposals to the Government to make all insulation products VAT free. That is the way forward. Stop punishing people. If the Government is punishing people, it should at least give them back some few bob. It does not do that.

Nursing homes throughout the country are closing their doors. There is no aid package in the budget, bar an electricity rebate, to save them. I know of a nursing home in Belgooly where 48 patients are basically being kicked out. It is down to 17, sadly, left in the nursing home as families frantically go around west Cork looking for nursing homes. It is a disgrace. Coupled with that, there are 51 workers within two weeks of being booted out the door who have never been communicated with by Aperee Living or anyone else on any entitlement they have. The Government is washing its hands of this crisis and boasting of a fabulous budget. Where will the budget deliver for the people of Belgooly who are losing their nursing home and for many other nursing homes throughout the country? Are we just standing idly by?

Look at the health budget. God almighty, there is no one accountable. It ran €1.1 billion over. Jeepers God, if I or somebody in my business lost €1,000 per year, I would contemplate firing them, but if the Government loses €1.1 billion, nobody opens their eyes and says, “Hang on, is there a problem here?” Not at all; sure €1.1 billion is nothing. Put your hand in the till. Where is it being soaked up? Why are people having to bus themselves to Belfast to prevent themselves going blind? They have to go from the South to the North.

Why can people not get hip or knee operations? Speakers named one operation after another but they cannot have those because the Government has failed them. It has a failed health system that is absolutely boiled down to the ground and is useless. Delivery is useless. People find themselves in the shocking situation of going blind and being in pain while waiting on this Government to deliver. There will be no delivery for them.

On education, class size is a big issue that should have been dealt with but it has not been dealt with. I met with the INTO and promised that I would do my best. We had it included in our proposals but they were ignored. The USC charge was brought down from 4.5% to 4%. What is the USC charge? It is a money grab. That is what the Government is continuing to do with carbon tax and with this tax or that tax. It is a money grab to take the money from ordinary people and ordinary workers. That is what is happening here. It is the working person who is suffering and it cannot continue.

I want to sum up on the issue of people's pensions. The Government is giving €12, which I welcome and it is a great initiative to give €12 to anybody who is drawing a pension because they are finding it difficult. There are letters going out to every second person in the country who has a pension to take the pension off them. I know of an old lady who is frightened out of her life at 80 years of age because her pension was taken from her. How many more has this happened to? It is scandalous. Imagine taking their pensions from them at the latter end of their lives. They are now getting letters to say they are living in vacant homes and they have been contacted by Revenue. What is going on in this country? It is a grab against the ordinary people.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Budget 2024 has spectacularly failed to provide relief to workers. Despite significant financial flexibility, the Government has neglected the concerns of working men and women throughout the country. The Government talks about this but it did not do anything meaningful with the USC. The cuts introduced offer limited relief to low income families while the decision to cut the universal social tax by 0.5% has done nothing to help workers. Our budget submission proposed the abolition of the USC, as the current Taoiseach promised in 2016. Has he any recollection of that or is he suffering from memory loss?

The ordinary workers of the country are feeling very hard done by. This has been described as a social welfare budget by many workers, which is what it was. Let us be honest. It has failed to encourage those in unemployment back into the workplace and many low income workers are now questioning the point of working at all. It is not worth the candle, as I said last night. I am the chairperson of a community employment scheme and we cannot get people to come onto our schemes. Something has to be looked at in this regard.

At a time of almost full employment, a person on jobseeker’s benefit will be €624 per annum better off after the budget, which is a meaningful amount, without taking into account special payments at Christmas, double bonuses and so on, while a worker on €25,000 will get just €252 per annum and someone on €40,000 will get just €342 per annum. The Government has to look at this. We have been saying this for years. It is inherently unfair to working people who have to go to work, and there are many other issues I will come to shortly.

While we acknowledge there is poverty for those on social welfare, and we must keep them out of that and try to support them as best we can, one has to wonder how industries will fare across the board from hospitality to the big high-tech industries, which cannot fill their jobs. There is a real feeling that workers are not rewarded for their efforts, which is very sad. Work is healthy, good, meaningful and rewarding, and it is good for families and communities as well. In the face of mounting inflation, the present cost of living crisis and heightened energy and carbon taxes, budget 2024 has regrettably fallen short for many ordinary workers, and that is a fact.

I turn now to agriculture, our primary industry. The Minister of State, Deputy Browne, is proud to represent one of the finest agricultural counties in the country. He knows the problems with beef and sheep, and although they might not know sheep so well in Wexford, he knows of the problems with corn and the fact our beet industry was sold out by a previous Fianna Fáil Minister. Agriculture merited seven or eight lines in an hour and a half of scripted speeches by the Ministers. The Taoiseach complained about leaks. With all of the costs for security outside here yesterday, which I think was way over the top - although I thank the gardaí for the job they do and we even had Commissioner Harris looking around, observing and seeing what was going on - there was not a protester in sight. I think we should have stayed at home and saved on all that security because we had the budget drip by drip for the past week - every single inch of it. Big Phil the enforcer - Phil Hogan - Deputy Browne’s one-time colleague, had to resign as a junior Minister because a page went out in error on a fax machine, and now we have the joke of briefing the media by every other Minister as to what they are going to do. What did they do? Sweet F - I will not say any more, but that is all. It is like a sift of snow that fell on the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath's constituency, near the sea in Ballycotton in Cork. With the first ray of sunlight, it would have gone off and disappeared, the same as the little things that came here, because he spread it so thinly across the whole area.

Agriculture is our prime industry, in particular beef and cattle. Teagasc figures suggest that only 27% of cattle farms and 26% of sheep farms are deemed economically viable. It is there to be seen. The Government tells us everything else that Teagasc does but it will not listen to that advice. Budget 2024 has failed to recognise the broader economic challenges confronting farmers. It offers no solutions to the urgent necessity of bolstering farm incomes and ensuring the viability of family farms.

There is no land commission and the Government will not deal with that. We have a situation in Tipperary where a conglomerate is buying up every piece of land that is available - tens of thousands of acres - and ordinary farmers are just pushed out of the way. That is not good for communities, farmers or anybody else, or for hurling fields. Agriculture is a prime industry and the Minister should be ashamed of himself treating it like that. You go with the Greens in demonising the farmers and telling us they are causing pollution and everything else. It is a lonely existence now because they are under attack.

On carbon tax, as I said, the Government claims to understand people yet it has this punitive carbon tax. I want to nail the lie, and it is a lie, that the carbon tax is going into retrofitting. People who want to retrofit houses are waiting 24 months and they then need €20,000 up-front, if they have it, and they might get back €25,000 - live horse and get grass. Féach ar na daoine aosta. It is unbelievable. This is combined with the fact households have to pay higher taxes and charges all round. To put up carbon tax last night was actually sinful. It is a punitive, cruel tax that affects people in rural Ireland more than anywhere else because they have to travel by car to work, school, play or church – to mass or meeting - because they have no other transport.

I will not even bother with housing because the Government has failed and there is no point talking about housing. The Government has lost its way. It is in a dark, deep fog. It has put billions into housing assistance payment, HAP, at this stage and there is nothing to show for it. They are failed policies. The definition of lunacy is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

I want to address the situation regarding any sense of fairness for carers and pensioners. In our budget submission, we asked for €30 but it is a miserly €12, the same as last year.

The Government knows that what it has done with PRSI and the minimum wage is going to add at least €1 to every cup of tea and a scone and every small plate of food for €8. That is the cost. The Government has let down hospitality with a bang. They are massive employers but the Government only pays lip service to them. It is increasing VAT at a time when small businesses, such as hairdressers, are closing by the day. They will get no life out of this budget.

There is so much flux and so much extra money in the coffers that the Government tells us about. I was sick of people talking for months about the amount of ballast the Government had for the budget but it neglected the people. They are waiting. Tá said ag fanacht libh. They are waiting in the long grass for you people. They are weary and tired of this Green-Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael conglomeration of a Government that is penalising ordinary people, that is putting people to the pin of their collar, that is driving people to despair. I will not even talk about the carry-on in health, which Deputy Michael Collins addressed. There is the waste that goes on across all Government Departments. You scrounged from ordinary people, giving with one hand and taking away with the other. It is a sad day and a sad outfit, with a party like the Minister of State's that was supposed to represent the ordinary daoine na hÉireann, the ordinary people. You have lost your way completely.

Michael Ring (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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We move to the Independent Group. I call Deputy Harkin.

Marian Harkin (Sligo-Leitrim, Independent)
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Yesterday's budget, like all other budgets, had winners and losers. It had good aspects but it had severe deficiencies. We heard the two Ministers yesterday and Government leaders today give their perspective and, of course, it is our role as members of the Opposition to point out the anomalies, the gaps and the downright unacceptable outcomes from yesterday's budget.

I want to start with the disability sector. Like all other sectors partly or largely reliant on social welfare, the across-the-board increase of €12, while of course welcome, does not even cover the cost of inflation.

This is true for pensioners, for example, who are bitterly disappointed that their pension promise campaign, seeking an increase of €30 per week, simply fell on deaf ears.

Staying with the disability sector, there was palpable shock yesterday that the €500 per annum cost-of-disability payment for last year was reduced to €400 even though the Government’s own report from Indecon clearly showed that depending on the severity of a disability, the extra costs above and beyond normal costs associated with having a disability range from €8,000 to €13,000 per annum. The nominal amount of €500 given last year just covered 5% of that extra cost and this year it is back to 4%. I say to the Minister of State that this is a totally backward step.

There is real confusion around disability funding. The Budget Statement delivered by the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, spoke about €64 million, whereas the Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, later announced €195 million in her statement. Last year the disability budget was not clear until the HSE service plan was published in March, six months after the budget. This meant that people with disabilities, unlike other groups, had no real clarity about what was in the budget. We are speaking about a very significant cohort of people, but nothing is clear for them. What is clear at this point is that the funding is below what the Government outlined as being needed in the disability capacity review to 2032 to respond to demographic and unmet needs.

Crucially, the disability action plan 2024-26, which seeks to implement the capacity review, was not published in advance of the budget. Given the publication of the national housing strategy for disabled people 2022-27 implementation plan, we would have hoped to see a much stronger commitment around disability in the budget with a stronger funding commitment there also. Yes, there is €8 million for housing adaption grants but that deals with older persons as well as people with disabilities and, again, there is no clarity.

Staying with disabilities, this morning I spoke with a number of section 39, section 56 and section 10 workers, as I have done for many years. They were here this morning preparing for their indefinite strike which is about to commence next Tuesday. I do not have time to go through all of the details. I am sure the Minister of State is well aware of them. After the crash, these workers, who provide support in the health and disability sectors, the children’s sector and the homeless sector, saw a pay differential of at least 10% arise between themselves and HSE workers. All of them do exactly the same valuable work. In the simplest possible terms, these workers who are employed by the voluntary and community sector are on significantly poorer terms and conditions than their HSE counterparts. I suggest to the Minister of State that they were the low-lying fruit picked to save our State from going under after the crash and pay parity has never been restored.

The Government, quite rightly, gave an increase of 10% of fee rates to criminal defence barristers and solicitors yesterday because they lost out after the crash, but for section 39, section 56 and section 10 workers, pay restoration was not dealt with. The Government has offered them 5% from the Workplace Relations Commission. These workers told the Government at the beginning of the negotiations that 5% would not be acceptable. There is no link to any further pay increases. I say to the Minister of State that the Government has to get back to the table. Not only do we need to keep these workers on side and working, but we must also remember that those who rely on their services - those with disabilities, children, etc. - will be left to suffer from next Tuesday if they go on strike.

Small businesses, small retail shops, coffee shops, hairdressers and other sectors have been left deflated by this budget. Yes, there is a €250 million inflation fund but other than some information about possible rate rebates, there is very little in the budget to deal with escalating insurance costs, high energy costs and very significant extra labour costs. I see some relief for angel investors and that is good, but right now I am worried about the day-to-day survival of many local businesses. We have small retailers watching their working capital dwindle. Many are not far from the point where their very future is in doubt and, unfortunately, some have passed that point. If this Government does not give proper, targeted and accessible supports to small businesses, one by one, street by street and town by town, they will close down. We will see big headlines about some large supermarket or multinational retail company coming to create 50 jobs or 120 new jobs but the truth is that they are simply replacing all of those local jobs which are already being lost in indigenous locally supporting small businesses.

I have no time to go into detail on the childcare support except to say that while the 25% fee reduction is welcome, it does not come in until next September. What are families supposed to do? The other side of that equation, on which we have radio silence from the Minister, is the fact that childcare providers are closing their rooms or part of their services. These providers need at least €100 million in support of early childhood care and education, ECCE, services. I ask the Government to talk to the childcare providers, to listen to them and to sit down and sort out these problems. Otherwise, there will be fewer and fewer such providers. Childcare services are already hard enough to get.

I am almost out of time but I will also say that the excise duty increase which is being deferred is welcome but it is not enough. I ask the Government to stop putting its hands in the pockets of motorists and local people who can no longer afford to pay these increased fuel costs.

Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change)
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None of us on this side of the House can say that there are no measures in the budget which people will welcome. There is no doubt about that. It is very much the fundamentals I wish to deal with in respect of the budget and previous budgets. This is a budget to buy time for a broken system which the Government does not have the political will to fix. It is a budget which will increase inequality in this country.

Ireland, like almost every country in the world, has seen a massive transfer of wealth from the bottom of our society to the top over the past few decades. In Ireland today, two billionaires own 50% more wealth than the bottom half of this country's population. We should think on this and absorb it. This is not an accident but is a political decision made by successive governments to let the wealthy get away with not paying their fair share. This inequality is not just on wealth. We have a two-tier system in our country. Rather than funding and resourcing our public services properly, we have allowed a two-tier system to develop. Those who can afford to go private get proper services and those who cannot make do with a broken system. We have a two-tier healthcare system, a two-tier education system and two-tier mental health services. I could go on. If one is rich, this is a low-tax, high-service country. If one is not, it is a high-tax, low-service country. The Government continues to ask ordinary people to pay high taxes for public systems that are rapidly failing. Only 9% of people wanted tax cuts in this budget because people want services that actually work. Instead, in this budget, the Government has asked ordinary people to keep paying high taxes for a broken system where the wealthy see no real tax increases.

Research by the Nevin Institute found that the implicit tax rate in Ireland on workers is 15% above the EU average, whereas the rate on employers is 46% below the EU average. That is a shocking difference with regard to who pays for public services. It is a political choice to tax workers and employers completely outside of what is the norm in Europe. What is more, regressive taxes on consumption are above the EU average while our taxes on capital are less than half those in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, the UK or Italy, and less than a third that of France. That is a sign of the systematic taxing of ordinary workers more than the rich. The clearest example is in employer PRSI, where Ireland sits 27th in Europe for employers' contributions to social insurance. Employer PRSI is 44% of the European average. Increasing it to the European average and making it permanent would create €10 billion plus a year, which would be the same as we spend on education in this budget alone.

What I have described is a total distortion of how a modern state is supposed to fund itself. Wages in Spain are significantly lower than Ireland but it costs more to employ a Spanish worker because they are compensated more through public services.

We wonder why our public services are underfunded and failing when in comparison to the rest of Europe our wealthy pay far less than their fair share. If we followed the rest of Europe we would have more than €10 billion extra per year. How many hospital beds is that, how many houses or buses, and what improvements could we make in our public services, councils, communities and in our retrofitting projects with that? What we have seen since the neoliberal restructuring of our economy in the 1970s and 1980s is a massive transfer of wealth from the poorest to the richest. This has been allowed to happen completely unchecked by a tax system that allows those with the most money to pay the least. That is why we cannot afford to build hospitals or houses and why our services are under funded and falling apart.

Next week, section 39, section 56 and section 10 workers will go on strike. They will most likely be joined by those from section 38 and other service workers in the coming weeks. I fully support their actions. I know how difficult the decision to restrict desperately needed services is but the reality is that without this action, those services will continue to get worse. The Government has refused to engage in the WRC or pulled out of the talks. It has provided no money in this budget to improve wages or services in this sector. This is a perfect example of the choices this Government makes. It would rather allow the wealthy to get richer than pay our health, disability, youth and homeless service workers properly. During the austerity years, these were the low-hanging fruit that the Government went for in relation to cutting wages. These workers do not even have a pension as it stands. The workers in these sectors should be HSE employees rather than giving money and asking Enable Ireland and others to cut their cloth and pay their workers increases and pay parity.

We need to start to take back the wealth that has been transferred from the bottom of our society to the top. More than 30% of billionaires get their wealth from inheritance. This will only get worse. We need proper inheritance taxes to stop it.

There is a widening gap between the top 0.1% of society and everyone else. A global wealth tax on the world's millionaires, with 3% on those with wealth above $15 million and 5% on the world's billionaires would raise $1.7 trillion annually. We need to start that here and support it worldwide.

Our employers' PRSI contributions are 44% below the European average. They need to pay their fair share. We need to scrap our regressive consumption taxes and introduce progressive taxes on income and capital. At the very least, the Government needs to reverse its decision to tax landlords less than renters paying out-of-control, extortionate rents.

Inequality is not just a moral question. It is a direct cause of why our public services are failing and why people cannot find homes or afford to make ends meet. It is not that we cannot afford to build house or hospitals or fund our councils and services, it is that we can no longer afford to allow a billionaire class that does not pay its fair share. We can no longer afford to allow billionaires to get richer while more and more people are pushed into poverty.

Yesterday, I raised the point about energy poverty. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul says that 40% of homes are now in energy poverty. In an article by Mr. Charlie Weston last week the regulator of utilities said that one in eight homes is in arrears on their bills. These are the 38% of people in the poll at the weekend who do not have the €1,000 in savings to pay for emergencies. I am dealing with a woman on the pension, who has arrears of €1,200 which developed in the last year. She was given the option to pay off the arrears over 10 weeks at €120 per week in addition to paying her electricity bill. There are thousands of people like her. This has not been dealt with because one-off payments do not address those issues. Core payments address those issues; the core payments people get each week.

Regarding the health service, I am dealing with a woman who has been waiting for an operation in St. James's Hospital since 2019. In this day and age she has been waiting since 2019.

Those are the points we have to remember. This is the reality for many people and the Government's budget does not address it.

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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Budget 2024 provides an additional €2 billion for healthcare, including €808 million in core funding, €1.032 billion in non-core funding and €156 million in capital funding. The total health budget for 2024 is €22.5 billion. The €808 million increase in core funding comprises a combination of €708 million to maintain existing services and €100 million for new developments. Funding to maintain existing services includes funding for inflation, rising patient demand, workforce measures including the public-only consultant contract, building momentum and pensions, as well as increases forecast for the State Claims Agency.

The €100 million in new development funding is to build on investments already in train. This includes staffing for 162 new hospital beds, 22 new critical care beds, our first six surgical hubs in Tallaght and new community beds. It is funding for college training places and progress in advanced practice. It is funding for improving patient access via our waiting list and emergency care initiatives. Progressing the new patient services is being dealt with through various items including the waiting list action plan. In the context of eHealth, there is funding to progress better digital supports for workers. We are expanding free contraception to people who are 31 years of age. As a result, no woman will age out of the programme next year. What is happening with mental health, older persons services, public health and social inclusion will be covered by the Ministers of State, Deputies Butler and Naughton.

The €1.032 billion in non-core funding includes continuing Covid vaccines and testing and tracing, services to Ukrainians fleeing war and our waiting list and urgent and emergency care plans. It includes building up the HSE’s cybersecurity and digital capabilities and addressing non-pay funding pressures in hospitals this year. We will be fully implementing the safe staffing framework.

In the past three years, the Government has delivered record investment in healthcare. We have added 22,000 staff since 2020, including 6,700 extra nurses and midwives, 3,100 extra health and social care professionals and 2,500 extra doctors and dentists. We have added more than 1,000 new hospital beds. We have delivered a big increase in critical care beds. This investment is having a positive effect. Last year, waiting lists fell for the first time since 2015. In fact, there are around 140,000 fewer people waiting longer than the Sláintecare targets, the ten- and 12-week targets, than there were at the Covid peak.

We have abolished inpatient hospital charges. Free contraception has been rolled out. Half a million more people have access to free GP care. State-funded IVF has just been introduced. The drug-payment threshold has been reduced to €80. Hundreds of thousands of diagnostic scans that GPs refer their patients to are being paid for by the State.

New services are becoming available for the first time in areas such as women’s health, diabetes, stroke, genetics, dementia and obesity. We are expanding existing clinical services where there are strategies in place. This includes in cancer care, maternity, trauma care, home care, cardiology, ambulance services, mental health and more. At the same time, as in many other countries, we are seeing extraordinary increases in demand for services against a backdrop of high inflation. As a result, the majority of this year’s budgetary funding is focused on absorbing price inflation and meeting growing patient demand.

There is a misconception that Ireland spends more on healthcare than other comparable countries. We do not. Of the 15 western European countries, Ireland ranks 11th in spending per person on health, accounting for local prices. Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, France, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg and Denmark all spend more per capitaon healthcare than we do, adjusting for local prices.

While we invest, we must also ensure that this investment is being used to the best possible benefit for patients. Most of the spending this year above what is budgeted for is due to higher prices and higher patient demand than was forecast and provided for in the last budget. Turning patients away from hospitals is not an option. Nonetheless there are opportunities to increase productivity. To that end, I have been working with the chief executive of the HSE and my Department for some time on a structured approach to seizing these opportunities.

To that end, I have been working for some time with the chief executive officer of the HSE, as well as my Department, on a structured approach to seizing these opportunities. This includes accelerating the implementation of the integrated financial management system and identifying opportunities in major spending areas, such as agency, overtime and procurement. For quite some time, we have been rolling out a productivity platform that will give us, for the first time ever, a clear central view of the amount of patient care being delivered in every hospital by every clinical team. This is the first time we will be able to forensically examine and compare productivity levels across our health service and use that to engage with healthcare providers to recognise the people who are doing extremely well, learning from them and sharing their practices, and identify those who are doing less well, are less productive and seeing what supports are needed to bring productivity up. In the shorter term, we will also improve cost controls in respect of areas including recruitment. In the context, the HSE will shortly provide details of further hiring freezes being introduced in areas where annual recruitment targets have been met.

In spite of record investment and important progress, we have a long way to go in terms of providing patients with the care they need when they need it. Waiting lists are still far too long. Emergency departments in too many hospitals are still under far too much pressure. I acknowledge the enormous difficulties this is causing for patients. I want to state clearly that improving speed of access for patients is the number one priority for me, for my ministerial colleagues in the area of health, for the Government, for my Department and for the HSE.

I will conclude by acknowledging the extraordinary work being done by our healthcare professionals all over our country every day. We in the Houses of the Oireachtas and the media tend to focus on what is not working for patients. That is exactly what we should do. However, we spend very little time discussing and recognising the vital care being delivered every day, at a very high level, by our healthcare professionals. For example, our healthcare professionals have taken 150,000 more patients off the waiting lists this year than targeted. The target in this regard was already ambitious. Waiting lists in the Republic are now half what they are in Northern Ireland. In regard to the number of patients waiting more than a year for a hospital procedure, the waiting lists in the Republic is now ten times lower than it is in Northern Ireland. This is thanks to the extraordinary work and dedication and the efforts being made by healthcare workers throughout the country. I acknowledge that and thank them for everything they continue to do. We are very lucky to have a health service staffed by highly skilled, dedicated professionals who, as we all know, provide great care all over our country every day to our friends, families and ourselves in our time of need. I assure them that we will continue to invest and to support them in the interests of patients.

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I am pleased to share details of the Department's budget 2024 allocations in the area for which I am responsible as Minister of State with responsibility for public health well-being and the national drugs strategy. As Deputies are aware, ensuring that people are healthy and active and that they get the healthcare they need is a priority for this Government. A key element of this approach is our healthy Ireland framework, at the core of which is the healthy Ireland fund. Established in 2017 with an initial annual budget of €5 million, the fund is used to support our partners, including include Departments and agencies, NGOs, community organisations and 31 local authorities, in delivering programmes focused on health and well-being. Mindful of the importance of this measure, we have gradually increased investment in this fund over the years since it was established. Our budget for the fund in 2023 was just over €14 million. I am delighted to announce today that I secured an additional €2.3 million for 2024, bringing the total to €16.5 million. That represents an increase of 16%. This money will be used to progress a number of priorities, including the employment of staff to co-ordinate activities, to support the Sláintecare healthy communities programme that provides targeted supports to some of the most deprived communities in the country and to help to facilitate exercise for older adults and others who may be living with chronic conditions. I have also secured an additional €300,000 to facilitate the recruitment of four community food and nutrition workers. This will bring the national complement to 19. These workers are a vital support to local communities in developing responses to food poverty and insecurity.

I am particularly pleased to also announce that I have secured funding to develop new walking trails in communities, building on the success of the GAA walking trails initiative I announced earlier in the year. I have also secured funding to develop facilities for outdoor swimming. Some €1 million will be provided for these initiatives.

On tobacco control, great strides have been made with the percentage of the population that smokes falling from 23% in 2015 to 18% in 2022. Approximately 22,000 people are expected to engage with the HSE anti-smoking services in 2024. Of these, one quarter will require medical intervention and supports. A total of €1.82 million is provided to assist these people to kick the habit.

Moving to sexual health, Members may be aware that work is ongoing in developing a new national sexual health strategy. As part of this we will increase the budget for free home sexually transmitted infection testing by €700,000, allowing people to test in the privacy of their own homes. Some 91,000 testing kits were provided last year. This valuable initiative will expand over the course of 2024. We will also increase funding for our national HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis programme, PrEP, launched in November 2019. It currently receives funding of €5.4 million and our investment of €600,000 will fund additional staff and increase access to PrEP medication, helping to provide better access to HIV prevention for more people.

As part of our response to tackling gambling addiction, €500,000 will be provided in 2024 to develop supports for the estimated 130,000 people with problems in this area. Since my appointment to the Department of Health just nine months ago, I have met with medical experts, people delivering addiction services on the ground and people who use drugs, some of whom are living with addiction. A key message I received is that we need to change how we think about and tackle drug misuse and addiction. This year, I have already ensured that core funding for our drug and alcohol task forces and section 39 organisations increased by €3.5 million. In addition,I provided €1.5 million in funding for a drug and alcohol education and awareness programme. This is the first time such funding has been provided. For 2024, we will deliver ground-breaking services never before provided. These will include dual diagnosis hubs that will support the recovery of young people with drug dependency and mental health issues and dedicated funding for services for people who embark on the road to recovery from drug addiction to support their integration into everyday life, for example, through housing and employment, education and other supports. It is important to note that in the past two years alone, funding for our drug and alcohol services has increased by almost €10 million. I am keen that we will continue to build on this in order to ensure that the fantastic care which is provided from within the community is supported. In total next year, the State will invest in excess of €145 million on drug and alcohol addiction services.

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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I am pleased to be here for my fourth budget as Minister of State with responsibility for mental health and older people. I am pleased to announce that more than €2.6 billion has been allocated to further enhance older persons' services in budget 2024, which is an increase of €158 million on the amount announced on budget day last year. This includes more than €45 million additional funding for long-term residential care in nursing homes, public, private and voluntary. This funding will support nursing homes to maintain services and to manage inflationary increases through the nursing home support scheme, also known as fair deal. I am also pleased to announce the establishment of a dedicated new €10 million fund to support private and voluntary nursing homes with HIQA regulations and compliance measures. The details are currently being worked on by officials in the Department.

The delivery of home care continues to increase each year. In 2024, we expect to deliver 22 million hours of home support. This is more than has ever been delivered before. An additional €2.8 million is allocated to meet inflationary pressures. Some 18% of all new home support hours are now ring-fenced for people with dementia. I am delighted to announce €300,000 in new funding for weekend activity clubs for people with early-onset dementia. This is being done in conjunction with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland and makes use of facilities that are normally closed at weekends. The latter makes perfect sense and will be a valuable resource for young people with early-onset dementia and their families. We know that community services play a vital role in helping to keep older people well, out of hospital and living in their homes and communities for longer. We will be investing an additional €3.7 million in 2024 for day services, in-home dementia day care and meals on wheels across the country.

In the programme for Government, we committed to establishing a commission to examine care and supports for older people. Some €1.2 million has been allocated in budget 2024 to support this work. We will also increase the provision of transitional care funding by €4.6 million in 2024.

Budget 2024 brings annual funding to mental health services to nearly €1.3 billion. This year’s budget focuses on further developing youth mental health. Specific funding has been provided for the recruitment of 68 posts associated with CAMHS. The extra staff for CAMHS will support the implementation of the recommendations of key reports and audits seen in this country over the last two years.

An exciting new initiative for which I am delighted to have secured funding is a youth mental health app. We know young people sometimes approach services differently,. They can be more likely to engage with digital or online supports and information. This app will help direct young people to the services they need, when they need them. Budget 2024 also provides funding for the development and provision of a new central referral mechanism for services for children, to be established on a pilot basis within the HSE. This referral mechanism will allow the HSE to appropriately triage referrals to specialist services, including CAMHS, to ensure no child ends up on the wrong waiting list for the care they need and deserve. This model, which is sometimes referred to as "no wrong door", is a key priority for me.

I am also pleased to confirm the continued roll out of suicide bereavement liaison officers in 2024, as well as specific funding next year for the further national roll out of the Traveller counselling service. This will ensure that culturally inclusive and appropriate counselling services will have national coverage for the first time. Funding has also been secured for minor capital works to develop more appropriate accommodation in services nationwide and meet the needs identified in the Mental Health Commission inspection reports.

In short, the investment that has been secured this year will further support the delivery of our priorities under Sharing the Vision, Connecting for Life and Sláintecare. The focus on youth mental health is timely and much needed. I thank all those who work in mental health services and with older people. I am very proud of the fact that we have the highest life expectancy among the 27 EU countries. I want to thank all people who work with older people to make sure they can live appropriately at home, in nursing homes or in whichever setting. It is also important to remember all those who care-----

Hildegarde Naughton (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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Yes.

Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
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-----for people with mental health conditions, people with dementia and older people. Carers play an invaluable role every day of the week.

David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein)
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Budget 2024 demonstrates, from my perspective, how the Government has thrown in the towel on health. This budget lacks ambition and vision. More than that, it lacks the funding that is necessary to properly fund our health services.

The Minister may be aware that over the past 24 hours there has been a perception that he has been thrown under the bus by the Government because of the cost overrun in the Department of Health. In reality, the people who have been thrown under the bus are the patients, those on the front line in healthcare, all of those groups that advocate for better healthcare and those who were hoping to see more new funding for healthcare next year. It simply is not there. Whatever about the internal positioning within the Government, there is a responsibility on the part of the three party leaders, the Tánaiste, Deputy Micheál Martin, the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, and the Minister for Transport, Deputy Ryan, to ensure that the health service is properly funded. We have all known for some time about what the health service needs for next year. I have spoken to the Minister for Health about that being done over a number of years. Yet, what I have seen in this budget really worries me in the context of where the health services is now and how it is being funded.

Three times this year, the Minister spoke about 1,500 inpatient beds for hospitals. These were not just to be 1,500 additional beds; they were to be rapid-build beds. We were told that these would be delivered at speed. There would possibly be 700 of them in 2024 and 700 or 800 the following year. I do not see a single additional cent for those beds in the budget. The matter was certainly not referenced in any of the contributions by the Ministers opposite, that is for sure. The only way the Minister can fund those beds next year is by raising the existing national development funding for healthcare and the capital allocation for health. If the Minister were to do that, it would mean that whole projects in the area of healthcare would not be funded, would be put on hold and shafted, in order to deliver those beds. If any of us are to propose additional beds in healthcare, there has to be additional capital funding and I do not see that. There is a question for the Minister to answer in relation to those 1,500 rapid-build beds, the need for which he spoke about in robust terms, and rightly so. What is the position with them?

There has been no additional money for new medicines. We know what the consequences of that will be for the people who will now have no access to some of those. While they will still have access to the existing budget, because there is no new money or additional funding means that there will potentially be some high-tech innovative drugs and patients may now not be able to access them. One has to continue to increase funding in this area while achieving efficiencies in the overall spend, which I accept.

There has been no additional money of substance for CAMHS. I know the Minister has said there is some funding, but what I see in the budget is a €7 million allocation for lots of different things. CAMHS is mentioned as part of that. I would like to hear what the breakdown is. How much additional funding is being given to CAMHS? Whatever it is, it is nowhere near what is needed when one considers the scale of the crisis. There has been no additional funding for national strategies, which live or die on the funding they get. Therefore, if we do not provide the funding year on year for those strategies, they will stand still or go backwards. We are talking about the areas of cancer, cardiovascular health and the maternity strategy. When people who deliver those services look at this budget and see that there is no funding and when people who advocate in these areas look at the budget and see the same thing, I can tell the Minister that they become very worried.

There is no additional money to cut the cost of healthcare. All of us here are committed to Sláintecare. I have commended the Minister in the past on some of the measures taken, such as abolishing charges in hospitals and additional GP cards, which we also called for last year and which are, thankfully, now in place. However, we have to continue with that every single year if we are serious about delivering a universal healthcare system. That is why we proposed the package of measures that I will speak about in a moment. There has not been one cent of additional funding of substance to cut the cost of healthcare in this budget when compared with previous years. We speak about incrementally moving towards delivering on that core commitment of Sláintecare and universal healthcare. We have now stopped that, and that also concerns me.

There is very little money for primary and community care. While I see some funding for GPs, advanced nurse practitioners and some areas, it is quite small. It is certainly nowhere near the scale of what is necessary. Again, I have commended the Minister, and rightly so, for the enhanced community care model and the foundation that has been put in place in recent years. However, I am sure the Minister will agree that we have to continue to invest year on year if we want to ensure that people get the right care, in the right place and at the right time. There has been no additional funding of substance for digital transformation. For me, that is one of the big issues for driving reforms in healthcare as we look to regional health areas. Those are the enablers in dealing with the healthcare system.

In our alternative budget, we provided for 1,800 additional beds over three years. We were honest and upfront in saying that it would take that length of time to deliver them, because we need to be clear. We proposed €20 million for new medicines, €75 million in additional funding for mental health, €145 million for national strategies, €240 million to cut the cost of healthcare and €100 million for primary and community care.

If I were sitting in the Minister’s spot today and Deputy Doherty was Minister for Finance, we would have been announcing 400,000 additional medical cards. The qualifying income thresholds have not been touched in years. While I accept that this year was not the time to increase the number of medical cards again and that we must allow some breathing space, there was an opportunity to expand the income thresholds, which we would have increased by €10,000. This would have delivered the 400,000 additional cards. We would have cut the cost of medicines by reducing the drug payment scheme threshold from €80 to €50. We would have abolished prescription charges, phased out car parking charges over a number of years and reduced the minor injury unit charge from €70 to €50. We would not abolish the minor injury unit charge because we do not want the unintended consequence of people going straight to minor injury units instead of to GPs first. We would have provided additional money to expand access to contraceptives and IVF. Given what has happened, I am concerned that there will be delayed access to new drugs and therapies next year.

There have been a number of reports by the Mental Health Commission, which has set out reforms that it wants to see. Some of those would require funding. The Minister will accept that mental health services needed more money than they got this year. We needed more money for our hospitals to deal with capacity issues in emergency departments. Learning from best practice in other hospitals, there are steps that we could take regardless – this is something that I have raised previously – but we all know that, year on year, we have to increase capacity, be that in beds, surgical theatres, diagnostics or staffing.

This is not even a standing still budget. I spoke with officials from the Department of Health a number of times in the lead up to the budget. There is no breaking confidentiality in my saying this, as they echoed in private what they had told me at a meeting of the Joint Committee on Health a number of weeks ago. They said that this year’s deficit would be somewhere between €1.1 billion and €1.4 billion. There will have to be a Revised Estimate to deal with that. Most of it is down to recurring costs and needs to be included in the base costs at some point, but the Minister got very little in the budget to deal with that. In fact, what he got to address this issue was only temporary. There is a resilience fund of €480 million, but to say that it is papering over the cracks is an understatement. Separately, the officials told us that maintaining existing levels of service would require at least €1 billion, yet the Minister only got €707 million. This means that we will be underfunding the health service massively. There is a big black hole in the health service’s finances this year with a potential deficit of €1.4 billion. I wonder who will be right when I make the claim that the potential deficit will be even larger next year. That is my concern. This is not the way to fund a health service or to have a true and accurate reflection of what the health budget should be.

My main concern is for patients and those on the front line. I do not doubt the Minister’s sincerity in wanting to deal with the waiting lists and emergency departments, to expand services in primary and community care and the health service to work better, and I have commended much of what has been done in recent years, but I am concerned about what I have seen in this budget. It would be remiss of me not to be robust in saying that I am concerned about the impact it will have on the health service in future. Regardless of who is in government after the next election, that large deficit will have to be dealt with at some point. We cannot continue to park it, fudge it and brush it under the carpet or allow it to become an issue of interparty rivalry at budget time. We must view this matter more seriously, but that did not happen this year. While the Minister has to bear some responsibility for that, the leaders of the three Government parties have even more responsibility to bear.

Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Another budget day and another missed opportunity for mental health services. This is another letdown for the individuals accessing mental health services and their families. Since this Government was formed, waiting lists for primary and acute services have increased. In some cases, they have doubled. We have seen a lack of further investment in eating disorder services, early intervention in psychosis and perinatal mental health services. We have seen those waiting on such services left out in the cold and waiting each budget day for some help and some hope. Each budget day, though, there is a sense of deflation among those using the services and among mental health organisations, which are starved of funding. There were no welcoming tweets this year from mental health organisations. Indeed, there were no announcement tweets from the Minister of State this year either. She seemed to go into hiding.

Those on the ground know that early intervention is key and that primary care services need to be funded so that acute services are not under pressure. They also know that acute services, particularly CAMHS and the national clinical programmes, need to expand. However, this budget offers little reassurance. One would need to be a forensic accountant to sift through the measures announced in each budget to find out what is real money. The tactic of smoke and mirrors is often used in this regard. We also have to wait for the HSE's national service plan to see what has actually been funded, often to be disappointed once again.

Where mental health is concerned, the Government seems to have thrown in the towel. It is out of ideas and running out of time. Yesterday's budget reaffirmed the need to step aside and let a Government that would implement the needed changes to take over. Sinn Féin would be that Government. Sinn Féin produces an alternative health budget each year, as the Minister knows. It is descriptive, clear and fully costed, with those costs confirmed by the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and the HSE. Sinn Féin is serious about funding mental health services, including CAMHS teams, and increasing inpatient capacity. We are serious about delivering the model of care plans for our national clinical programmes.

People have been waiting too long and they deserve better. They deserve a Government that cares. It is cruelly ironic that the budget was introduced on World Mental Health, given that the allocation for mental health services next year is shameful. The Minister of State is not coming in here with bells and whistles on saying that this is fabulous, because it is not. It is less than that. This is not even standing still money. Rather, the budget is regressive. We had a mental health crisis before this budget, and we will still have one after this budget.

Young people, families and communities are crying out for services, resources and help. They were looking on yesterday hoping that this help would come from the Government. If there is any new mental health funding, though, it is buried in a paltry €7.5 million. That was the announcement yesterday, but when I watched the press conference earlier, the Minister of State mentioned a figure of €13 million to €14 million; I am not sure what the figure is. Sinn Féin would have invested an additional €75 million to improve mental health services. It is not standing still money, but money for the development of new services. We would have invested in a raft of measures to make it easier for people to access mental health supports and to cut the long waiting lists. Last year, the Government did not invest in any new development under the national clinical programmes. We hoped that it would rectify that this year. Alas, we were disappointed. For the second year running, the budget does not contain any new funding for eating disorders, ADHD, early intervention in psychosis or suicide prevention. That is shameful. What does the Government say to the people who need help with eating disorders or ADHD, who need early intervention in psychosis or who have suicidal thoughts? What does it say to the young people and their parents who are suffering because CAMHS is on its knees and getting worse? What does it say to those who age out of the system at 18 while they are still in need of treatment and care?

I put it to the Minister of state that it is dangerous for the Government to pay lip service to the area of mental health and not deliver the funding and resources necessary to achieve the radical overhaul that is required. This is why Sinn Féin outlined in our alternative budget €75 million for next year. We need ambition and energy to deliver a world-class, modern, fit-for-purpose mental health system. Treading water and skirting around the edges of the problem will not get the job done. Those living with mental health challenges will feel abandoned and badly let down by the Government today.

When we are being critical, we can sometimes be deemed to be criticising the staff working in mental health services. I spent the recess meeting them. It is a vocation and they do a good job, but they are being let down by a lack of resources and by the systemic failure of Governments.

Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour)
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Governments are defined by the budgets they produce and the money they allocate to issues they feel are important, and we get a chance once a year to reflect on those statements by Governments about what they deem to be important. In these Houses, when we learn of people from other parties who are resigning or not running again, we sometimes wonder why we get up in the morning and come here to do this job.

We wonder why we come in here and we reflect on that. Politics is a big influence on all our lives and it has a negative influence as well, but the reason I get up in the morning and the thing I care passionately about more than anything else is disadvantaged education. It is probably at the top of my priority list every time I get up in the morning, and every time I think about anything in terms of my political life, it is disadvantaged education. I could criticise the education budget and the fact class sizes have not been reduced even though they are the biggest in Europe. I could talk about the capitation allocation, which is less than last year and the fact people are saying they will not be able to run their schools. I could talk about many other issues in education where there are failures in this budget. Education is the great liberator. There is no better or more effective way proven anywhere in the world of getting out of poverty than education. It is the only thing that works. That is proven internationally.

A government that is serious about educational disadvantage is one that is serious about child poverty. I was delighted when the Taoiseach announced, when he resumed the role last year, that child poverty was to be his great burning passion. In fairness, you have to meet that statement where it is. You do not want to be disrespectful to that statement because you do not want to play politics with child poverty, but there is one thing that will move a child out of poverty and it is education. It empowers the child to move out of their own situation. I am looking at the allocation to education with respect to a very deliberate proposal from a number of DEIS principals from three geographic areas in Dublin, covering around 30 schools. They are asking for a new DEIS-plus designation. They want that designation because they are scared out of their wits about what is in front of them with the children they are dealing with. They tell me some children are already lost. They say the pandemic has compounded educational disadvantage. They are dealing with parents who are showing suicidal ideation more than they ever did before and children who are hungry. Parents are changing the route to swimming during the week because they are afraid of being caught in the gunfire of a local dispute. These are real, genuine situations in disadvantaged schools. These principals have asked for trauma-based supports so the children they are dealing with will be in a position to move beyond the situation they are in and perhaps maximise their potential. The potential of these children is unknown, but it is being dogged by the circumstances of where they are from, intergenerational poverty, intergenerational trauma and intergenerational educational disadvantage.

The proposal was made to the Department of Education. What is most depressing is the Minister for Education and her officials could have said they had listened to the principals and were going to make a grand gesture, a generational change of investment in this area, because they had heard what the principals were saying about the lives that are at risk. Whenever it comes to talking about antisocial behaviour, the answer is more gardaí. Whenever we talk about crime, the answer is more gardaí. It is always a law-and-order response, but the DEIS-plus proposal would have a more profound impact on antisocial behaviour and crime over the course of a childhood than any other measure. The Minister says it is under review. The horse and greyhound fund is getting a 4.4% increase up to €96 million, with no review necessary. I have come to conclusion these children are better off being horses or greyhounds because those get invested in. However, because they are children in disadvantaged areas going to DEIS schools with principals who are crying out for supports for them because of the trauma they are going through, which is intergenerational, we will just have to review it.

In all the conversations about the budget we will talk about tax and we will talk about spend. We will talk about pensions and we will talk about social protection. We will talk about tax changes. We will talk about the squeezed middle and the tax burden. We will talk about all these different debating points, but it is my responsibility, due to the background I come from, to speak purely about the one chance these children have and ask for somebody, somewhere in government to listen to their life experience and to what the principals are telling them. The principals spoke to the social inclusion unit of the Department of Education about the 100 or so schools that have been identified. What came out in the budget? It is under review. Then you need only turn a page to see the horse and greyhound fund has had a 4.4% increase to €96 million, thank you very much. That is what I find most depressing about this job I do, because it gives me absolutely no pleasure to make remarks like this. These children do not deserve to be under review; they deserve to be invested in. In some circumstances they deserve to be saved, but they definitely deserve to be invested in and empowered and DEIS-plus would be a simple win for this Government and would absolutely be a win for these children.

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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Is cúis áthais dom labhairt leis an Teach inniu maidir leis an leithdháileadh iomlán de €1.17 billiún do mo Roinn i mbuiséad 2024, agus achoimre a thabhairt ar chuid de na bearta lena ndéanfar cothú, feabhsú agus forbairt ar na hearnálacha a bhfuil freagracht agam astu. The sectors in my Department are vital to the employment sector, especially outside urban centres, and form a core part of how we identify as a nation, as a collective people living on this island and in welcoming those from abroad, and as individuals, through sports participation and fandom, through cultural expression, admiration, experience, through our native tongue which is embedded in the fabric of our identity, and across our engagement in news and communication with media, social media and online content.

As we stabilise after the shock of the pandemic and face into the challenges of the continuing war in Ukraine, other erupting conflicts and the very real dangers of climate change, we look to these sectors for means of understanding, resilience, comfort and positive connection. Participation in sport and culture fosters tolerance and empathy through shared experiences and helps to bring people together. At a time when there are so many divisive forces at play in the world, their contribution is more important than ever. We must also appreciate the significant contribution these sectors make to employment and the economy. My departmental colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, will address the House on specific measures around sport. The Minister of State, Deputy O’Donovan, sends his apologies as he is unable to attend. My address will focus on the sectors of tourism, culture, Gaeltacht and media.

The Department received a total allocation of €1.17 billion in budget 2024. The sectors overseen by my Department have great impact across society and they have shown extraordinary resilience in the face of, first, the Covid-19 crisis, and then increases in the cost of living. It has been a priority for me to ensure we can respond to these and other challenges in a robust and sustainable manner. Budget 2024 maintains and increases funding across a wide range of key initiatives. A once-off allocation of €57 million in current funding has been provided, along with an increased allocation of €40 million in core current expenditure. In addition, there is a further €4 million in capital uplift under the national development plan along with just over €10 million under shared island initiatives across the culture, Gaeltacht and tourism sectors.

For tourism, the total overall allocation is €216 million, which allows for continued assistance to the sector, especially those regions and businesses most affected by the downstream impacts of tourism accommodation stock displacement impacted by our national support for people fleeing the war in Ukraine. While the sector has recovered strongly over the past year, challenges remain and I am pleased to have retained much of the exceptional additional funding secured last year to help the sector build to full recovery. I am also looking to the longer term in assisting the tourism sector to increase its focus on and action in relation to climate change. To this end, I will be directing €10 million of funding to focus on sustainability and especially the implementation of policy measures to help tourism businesses in the regions worst affected by displacement. This funding will be directed at specific actions to support those businesses in areas such as domestic marketing with a sustainability focus, digitisation and recruitment and retention. As part of this, I have also asked Fáilte Ireland to consider the scope for business support schemes that could help the most affected tourism activities and attractions and to report back to me on options and recommendations within four weeks. I have also maintained additional funding of €10 million for overseas marketing of Ireland as a leading holiday destination.

Sustaining marketing campaigns at current levels will be crucial to ensure Ireland holds its strong share of voice for longer term success in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

In relation to arts and culture, Irish artists are reaching new heights in terms of international recognition, whether this be in the Booker Prize long and shortlists or at the Oscars this year. This is the result of sustained investment in arts and culture in recent years, and I am pleased therefore that funding totalling €367.406 million has been secured for this sector for 2024. The budget provides for a record €134 million funding for the Arts Council in recognition of the transformational impact of this funding and to support the sector. ·It also provides an additional €1 million in increased funding for Culture Ireland to enhance the overseas promotion of Irish creative workers. Changes to section 481 tax relief will further enhance Ireland’s attractiveness as a location for major international film and television projects, building on the remarkable success this year of “Banshees of Inisherin”, and “An Cailín Ciúin”.

·I have also secured an allocation of an extra €1.9 million to provide additional capital support for our regional arts infrastructure. This funding will assist regional players to meet their building and equipment needs, including equipment for measures under the night-time economy scheme and to adapt their facilities to reduce their energy needs and their carbon footprint. I will bring forward proposals in the coming months for a pilot initiative on how best to allocate these much-needed funds. ·This funding also allows my Department to continue to support activity in relation to the Safe to Create programme, including Minding Creative Minds; the Creative Ireland programme, including the innovative creative climate action measures; the continued development of the night-time economy; sustained protection and presentation of our national collections through the national cultural institutions; additional funding for Comhaltas Ceoltóiri Éireann; and the continuation of the critical basic income for the arts scheme.

Fáiltím roimh an tacaíocht atá aontaithe ag an Rialtais don Ghaeltacht agus don Ghaeilge i gcoitinne. Tá mé sásta méadú 4% ar mhaoiniú d’earnáil na Gaeilge agus na Gaeltachta a thuairisciú, méadú a thugann go níos mó ná €100 milliún an infheistíocht a bheidh á dhéanamh ag mo Roinn san earnáil an bhliain seo chugainn, beag beann ar an maoiniú breise a bheidh ag dul go TG4. Leis an maoiniú a bheidh ar fáil don earnáil in 2024, cuirfear réimse leathan beartas i bhfeidhm taobh istigh agus taobh amuigh den Ghaeltacht.

Caithfimid cuimhneamh go bhfuil méadú thar chuimse tagtha ar bhuiséad mo Roinne don Ghaeilge agus don Ghaeltacht ó tháinig an Rialtas seo isteach. Cuireadh timpeall €78 milliún ar fáil don earnáil i mbuiséad 2021 le hais an beagnach €100 milliúin a bheidh ar fáil di an bhliain seo chugainn. Anuas air sin, tá an Rialtas seo tar éis maoiniú a chur ar fáil do TG4 chun an stáisiún nua do pháistí, Cúla4, a bhunú. Tá an bhunsraith leagtha síos againn agus táthar ag dul a tógáil air sin i 2024.

Tá an méadú go €14.45 milliún ar leithdháileadh caipitil iomlán Údarás na Gaeltachta do 2023 coinnithe do 2024. Anuas air sin, tá maoiniú breise de €1.1 milliún á chur ar fáil d’Údarás na Gaeltachta in 2024 chun feidhm rialachais na heagraíochta a láidriú. Is cur chuige é sin atá stuama, dar liom, agus tús á chur anois le cainteanna maidir le buiséad caipitil na heagraíochta do na blianta amach romhainn.

Beidh tacaíocht breise ar fáil do scéimeanna um chuimsiú sóisialta do 2024. Leanfaidh mo Roinn ag maoiniú na scéime DEIS Gaeltachta in 2024. Chomh maith leis sin, cuirfear €500,000 breise ar fáil chun tacú le cohórt níos leithne daoine óga ó chúlraí faoi mhíbhuntáiste ar mhian leo freastal ar chúrsa samhraidh sa Ghaeltacht.

Beidh €1 milliún breise ar fáil i scéimeanna tacaíochta Gaeilge mo Roinne ar mhaithe le scéim nua a chur ar bun a thacóidh le múinteoirí scoile agus oibrithe in earnáil an luathoideachais barr feabhais a chur ar a gcuid scileanna teanga. Anuas air sin, tá €500,000 in airgead caipitil curtha ar fáil do na scéimeanna tacaíochta Gaeilge chun a chumasú do mo Roinn tús a chur leis an obair fhorbartha ar cheanncheathrú Chonradh na Gaeilge ag Uimhir 6 Sráid Fhearchair.

Bunaíodh líne nua buiséid €1 milliún in 2023 chun dlús a chur le cur chun feidhme Acht na dTeangacha Oifigiúla (Leasú) 2021, d’fhonn spriocanna uaillmhianacha earcaíochta a leagtar amach ann a bhaint amach. Cuirfear allúntas breise de €500,000 ar fáil don obair seo i 2024 le tacú le hiarrachtaí mo Roinne forálacha an Acht teanga nua a neadú trasna an státchóras agus chun feasacht ina leith a chruthú i measc an phobail. Tá teachtaireacht thar a bheith dearfach againn anois maidir leis na deiseanna fostaíochta atá ar fáil dóibh siúd a bhfuil an Ghaeilge acu agus caithfimid an teachtaireacht sin a scaipeadh go forleathan.

Tosóimid sa bhliain 2024 le fuinneamh athnuaite agus le fios a bheith againn gur féidir linn a bheith ag súil le forbairt leanúnach na Gaeilge agus na bpobal Gaeltachta.

Funding for the media and broadcasting sector in 2024 will total €304.373 million. This allows for increased funding of €4.8 million to TG4, allowing for a 2024 allocation of €57 million. This is a total increase of almost €20 million since 2019. This funding will allow TG4 to support delivery of its strategy.

I am conscious that time is running out for my colleague.

As recommended by the Future of Media Commission and underpinned by the more recent NewERA analysis, the Minister for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform and I acknowledge the need to provide interim funding of €16 million to RTÉ as required. This will be dealt with post budget and any further funding will be considered later in the year when we receive RTÉ's strategic vision.

The Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, will now speak on the increased funding to sport in budget 2024.

Thomas Byrne (Meath East, Fianna Fail)
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The 2024 allocation for sport and recreation amounts to €181.837 million. Increased funding is being provided to sporting bodies to ensure their recovery post pandemic and to enable them to face the challenges of today. An extra €2 million is being provided for the national governing bodies for sport. The funding targeted at increasing female participation is being doubled. This means that the women in sport programme fund goes from €2 million to €4 million. The increased funding will target areas such as participation, coaching, officiating, leadership and visibility.

As 2024 is both an Olympic and Paralymic year, there is an additional €1 million in funding to support our high-performance athletes on their journey to Paris. There is also continued investment in major sports events. Obviously, we were very pleased yesterday to be formally confirmed as the co-hosts of UEFA's Euro 2028 championship. This is largest single international sporting event held in Ireland and is one of the largest such events in the world.

What we are about in this Department is sport for all. We want to make sure sport reaches deep into every corner of society and that participation is increased. We want to improve everyone's physical and mental well-being as well as improve integration in the community, and sport has a huge role to play in that regard. Budget 2024 delivers on our sport for all approach and I welcome the investment in our sporting community.

In the context of the Department of Education and physical education, PE, I am the first Minister of State with special responsibility for PE in that Department. I am delighted to announce increased funding for the expansion of the active school flag programme. Budget 2024 will support more schools to get more active more often. As a result of the increased funding for the aforementioned programme, I look forward to seeing more flags awarded to primary schools throughout the country and the growth of the post-primary programme from pilot phase to full roll-out. This is not just a flag that schools get for a couple of weeks' work in transition year. This is a multi-year programme within schools. It takes a lot of effort from both students and teachers but can make real and lasting change. It is one of the most impressive programmes I have seen and I was really pleased to advance it. I thank the Minister, Deputy Martin, and the Minister for Education, Deputy Foley, for their co-operation in putting forward some of my priorities. They have both been very helpful in that regard. In education, we are going to see further developments in the PE curriculum and further initiatives as well with the budget that has been agreed. The same is true for sport. I look forward to a great sporting year, not just this year but next year as well.

Catherine Martin (Dublin Rathdown, Green Party)
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I cut short my contribution because I thought my colleague would get no time but if I may, I would like to reference one other issue under the media sector, namely, the €6 million being provided for the local democracy reporting scheme and the courts reporting scheme. That will help to enhance coverage of issues of concern at local level.

Chris Andrews (Dublin Bay South, Sinn Fein)
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People from across the sporting community tuned in yesterday to follow the budget announcements and to hear what support and investment sport and recreation would get in 2024, only to be bewildered and left wondering where was the support for which the sporting sector had been calling. This budget has made it clear that sport and recreation is not even on the radar when it comes to priorities for Fine Gael, the Green Party and Fianna Fáil. Year after year, Ireland has had the lowest level of investment in sport and recreation across the entire EU and this budget has ensured Ireland will stay at the bottom of the list. Simply put, in comparison with the rest of the EU, sport in Ireland is neglected. As a result, improvements in levels of participation in sport are either stagnant or moving at a snail's pace. Worst of all, we are seeing the harsh impact of the cost-of-living crisis on children. Barnardos has said that nearly one quarter of parents have had to stop or reduce their child's sporting activities due to rising costs. This was reinforced in the Irish Sports Monitor's annual report, which painted a clear picture of growing inequality in sport. Children are paying the harsh price for this Government's neglect of sport and recreation.

Sinn Féin would provide our sporting community with the respect it deserves. We would introduce a leisure card that would make sport more affordable and accessible to children across the State. The leisure card scheme would drive up participation and support families during this cost-of-living crisis.

We would increase capital funding for sports facilities, providing communities with the modern sports facilities they urgently need. Sport and recreation are crucial to society and vital to our social fabric. It is about time sport and recreation were shown the respect and support they deserve.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Arís i mbliana, tá buiséad frith-Ghaeltacht os ár gcomhair. I gcomhthéacs na géarchéime atá ann, beidh fíorbheagán tionchair ag an méid atá fógartha don Ghaeilge agus don Ghaeltacht ag an Rialtas chun déileáil leis na deacrachtaí atá os comhair lucht na Gaeilge agus pobal na Gaeltachta ach go háirithe. Tá líon na gcainteoirí Gaeilge tar éis titim sa dara daonáireamh as a chéile. Níl ach teaghlach amháin as gach cúig teaghlach ag tógaint a gcuid clainne trí Ghaeilge, agus tá 30% de na mná tí Gaeltachta éirithe as ó 2018 i leith. Sin an comhthéacs atá i gceist nuair atá mise agus daoine eile ag rá go bhfuil ghéarchéim ann ó thaobh na Gaeltachta de agus nach bhfuil na pinginí atá luaite ag an Aire chun déileáil leis na bunfhadhbanna. Fiú ag an bpreasocáid níos luaithe, ní raibh an tAire sásta glacadh leis go raibh géarchéim sa Ghaeltacht.

Rinne an tAire fógairt ar an €4.2 milliún breise atá ar fáil don Ghaeltacht ach tá an ceathrú cuid de sin chun dul ar chúrsaí riarachán agus cuid mhór den €3 mhilliún eile atá fágtha dírithe ar chúrsaí lasmuigh den Ghaeltacht. Teastaíonn €9.2 milliún ó TG4 chun an plean straitéiseach atá aige a chomhlíonadh i 2024 amháin, ach níl ach beagán thar leath de sin á fháil ag an stáisiún. I gcomparáid leis an €9 milliún a d’fhógair an Rialtas, bhí Sinn Féin réidh le €34 milliún a fhógairt le caitheamh - nó gur chóir go mbeimid ag caitheamh - ar an nGaeltacht, ar na meán Gaeltachta, agus ar an nGaeilge i gcoitinne. Bheadh an tsuim seo le caitheamh an bhliain seo chugainn agus ag ardú amach ansin. Is léir gur chuma sa tsioc leis an Rialtas maidir leis seoid oidhreachta na hÉireann a chaomhnú agus ní hamháin sa Ghaeltacht a tharlaíonn sé sin. Ní gá ach féachaint ar Moore Street mar shampla ach casfaimid ar an gceist sin ar lá éigin eile.

Speaking of culture, the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, has not even managed to secure a 1% increase in the current funding for the entire culture and arts sector in 2024. There is a measly €2 million total increase. A Sinn Féin arts Minister would have spent ten times that in current funding on top of the existing arts spending. We proposed a €36 million package of increases. These figures were taken from the Minister's own pronouncements today and pronouncements in the budget documents yesterday. We value our culture, our teanga and our artists. We would deliver on these issues. Ach go háirithe, dhéanfadh muid cinnte de go raibh seoid náisiúnta na Gaeilge á caomhnú againn. Ní hamháin sin ach bheimis ag cur lena húsáid, á cur chun cinn ag gach ócáid agus á cosaint, agus bheimis ag cuidiú le clainne a gcuid páistí a thógaint le Gaeilge, ní hamháin sa Ghaeltacht ach ar fud na tíre.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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I am going to focus the majority of my speech on the education side of the budget yesterday, which was like the budget before it and the one before that, a budget of half measures. I do not use the term lightly. To describe a person, thing or entity as a half measure is not something I would like to do, yet that is exactly what we seem to get. It was the accusation that was levelled towards the Government's budget yesterday and, I would argue, since it came to power. Yesterday, it was announced that the free book scheme would be extended up to junior certificate level. Last year it was provided at primary level, yet we took away the ICT grant. The Government gives and takes away.

Students, parents, teachers and staff throughout this country have described, in online forums that we looked at and in news and media, how the budget yesterday did not go close to far enough in the realms of education. One person described it as a shambles. We know this because they have come out in their droves to say it. The Irish National Teachers' Organisation, INTO, said that budget 2024 fails miserably. It does so precisely because of its approach of half measures. The INTO is forecasting the loss of 250 more teaching posts by next September as a result of yesterday's mockery. Included in that mockery was the suggestion that an additional 700 new teaching posts could be filled when teacher shortages, a crisis that has been hindering student education and staff welfare for several years now, received absolutely no attention at all. The Government announced 250 more teaching posts but did not address retention and the fact that people are leaving in their droves. No solution was put forward and half measures were announced.

The Department of Education has shown itself of be a Ministry that is only led by broken promises. The Minister, Deputy Foley, has built quite the reputation for peddling false pledges and empty assurances, apologising in the short term while setting up the con for the long term. Last Easter, we were promised 2,400 assistant principal positions. Vital roles which have been vacant for 15 years now would be restored, it was promised. The budget, most predictably, made no mention of a return of these posts of significant responsibility. Last year, the Social Democrats put forward a motion with real solutions to tackle the teacher shortages, which outlined how almost two thirds of primary schools in the Dublin area were short staffed, while those in Wicklow and Kildare faced similar conditions. In many areas very little has changed. In fact it has actually got worse. Yesterday offered no respite from that. Mainstream teachers are still being used to plug gaps in special education classes. The State certainly cannot provide the level of education special education classes deserve. The Government has announced 1,200 special needs assistant, SNA, posts. How does it plan on filling those posts when SNAs are underpaid, underappreciated and have seen no substantial improvement in the terms and conditions of their work for years now? It was one of the first issues I raised in this Dáil term and it is still a significant issue. It all comes down to half measures.

There is no end in sight for overcrowded classrooms, despite the pleas of stakeholders to bring us into line with the EU average, which is three fewer students per class. More than 60,000 are in super-sized classes of 30 pupils or more, an environment not fit for the standard of education of any child in this country. There are 60,000 children in classrooms of 30 pupils or more. All the while, many of those students return home with letters demanding voluntary contributions, a practice so outdated and cruel that it destroys any misconceived notion that education in this country is free. It is free at the point of entry and children are going home with a letter in their backpacks for their mothers who are struggling with the crippling cost of living. Funding must reflect the real operating cost of primary schools, while banning this practice outright. Neither of these basic asks was answered or even referred to yesterday.

The litany of ways the budget has failed primary schools could be spoken about endlessly, but secondary schools have suffered the same fate. Though the provision of free school books up to junior certificate level is welcome news, the cost of leaving certificate materials will continue to hurt families who are struggling with the cost of living. Leaving certificate books can cost up to €40 and many students are taking seven subjects. That is an astronomical fee to place on parents. Yesterday, we were told that junior certificate students will get free books but somehow fourth, fifth and sixth years will once again be treated differently. They are half measures. These costs are crippling low- and middle-income families every August. Senior cycle books and materials exceed the price of their junior cycle counterparts, yet when families need help the most, the support simply drops off a cliff. The billions of euro kept in the Exchequer for a rainy day could have been used to significantly ease the hardship these families are facing now. They are dreading the thought of the bills coming through the door.

In the Social Democrats' alternative budget, we costed free school books and genuinely free education for primary and secondary schools at just €294 million, or 2% of the overall education budget. This shows it is not an expensive measure that needs billions upon billions that would place an undue burden on the Exchequer. It is simply a choice not to do it. The Minister has shown herself to be a Minister not of transformation but of rearrangement. She is providing free school books but removing an ICT grant. The provision of free books up to junior certificate might be a positive measure but there is no word on that ICT grant which schools have been crying out for. Yesterday, I received a number of communications from secondary schools asking if, like their primary counterparts, they will lose that grant. The Government is moving money around and playing fast and loose with people's genuine needs. In our budget, we would have provided free school books and classroom resources. We would have provided free school transport which the Government has not even come close to addressing for thousands of students throughout the country. Some of our most vulnerable students are still waiting for that basic necessity of getting to and from school. There should be no more voluntary contributions. It is a cruel and outdated practice and we could get rid of it.

I have not even got time to go into the DEIS+ categorisation, which so many schools in our most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities have asked for. I have been told it would be looked at but it is too late. If I had the time I would have talked a bit more about counselling and the therapeutic necessities in classrooms, but I will leave it there.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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Delivering on housing is the defining challenge of this Government. After over a decade of undersupply, our country is catching up but too many of our people are still left behind. We need to do more and do it quicker and we will.

I know how hard things are for people but we are making progress. In 2023, more homes will be built and more homes will be bought than in a generation. We will break through our Housing for All targets and ramp up our ambition for next year. Under this Government we have the highest number of home completions since 2008, the highest home commencements on record and the highest number of planning permissions since 2008. We have over 400 first-time buyers every single week, over 20,000 more workers in the construction sector, the first ever vacancy grants, the first ever cost-rental homes and the first affordable homes in over a decade. We are building more new social homes than we have in 50 years.

Ireland is back building and under this budget we will build even more, with our highest ever capital investment of over €5 billion. In addition, we are also using the long-term proceeds of our economic prosperity to capitalise the LDA further, up to €6 billion, and expand the Housing Finance Agency by a further €2 billion. Never before in our history have we committed so many resources to housing. Housing for All, our multi-annual plan to 2030, is a clear framework to underpin a new era of home building.

The budget moves forward a number of key provisions. For first-time buyers, we are extending the help-to-buy scheme, which has helped over 40,000 people buy their own homes. We are continuing to fund the first home scheme. In just over a year, over 2,600 families and households have been able to buy their new home through that scheme. We are financing 6,400 affordable homes, which is the largest number ever in our history, through our local authorities and the Land Development Agency. For renters and landlords, we are increasing the rent tax credit by 50% to €750 and introducing income tax relief to retain landlords in the system, worth between €600 and €1,000 per annum over the next four years. We will continue to expand cost rental to record levels. For social housing and homelessness, we are funding 9,300 direct-build social homes and increasing homeless funding to €242 million, an increase of €27 million. We also have a €35 million housing first acquisition fund, increasing the single-stage approval process threshold from €6 million to €8 million. There will be a continuation of the successful tenantin situscheme into 2024 and we will exceed our target in 2023. We have a fully funded multi-annual plan that gives certainty and allows long-term investment, which is needed to meet our people’s housing need.

In contrast to that detailed plan, the Opposition has committed just two and half pages in a 52-page budget document to housing. If that is what Sinn Féin says is its priority, I would hate to see what it regards as a normal issue. We are over three years into this Government's term and the Sinn Féin alternative housing plan can be described as the Loch Ness monster of politics; often talked about but never actually seen. We do not know what Sinn Féin is for but we are clear that it is against homeownership. Sinn Féin would scrap the help-to-buy scheme that has helped over 40,000 families. It would scrap the first home scheme and even more inexplicably, it would scrap the €70,000 vacant property grant that 4,500 households have applied for already. It is hard to find a homeownership support that Sinn Féin would not scrap. Even its own scant budget numbers show the scale of its attack on homeownership. It is scrapping €260 million of supports but only putting €74 million extra into affordable homes.

The attacks on homeownership go even further and extend to parents passing the family home onto their children. Sinn Féin proposes to increase the inheritance tax rate to 36%, which is a €59 million hit on a child inheriting a family home. This means a child in Dublin inheriting an averagely valued house would pay €36,900 in tax. The Sinn Féin budget also imposes a €400 charge on small landlords, as well as a raft of new restrictions on property. This is despite the fact that last year Sinn Féin called for crisis intervention and a plan to slow down the disorderly exit of private landlords exiting the rental market. Deputy Ó Broin said that “all options must be on the table for consideration including ... tax reform in the private rental sector.” Now, however, Sinn Féin is imposing a €400 additional tax that would affect one in three homes in the country. Its strange solution to the rental crisis is to drive out landlords with no plan to replace them. All the while there is a glaring €200 million hole in its rent tax credit. It is loaves and fishes economics where Sinn Féin says it would give more money to renters but with a smaller budget.

This is all we know of the Sinn Féin housing plan - scrap, tax and hope. It would scrap homeownership supports, tax existing homes and hope that changing targets without an actual plan to build and drive out landlords will somehow work out. Housing for All, in contrast, is a fully funded long-term plan that is getting Ireland building again. The Opposition has soundbites, dodgy numbers, black holes and an aversion to homeownership across two and half pages of scant detail. This budget funds a radical, realistic and fully funded policy, underpinned by record State investment, which puts homeownership back at the heart of Irish life while helping those who need it through the delivery of social homes. These are our best values and our finest traditions. Our plan embodies them and this budget will help to deliver it.

Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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Budget 2024 is very important. More particularly, in my role as Minister of State with responsibility for local government and planning, I will go through some of the key elements.

We have made a significant contribution of €421.9 million to the local government sector in 2024. A significant portion of this contribution will cover the impact of the national pay agreements on the payroll of local authorities, ensuring local authorities have the necessary resources in terms of people to support their functions. We are conscious that public pay talks will get under way shortly and that will further inform local authority staff payroll costs. The contribution from central government will also support an increase of €75.4 million in local property, LPT, tax baseline funding to local authorities in 2024. That is a 21% increase. This uplift is following a much-needed review of baseline funding, which we completed earlier this year. Each local authority will now see an increase, at a minimum, of €1.5 million in its LPT baseline funding for 2024 onwards, in line with the recommendations of the review and in recognition of the increasing costs and demands facing the sector. The fund will also provide an allocation of €24.7 million to support smaller but vitally important projects across the sector.

Local authorities play a pivotal role in our local communities and their support and, more particularly, their staff, is fully acknowledged. The Minister made reference to the local authority affordable housing scheme fund. We have amended that in co-operation with the Department of Finance. There was an issue whereby not all applicants qualified for the help-to-buy scheme. We are amending the scheme to ensure they do. It is a very progressive scheme in making it more affordable for people to purchase a home. The help-to-buy scheme is something Sinn Féin would have opposed in the past but we think it is a key element. Local authorities administer the Croí Cónaithe scheme as well, which is hugely important.

I will now move to the directly elected mayor of Limerick. I am pleased to announce that we have secured funding of over €4.3 million in 2024 to provide for the establishment of the office of a directly elected mayor of Limerick, and more importantly, for a mayoral budget to support the mayor in their role, in particular in the delivery of their mayoral programme. The mayoral election will take place on the same day as the local and European elections. That budget is for a six-month period and the mayoral programme could even be for a shorter period because when the mayor comes in they will have four months in which to come forward with a mayoral programme. I am looking to get the legislation through by the end of the year. On top of the €4.3 million for next year, I have secured €300,000 to provide for a public awareness campaign as well, which will be hugely important when we have the legislation brought in and in advance of the election being held in June.

On planning, we have provided more than €10 million and brought forward the largest reform of the planning system, in the Bill recently published, since the foundation of the State. An additional €5 million is going to An Bord Pleanála, bringing the total to €32 million, and local authorities and the Maritime Area Regulatory Authority, MARA, are getting an additional €2.6 million and €3 million, respectively. In the reforms we are bringing in, we want to ensure we have the staff and capacity required. The €2.6 million for local authorities is to enable them to get the first 100 people recruited, in line with the recommendation of the review for more than 500. Furthermore, we want to ensure An Bord Pleanála has the requisite staff to deal with the backlog and further demands under the new planning Bill in the context of the deadline dates.

To support vulnerable households, there is €28 million for Traveller-specific accommodation, or an increase of 5%. I am also very much committed to making the pilot caravan loan scheme, for which €3.2 million in loans is available, a permanent scheme next year.

In respect of the housing adaptation grant for older people and people with a disability, there is an increase of €8 million on 2023, or 12%, bringing the total to €75 million. About 13,000 grants are expected to be delivered, on top of the 12,300 this year. Furthermore, as Deputies will be aware, 13 of the local authorities have applied for additional funding this year. We have approved ten and we are looking at the other three. It is a scheme we feel strongly about and want to roll out.

A total of €3 million is being provided for initiatives for disabled and older people, of which €2 million comprises expenditure for mental health tenancy sustainment officers in co-operation with the HSE, Age Friendly Ireland and the Housing Agency, which is implementing the housing strategy. It is another issue we feel strongly about.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It is telling that the Minister, in his five-minute contribution, spent only two minutes outlining his budget measures and three minutes attacking the Opposition. That is two minutes of more empty promises that will be unfulfilled and three minutes of deliberate misrepresentations of Sinn Féin's position. The reason, of course, is that yesterday we learned the emperor has no clothes. Despite the housing crisis getting ever worse year on year and despite the Government claiming housing and homelessness is its priority, the Minister secured nothing new of any substance to tackle the affordability crisis, the social housing crisis or the homelessness crisis.

Let us look at the facts. First, there is no change and no increase to the social and affordable housing targets announced two years ago. Despite the Government having missed its targets year on year and despite the levels of need rising, it is still stuck with targets that are too low and, even if it delivered them, would not meet demand. There is no increase in capital funding for that social and affordable housing delivery programme. The budget book makes this clear. There is €2.6 billion, the same as last year, because it has not changed the target. When we look, for example, at the very meagre increases within the overall envelope for the social housing investment programme, the affordable housing fund and the cost-rental equity loan, it is clear the Government has given up on the idea of councils and approved housing bodies delivering the volume of homes required.

The Minister talked about increasing the renter's tax credit, but there is only €250 extra. That will be swallowed up by rent increases, both inside and outside the rent pressure zones, and ultimately, it will be paid to the landlord. As for the landlord's tax credit, for which the Minister fought so hard and into which he put so much political capital, he should listen to what landlords are saying today. It will not make a whit of difference in keeping single-property landlords in the market whom the Minister's bad policies have been driving out over a number of years.

We need to look at house prices, because the only way we can tackle the affordable housing crisis is if house prices come down. The Minister is continuing not only with the disastrous help-to-buy scheme but also with the shared equity loan scheme, pushing up house prices, saddling working people with high-risk debt and making it harder and harder for them to afford a home. That is why, every time the Minister's party is in government, homeownership as a percentage of the overall housing stock falls. As it is currently doing, so will it continue.

On homelessness, the Minister has a commitment, which I support, to ending long-term homelessness and the need to sleep rough by 2030, yet there is no plan to demonstrate how year on year we will see that decrease. In fact, I thought his answer at his press conference yesterday was very telling. He wishes, hopes and would like it to happen, but he is not actually doing anything to achieve that objective. Under his watch, adult homelessness, child homelessness and pensioner homelessness figures are higher than ever in modern records.

One of the odd things about the budget is that despite the high-profile Government announcement in the summer of the new secure tenancy affordable rental, STAR, investment initiative, there is no capital allocated in voted expenditure. We are very interested to hear from the Minister, at the earliest opportunity, where that funding is coming from because it is not in the budget book and it was not in his press conference yesterday.

There is then this interesting, ambiguous and as yet unagreed promise of Land Development Agency, LDA, capitalisation. If the Minister had secured an additional €6 billion for housing through LDA capitalisation, that would have been in the statements of both Ministers, Deputies Michael McGrath and Donohoe. In fact, it would have been the headline item in the opening remarks made by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, at his press conference, but it was buried away. When he was asked reasonable questions by journalists, he could not answer because he does not yet actually know how much he will get, given he has not got the information. The sooner he can provide clarity on that, the better.

This is a status quobudget, which means that in housing, things will remain the same and for many people, things will get worse. Given the scale of the finances available yesterday, this could have been a game-changing budget. It could have been about undoing the damage the Minister and his colleagues have done in recent years and giving some hope to people desperate to own or rent an affordable home, to get a council home or to get out of emergency accommodation. In fact, all those homeowners with building defects were very surprised to see only an additional €5 million in the pot for building defects. Where is the money for the new scheme the Minister is promising to open next year going to be? It is not in the budget announced yesterday. My colleagues are correct; the Minister has squandered an enormous opportunity. It is clear the Minister has thrown in the towel. Otherwise, he would have spent a full five minutes telling us why this budget was so good.

Therefore, as I have said previously and will continue to say until the next general election, he is making things worse and it is time for him to go. Let the electorate decide who they want to lead the Government, who they want to be in charge of housing and who they think is best placed to undo the damage of decades of bad Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policy.

Gino Kenny (Dublin Mid West, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I am going to concentrate my time on all matters relating to health. The budget in regard to health has been very low key and quite bland. Normally, in my experience of budgets in these Houses, health budgets have been headline news regarding the level of provision and so forth, but this budget has not delivered on anything in the form of proposals relating, in particular, to Sláintecare. In regard to capacity, any mention of the 1,500 beds the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, signalled for acute services is completely absent. There will continue to be these unacceptable delays in waiting times and insufficient capacity in our public health system. The country is awash with money, yet the health budget has basically stood still, which is just not acceptable.

This is the case with regard to mental health in particular. Spending on mental health accounts for €1.1 billion, less than 5.5% of the overall budget. The recommended level of spending in most countries on mental health is 10%, so there is a huge deficit, which has a knock-on effect. It means people will go without and not get the intervention they need, and that will have very significant consequences, far beyond the realm of Leinster House.

One issue shows that the devil is in the detail. I got an email yesterday from a woman, who does not live in the constituency I represent, regarding funding that normally comes through the health budget for new treatments and drugs. I spoke informally to the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, about this yesterday. Normally, there are tens of millions of euro for new treatments and new drugs from pharmaceutical companies but this year, there is zero. There is no money for new treatments or drugs. That will have enormous consequences for that person and she is not in isolation.

She is only one person. I am sure there are hundreds of people relying on new treatments and new drugs for illnesses they have. This is a serious and retrograde step for our health system. As I have said, as a consequence people will have to go without. In fact, this lady's doctor told her that she will have to leave the jurisdiction if she wants to get these particular medications. For the sake of €20 million to pay for treatments that will help hundreds of people, the Government is telling them they cannot get it and have to leave the country. This is a complete joke. I do not know who has made this decision, but hopefully they will reflect and funding will be put in place for new medications.

Overall, it has been a bland budget. It is a continuance of divided health services with inequalities within them. People have to wait and there are capacity issues. Again, this is an opportunity missed.

Norma Foley (Kerry, Fianna Fail)
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I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the House this evening on budget 2024, and in particular to highlight some of its key features for children, young people and their families. This is a hugely progressive budget, which has its heart supporting individuals, families, communities and all sectors of society. In the short time I have, I will speak in particular to the budget benefits for children, young people and their families. Investment in our youngest generation begins with more than €1 billion investment in early years and childcare. This Government has halved the cost of childcare in the past two budgets, ensuring that families receiving even the minimum level of subsidy under the national childcare scheme will receive up to €5,000. Once a child enrols in primary school, they will benefit from the care and expertise of our excellent staff, now employed in their highest numbers ever. A capital budget of almost €1 billion is intended to ensure that every child has access to an appropriate school place, and that schools can benefit from building upgrades and modernisation.

As of this school year, all children enrolling in primary school receive all books and classroom resources free of charge. This has reduced costs for families significantly, and ensures every child can enter the classroom on a level footing. I am pleased to have secured additional funding under budget 2024 to roll this scheme out for all junior cycle students. Funding of €67 million will be made available to underpin this measure, which will deliver an average saving for families of almost €1,000 over the course of their junior cycle career. Combined with 568,000 students benefiting at primary level, this will bring to almost 800,000 the number of students in receipt of free books and classroom resources.

The Department of Education's €10.5 billion budget also provides for an additional 1,200 special needs assistants, SNAs, and 744 special education teachers, ensuring that children who need additional care and support can access this, whether in a special school, class or mainstream setting. The Minister of State, Deputy Madigan, will give further details of the initiatives within special education.

An additional €5 million is also provided under budget 2024 to continue our provision of mental health supports within primary schools, charting new territory and ensuring students are adequately supported to meet their fullest potential. Exam fees are also waived for junior cycle and senior cycle pupils. Funding has also been secured to help to defray school transport costs for families. Of course, I am more than conscious that our ambitious agenda and the dreams we have for Irish children and young people cannot be fulfilled without the hard work, dedication and sheer talent of our staff. That is why I have secured more than €81 million in additional grant funding for schools, which will be paid on a per capitabasis. I have also secured funding to increase by 1,000 the number of posts of responsibility in our schools, providing much-needed support to school leaders.

In recognition of the challenges facing us in teacher supply, I have secured additional funding for new upskilling programmes and to provide a €2,000 grant to professional masters in education students on completion of their training. Access to free hot school meals has also been extended thanks to further investment under budget 2024, which sees the scheme expanded to include 900 additional primary schools. Families will receive a double child benefit payment of €280 before Christmas, and 18-year-olds will now be eligible to receive this payment if they are still in full-time education. Significant funding has also been provided to broaden access to further and higher education, and to reduce fees for families. These are just some of the measures which give a sense of the Government's investment and commitment to children, young people and their families.

Josepha Madigan (Dublin Rathdown, Fine Gael)
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I am delighted to announce the supports for special education in this budget. We have a budget of €2.7 billion this year, which is a 5% increase on last year. It is 26% of the entire education budget. One of the challenges I have as Minister of State with responsibility for special education is to ensure we have sufficient special classes and appropriate placements for children with additional needs - either a special school place or a special class. One of the ways we do that is by securing sufficient SNAs and special education teachers. This year, we will have 745 extra special education teachers and we will also have 1,216 SNAs. By putting these staff in place we will be in a position to provide 2,700 appropriate placements across special schools, special classes and in mainstream. We should obviously remember that 97% of children with additional needs attend mainstream. However, we need to provide the staffing supports for those children in special classes and special schools. Of course, there are SNAs and special education teachers available in mainstream classes.

This year in particular I want to concentrate on special schools, which look after approximately 8,750 children across the country. These are children with profound and complex needs. It is a very challenging and difficult job. When I talk to principals and staff, they tell me they are in a unique position because they have a huge number of non-teaching staff, such as escorts and SNAs. We have therefore reduced the threshold of 15 teachers in a special school by which such a school can be eligible to have a post of administrative deputy principal. Instead of only one quarter of special schools having an administrative deputy principal, all schools will now have an administrative deputy principal in place. This will go a long way, and in an instrumental way, to assisting principals with leadership and management in special schools. This will go a long way to help these children. We will also have 100 additional posts for post-primary aged children in special schools. The majority of children in special schools, some 57%, are children of post-primary age. These 100 posts will help at the senior cycle. Whereas at present we only have a junior cycle syllabus and curriculum, we will now be able to put a senior cycle curriculum in place. It is not just about vocational and life skills, although they are important. We also want to see some sort of pathway at senior cycle for these children.

Finally, I will mention the summer programme. It was important that we had some permanency around the expanded programme. That has now been secured. It has been taken out of the Covid core funding and is now funded directly from the Exchequer under this subhead. I am glad that is there. We had 42,000 children who availed of that programme last year. We had a 50% increase in special schools participating in it, and a 20% increase overall in schools participating in the summer programme. We also had approximately 3,000 Ukrainians participating in the summer programme. It allows schools the clarity and time to plan for next summer. Part of the feedback they gave to us was that they did not have sufficient time to prepare. This will allow them to do that. We also put a new administrator in those schools to assist. I am pleased, on my fourth budget as Minister of State with responsibility for special education, that we have put a lot of work and resources into this. I hope it will help children with additional needs.

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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The Department of Transport has secured €3.5 billion to fund projects and programmes run under our remit in 2024. This has been a budget focused on investing in young people and families. This theme is apparent in the package that has been provided to continue many of the public transport affordability measures for families and young adults. The 50% discount for those with a young adult card has been extended for two more years and will benefit 24-year-olds and 25-year-olds. These additional cuts come alongside the 20% fare reductions for all, which were originally introduced as a temporary cost-of-living measure and have been secured again for 2024.

As passenger numbers on public transport increase, it is clear these reductions are helping more people to choose sustainable modes of travel. In addition, we will have more services and an expansion of public transport capacity in urban and rural areas, which shows demonstrable progress by this Government.

As time is limited, I will keep my comments to a few items. I will outline in more detail how this investment will impact roads, road safety and the maritime and aviation sectors. We will invest more than €1.2 billion in our roads network. This is made up of €937 million in maintenance, protection and renewal of the network and well over €200 million for new roads. There is a need, as many Deputies have stated, for further investment in the network to fulfil our commitments in the national development plan, our commitments to regions and for ongoing connectivity from a road safety perspective. That is something the Government will discuss further as we engage in capital allocations for 2024.

We seek every opportunity to improve road safety in light of the increased number of fatalities on our roads. I can confirm the Road Safety Authority, RSA, will provide an additional €3.6 million this year to strengthen the message to the public around safety and awareness on our roads, while €2 million will be provided by the RSA to ensure the driver curriculum is effective in highlighting the issues drivers need to know about, with the constant concerns of speed, seatbelts and attentiveness still requiring attention, and newer challenges also relevant, including the impact of drugs on driving. A review of the RSA will commence shortly to ensure it has what it needs to fully deliver on this agenda. The RSA’s efforts will be underwritten with €15 million earmarked for road safety upgrades next year, including improvements to junctions, the N20 slip extension in Cork and many other road projects.

More than €100 million will be allocated in 2024 to maritime transport and safety, as well as ongoing support to the coast guard. An additional €5.8 million is provided to the coast guard to assist the transition to a search and rescue aviation service and for coast guard safety. The new contract will enable the coast guard to continue to provide world-class maritime and inland search and rescue services, including the expansion of the aviation service for the coast guard - I will finish in 20 seconds - two fixed-wing aircraft based at Shannon Airport and support for the coast guard’s search and rescue operations.

The capital allocation for investment in coast guard buildings and assets has increased from €8 million in 2023 to €18 million in 2024, while €70 million is being provided to our regional airports to support investments, safety and security. We are also progressing a review of the regional airports programme, which will be decided on in the coming weeks.

The budget seeks to secure our future while addressing the urgent needs of the present, particularly in light of the pressure on the finances of families, individuals and businesses. It invests in essential infrastructure for all modes of travel and supports greater safety and sustainability. It supports protection and renewal of our national, regional and local roads and continued construction of the roads programme. It improves maritime safety and security. I look forward to our continuing to deliver on our commitments in 2024.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Thank you, Minister of State. That was a Castleknock 20 seconds, I think.

Jack Chambers (Dublin West, Fianna Fail)
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It was.

Sorca Clarke (Longford-Westmeath, Sinn Fein)
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For anyone watching yesterday hoping that education would finally have the level of investment needed to adequately address and tackle the years of underfunding, "disappointment" goes nowhere near describing what they have expressed to me. There is frustration and outright bewilderment that, when the State’s coffers are flush with funds, the level of investment in education remains well below our European neighbours. Substantial progress could have been achieved by continuing to reduce class sizes and substantially increasing the capitation grant. More than12% of children in this country are in classes of 30 pupils or more and 83% of our classes are larger than the EU average of 20 pupils.

With an overall budget of €20 billion, the allocation of new measures is just €56 million. If the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, threw in the towel on health, the Minister for Education seems determined to match him, with new measures costing less than 1% of stand-still costs. Of the €900 million in the budget that is additional to capital committed to in the national development plan, not one euro went to education, despite other Departments struggling to spend their capital budgets. I was struck, and perhaps the Minister could explain why a Fianna Fáil Minister is ignoring the budget asks of Fianna Fáil Ministers. Housing, health and education all appear to be starved of funding by one of their own.

The education budget is a litany of missed opportunities. The extension of the schoolbook grant to post-primary junior cycle students is welcome but it needs to be clearly explained to parents and guardians of senior cycle students why their costs are ignored in the budget. A far more equitable way was proposed by Sinn Féin - to begin funding post-primary books at first and fifth years, which recognises and starts to address the most expensive years of both cycles. Fifth, sixth and first years are incredibly expensive years for parents. Senior cycle deserves to be supported too.

It is disappointing to see no additional funding made available for guidance counsellors in Government budgets. Guidance counsellors do so much more than help with future career plans. They often support students at vulnerable times and contribute to personal, social and academic well-being. They are a vital cog in many school communities, yet there is nothing for them.

The funding for school transport seems to mean nothing to the majority of parents whose children again this year were left without a seat on the bus while that review is pending. The Minister said at the press conference this morning that it was near completion, but near completion does not equate to seats on a bus. These parents remain as frustrated today as yesterday. Additional funding for grants that seem to mask years of inefficiency and failures in the school transport system does nothing to deal with the cause or to suggest where potential solutions might lie. There is still no clarity or certainty about the future of the school bus scheme.

Another missed opportunity by Government is the failure to include and acknowledge the importance of the ICT grant. That funding has not been made available to schools since 2021. It is said every year that budgets are about choices. Government Members made the choice not to address this but no doubt will make the choice to address it and clap themselves on the back when the funding due for this year is finally paid in January.

School libraries funding is another missed opportunity. More than 6% of Irish university graduates struggle with literacy. Our younger children are doing well but we need to embed that in children’s lives. An investment in libraries pays dividends over lifetimes.

It beggars belief that when schools tell me they are on the brink of financial collapse, an additional €7 million in capitation is the length the Government is willing to go to support them. This is where the anger kicks in because the result of this will be very clear. The Government is forcing schools into continual reliance on parents and guardians for voluntary contributions and fundraising. Government Members talk of the cost-of-living measures for families, yet they are under-resourcing those families’ children’s schools and putting the responsibility on the families to help bridge the ever-increasing costs schools have in keeping the lights on and the rooms warm. For some bizarre reason, at the Minister’s press conference this morning, the conversation wandered into energy credits for families. Is that where the funding will go? The continual expectation on schools to do more with less is not good enough. Education was significantly underfunded yesterday and remains so today. Families are significantly under pressure every year and will remain so next year.

Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on the budget again this evening. There are a number of areas I want to home in on.

There is all of the spending that will happen in health and we are talking about all the money that will be spent on disability and mental health, even though I would challenge much of that. However, the biggest problem we face right now is the strike pending in the next couple of days from section 38 and section 39 workers. If that is not put right, our services, which are already collapsing, will be worse off in a couple of weeks.

Ability West in my part of the country in Galway has been closing services for the past six or nine months. These are services for people with disabilities who need help and day services but have no place to go. We are sleepwalking our way into a crisis, rather than solving it. This has been flagged for a good while. There is an urgency to it now. I urge Government to realise this is not a pay issue right now.

It is a service provision issue that is getting worse and that will get worse still. If there is a strike outside the Simon Community offices in Galway or any other part of the country or outside disability service provision centres, it will be an indictment of the Government for allowing it to happen. I urge the powers that be - the Ministers for Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Finance and Health, the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste, and whomever else needs to get involved - to make sure that the money is put in place or whatever is needed is done to avert a strike and to ensure there is parity.

The other day, an elderly person rang me who had a carer for seven hours and approval for another seven hours. He is in his 80s. He had worked very hard for a local retired group for as long as he could, but he now has Parkinson's. His carer has left the private operator and gone to work with the HSE. The result is that this carer is gone from my friend, who has been reduced to three hours per week because the service is grappling with the problem of getting staff. We are robbing Peter to pay Paul and those who are suffering are the people who need the service. We need to reconcile all of this and restore equality of pay as a matter of urgency.

The retained firefighters have been engaging in industrial action. Again, this is another cohort of people who have served this country proudly through all emergencies, the Covid pandemic and all of the things that we have encountered. They have always been there for us. It is time that we really and truly grappled with their concerns so we have a functional and vibrant retained firefighter service. Otherwise, we will have a situation where there are fire engines in fire stations but not enough people to man them when they go to emergency situations.

The Regional Group budget submission referred to mental health services and the provision of counselling and therapy services for all primary and secondary schools. While we asked for that, I do not think it is happening or else it has been done as a pilot scheme. For the people who pay for the services, we were looking for the expansion of tax relief and for these expenses to be deemed eligible expenses in line with other health expenses. It is important that something like that is done in order that some relief is given to people who pay for the services.

With regard to disability matters, there are simple things like extending the parking permit to a lifetime duration rather than having people review it every few years and pay money for it. As a friend of mine, Councillor Gabe Cronnelly, said, his leg is not going to grow back. He has a disability that is for life, so why do we get him or anybody like him to fill in forms every few years in order to justify getting a parking permit? It is creating unnecessary paperwork and also creating stress for people who are not used to filling out forms and who, really and truly, have a lifelong disability.

There is an issue in the context of ensuring that people with disabilities have some sort of transport supports in order that they are not left grounded or isolated, especially in rural areas. The Ombudsman, Peter Tyndall, in his most recent report stated that we cancelled schemes over ten years ago with the objective of putting in a scheme that was more workable but, ten years on, we have failed to do it. That is a failure of successive Governments.

The Minister for Education spoke about school transport. I noted with interest that additional money is being put into school transport. There is a situation where school transport routes are operating for a week and the buses are then taken off the road, for one reason or another. At the moment, I know of five routes in my constituency where the buses have disappeared. The transport operators tell me the school transport service is broken. I warned last May that we should be prepared for the re-opening of the schools in September. Bus operators were informed two days before the school was due to open that they had been successful in getting a bus route, and they had get drivers, make sure the buses were right and all of that type of thing. When you fail to plan, you plan to fail. That is an apt way of describing what has happened with school transport.

That problem has arisen in special schools. I do not think any of us can be proud that we have special schools without school transport. This is not political point-scoring. I believe we need to look at every route as a matter of urgency. People who are entitled to a school bus service do not have one. That is apart from the fact that concessionary tickets have not been issued. In some cases, people who applied for the concessionary ticket and did not get it, but who are hoping they will still get it, get an email thanking them for submitting an email that they did not send and talking about a refund. In this day and age, with all the systems we have, it is wrong that we end up in a situation where a school bus cannot be found in so many cases. This might affect 15% of the overall population of the country. I do not know why but I have had people from Fermoy ringing me about school transport, so it is not confined to a particular area. I ask the Government to look at this as a priority and a matter of urgency.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I call the Minister, Deputy Simon Harris, who is sharing time with the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I am very pleased to have an opportunity to confirm details of the budget for the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science for the coming year. Cost should never be a barrier when it comes to education. It should never be a barrier to someone reaching their full potential or pursuing their goals and getting to where they want to in life. What we are trying to do in this budget is, yet again, to remove barriers, break down barriers and make further and higher education more accessible for more people in more ways than ever before. This is a budget that supports young people, supports their families, supports people trying to get back into education and supports people through education and training. It is a budget that recognises that education is a driver of innovation, a driver of skills development and a tool that can break intergenerational poverty and help each of us reach our full potential.

While we know inflation might be falling, we also know that students, parents and families are still facing the weekly shopping bill that is too high or rental costs that can have an impact on their achievements in third level education. One of my priorities when I entered this budget process was to ensure that students and their families can benefit from financial support to help them with the cost of third level education. I am pleased to confirm that third level students who are eligible for free fees will yet again receive a €1,000 reduction in the student contribution. I know the difference this made to people last year. I met those people. I met the parents who told me that getting €1,000 back before Christmas, or getting perhaps €2,000 back if they had two children in college at the same time, made a real and meaningful difference to them. It also means that, this year, people with a household income below €100,000 will see their fees halved; they will actually see their fees reduced to €1,500 because they will get the €1,000 off and they can also get the €500 credit from the SUSI system as well.

In addition, all student grants will increase from January, with none of the waiting until September that we had in previous years. We want to try to bring it forward to January. The grants will increase by up to €615 over the course of the year and €342 this academic year between January and May.

Importantly, and I am very pleased we could get it over the line this year, postgraduate maintenance grants will return on a similar basis to those for undergraduates for the first time since the economic crash. This will put up to €2,384 back in the pockets of our postgraduate students. Since I became Minister, I have taken numerous measures to increase student grants and to try to reform the system. It is clear that the student grant scheme requires to be overhauled or reformed. Legislative change may be required in that regard. Exploring these options is something I intend to do during the course of 2024.

We will also be taking two measures to reform the education system in 2024 because, for the first time ever, the student grant scheme will be extended to part-time students. I genuinely believe that this has the potential to be seismic in the context of opening up opportunities for people. We cannot tell someone to study full-time if that person is a single parent trying to hold down a job, pay the mortgage or rent, raise a child or children or care for a parent. That individual cannot pack his or her bags and head off to university for four years. However, he or she has every right to be able to access an education just like others. What about a person with a disability who wants to do a degree? In some circumstances, it might work to do the degree online or over a longer period. Why should we tell them that we will not help with the fees at all unless they do it full-time? From September, for the first time ever, part-time, online and blended education will be included as part of the free fees initiative. If someone has a household income of €55,924 or less, those fees will be paid for that person. In addition, when it comes to full-time education, all registration fees will be abolished from September for any eligible student with a household income of less than €55,924. These are two practical measures we can take.

I acknowledge the changes that my colleague, the Minister for Finance, brought with regard to digs and the rent-a-room tax credit. This ensures that if a parent is paying the rent for his or her child in college, he or she can claim the renter’s tax credit. People will be able to claim this credit of €750 next year. Better than that, if the student was in digs or renting a room in the previous years, the parent can claim backdated payments of €500 for 2022 and 2023, respectively. That is a significant amount of money we can put back in the pockets of parents or college students during the course of next year.

I am very pleased that we have been able to deliver a significant increase in core funding for higher education. From now and into 2024, there will be a €194 million increase in higher education funding. This will include €60 million in core funding, €35 million for pay and €56 billion for pension deficits and demographics. This means that the Government has paid down more than €100 million of the €307 million deficit found in institutions by Indecon and European Commission in recent years.

We also have money to expand the number of tertiary degrees. These are degrees that are available outside the CAO system in respect of which we assess a person’s suitability based on his or her passion, heart and soul, the difference he or she wants to make and the interview he or she does, rather than the points he or she gets in the leaving certificate. We will also expand those courses.

I am pleased that we are investing in apprenticeships, with €65 million allocated for this sector. There will also be additional supports for under-represented groups in the apprenticeship population.

Tomorrow, I will provide details in how we intend to better support our PhD researchers in the context of their stipend.

Overall, my Department’s budget has increased to over €4 billion, which is a 5% increase on last year. This shows the Government’s commitment to third level education, research and innovation. I am pleased to confirm that we have secured funding to make an application to join CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research and to appoint a chief scientific adviser for Ireland.

Before I hand over to the Minister of State, I want to refer to the alternative budget put forward by Sinn Féin last week. Sinn Féin members marched with students last week and followed up with a protest involving the PhD researchers. They were there, their banners were there, they used the megaphone and they accused the Government of failing students. You can only imagine my shock, let alone the shock of students and parents when they read the alternative budget. There was no reduction in the student contribution fee this year. The students and their parents can wait until next September. Only €40 million of extra money is to go into the universities and not the €60 million we provided. There was not even a mention about the PhD researchers. There were no increases in student grants until next September. We are increasing the grants from January, we are cutting the fees now and we are increasing the stipends next year. We are putting in more to core education. That is what one does. Megaphone politics does not butter the parsnips, feed students or their families or help our education system.

Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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I have the honour of being in charge of the largest capital programme in the State, namely, the national broadband plan, which is bringing fibre broadband to every home, farm and business in rural Ireland. How is the project doing? An extra €136 million has been allocated for this year. Why do I have that extra money? I have it because that project is going at a much faster rate this year than it was last year, and it is anticipated to continue at that rate. At the current rate, part way through next year we will have connected the majority of premises in rural Ireland. We know how important that is because the determining factor in selling a property in rural Ireland now is whether it has fibre broadband because that is what determines whether a person can earn the money to pay the mortgage. It is creating jobs in villages and towns around the country and revitalising them in a way that was not expected.

I had the pleasure of cycling the Ring of Kerry. I went through Killarney National Park. At the west side of the park, I cycled through the Black Valley. The latter is famous for being the last place in Ireland to be reached by rural electrification. The national broadband plan is like rural electrification, except that it does not take 50 years; it takes seven. In the Black Valley, we are bringing fibre broadband to nearly every home, or something of equivalent standard, and that will be there by July next. I see the Deputy who represents Kilgarvan and the broader Kerry area facing me here in the Chamber. I say that the Kilgarvan deployment area will be completed by December. The national broadband plan is going full speed and is coming in under budget and on time.

On cybersecurity, we all know that there was a big attack on the HSE two years ago. Since then, the cybersecurity team has been doubled in size. It has new headquarters, which it will be moving into at the end of the year, and has successfully defended against more than 2,000 attacks, including a potential attack on the Coombe Hospital that did not materialise. The maternity hospital is doing well. There was also an attack on the Irish Embassy in Kyiv.

Next, I want to talk about the circular economy. For many years in towns and villages all around Ireland there were illegal dumps and landfills. One of the most egregious, shocking and blatant of these was in Kerdiffstown in Kildare where there was a vast pile of rubbish being added to all of the time as if there would be no sanction for this. It was being done with impunity. Well, there was a punishment. The person who is responsible for that environmental crime is now in prison. I was allocating money tens of millions of euro every year to remediate those sites. Much of this funding was going to Kerdiffstown. It has now been remediated and turned into a public park. I am looking forward to going down, if I am invited, to the opening of the park. I am glad that is happening. Because we have remediated so many landfill sites; we have managed to reduce the budget we have for this.

However, also in that same division of the circular economy, by 1 February of next year, we are rolling out the deposit return scheme. That means that we will see a machine in every supermarket in Ireland where one can bring back one’s bottles and cans and get money back on them, in the same way that our parents and grandparents generation were able to return their bottles and get money back on them. This will help to reduce the 1.9 billion bottles and cans, many of which end up on the ground as litter. I expect that over 90% of them will be returned and will provide clean streams for recycling.

We are bringing in free electricity credits this year, one before and two after Christmas, of €150 each. The credits will be slightly different this year. We worked on this over the past six months with the Department and with great help from the civil servants there to ensure that this is targeted in order that people whose homes are vacant will not receive the credit and that those who slipped through the cracks the last time, such as those living in mobile homes, some Travellers and some people with disabilities, will be reached. The scheme will be fairer than it was before because it will reach people who were previously unfairly excluded and will exclude those with vacant properties who were unfairly included.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Next we have the Rural Independent Group. I call Deputy Nolan, who is sharing time with Deputy Danny Healy-Rae. Deputy Nolan has three minutes and 15 seconds.

Carol Nolan (Laois-Offaly, Independent)
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Now that the dust has settled from the political theatre of yesterday, we can all now clearly see just exactly where the deficits and fault lines lie. We can see where the lost opportunities have occurred and what exactly it all means for the general public. I am afraid that the general consensus is, that despite all of the applause from Government Ministers, that this is a budget that has just not risen to the occasion and has fallen flat. Rarely has so much cash been splashed about with so little impact. Indeed, I also wonder just how much of what was announced yesterday was actually nothing more than a restatement or repackaging of commitments made already over the past few months.

In the context of education, I welcome some measures like the extension of the free schoolbook scheme to junior cycle and the extension of child benefit in respect of children aged 18 who are in full-time education.

I raised this issue over the last year and half. I am glad to see that I was listened to on this one in terms of providing child benefit to those children still in full-time education at 18 years of age.

I also see that there is a capital funding commitment in 2024 to facilitate the rollout of urgently needed school building projects. This includes the progression of about 300 building projects. However, as far as I can see, these commitments were already made in the national development plan which I referred to last week and this very issue in the education committee. There is nothing new there really. I think the Government might be misleading the public into believing that there is something new. That is just a repackaging of an old announcement.

I would like clarity on the commitments made by the Minister of State, Deputy Anne Rabbitte, that parents accessing private autism assessments would be reimbursed. This was stated in May and we still see nothing put in place. Those parents need clarity.

When we look to agriculture we can see more clearly the major fault lines of this budget in a rural context, the missed opportunities and that so many sectors were not fully supported in terms of what was offered. The maintenance of some tax reliefs is very welcome. The increased funding for the sheep sector is a step in the right direction. It will be €20 per ewe, which is certainly better than what was offered in the budget last year. However, I remain very concerned about other sectors such as the beef and suckler, tillage and dairy sectors, given the fallout from the nitrates debacle. These sectors need proper and urgent support. Agriculture and food production are really taken for granted. The fact that agriculture sustains 170,000 jobs is taken for granted. These jobs are very important to our economy, to trade and to imports.

Danny Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent)
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I am glad to get a chance to add to my contribution from last night. There is a lot of concern regarding road safety with ideas about reducing speed limits and increasing penalty points. However, we have to admit that there has been a massive increase in the volume of traffic on every road. I am calling for our roads to be upgraded. Many of our roads were built in the late 1800s and have not been improved much since. Plans for the Killarney bypass, otherwise known as the Kerry-Cork economic corridor, has been shelved this year by the Minister, Deputy Ryan. This is unfortunate because on some days they are 23,000 vehicles movements on this road. I call on the Government to revisit this. After 24 years, surely we are entitled to get that relief road built. There are so many dangerous junctions and bridges on the road, including bridges at Listry, Blackwater and Caragh. None of these bridges has been touched since the 1800s. We know the vast volumes of traffic. We have 660 roads on our local improvement scheme list. That is terrible. Even the Bonane road and the Laragh road are in a shambles, with trees hanging over the road which takes big vehicles. On the Ring of Kerry, so much needs to be done on the road from Sneem to Moll's Gap to trim back the trees and the bushes in terms of the massive volume of buses which are on those roads every day.

Section 39 workers deserve pay parity. They are doing the same work as other workers and they have been left behind. They are going on strike and the Government will have to bear the brunt of that because they have been left down. Childcare and creches are being left until next year after all the presentations they made.

I want to mention hydrotreated vegetable oil, HVO. This is an option instead of electric. Everyone could use the cars they already have instead of going to the expense of having to purchase an electric car. The Government is not giving this a fair chance. There is a facility in Ringaskiddy for storing this. When I raised this issue last night I got support for it. I am asking for the tax on it to be reduced in order to make it an option if the Government is serious about reducing emissions. Whatever the Government does with emissions, it will still not change the weather, especially when we see what they were doing in other countries like America and China. Here the people are being penalised with carbon taxes that make it harder for people working and transport operators to survive. I ask the Government to look at this option and give it favourable consideration and give it a chance.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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In my time I hope to generally deal with three or four topics and then go to the issue of the Irish language. It takes a while, not just a few days, but a few weeks to analyse a budget. Notwithstanding the good points and the payments that are being made, I would like to give some of the reaction.

The Antipoverty Network in Ireland described the budget as a wasted opportunity. It said that by prioritising short-term one-off payments over adequate and sustainable permanent measures that would enable Ireland to meet its antipoverty targets, the budget is just another long list of missed opportunities.

Similarly, Social Justice Ireland said that rather than spending this year's surplus to support those who need it most, for whom it would have the greatest impact, the Government has chosen to channel money towards those better able to manage it.

I heard the word "progressive" used regarding the budget. I would call it a giveaway budget geared to elections. I agree with the views expressed by Social Justice Ireland. This is another regressive budget, despite Government claims that it is progressive. It is regressive because permanent changes are targeted at higher income households while the one-off measures are focused at lower incomes. I would really love time to develop this point because I believe that instead of going from budget to budget and once off payments, some of which are very welcome given the cost of living crisis and inflation, we must have a completely different model. Foolishly, I thought we were going to get that following the pandemic and the emergency climate declaration on biodiversity. However, we have not, and we are proceeding in the same piecemeal manner without an overall vision.

On a practical level let us take the disability payment. The Minister knows all the reports better than I do. We have quoted them here and the Government has utterly failed to bring in a disability payment, despite all the reports, including the INDECON report.

I welcome that there is a follow up on the promise to reduce childcare costs. However, it is being done within a market model, which is the same market model that has got us into trouble with nursing homes where the ratio is 80:20, which I know the Minister wants to change. However, it is the exact same model. With childcare, as with housing, we are all the time financing the market system that has utterly failed. If it had not failed we would not need to be channelling money into it. I would love to see, and would be delighted to support the Minister on, the 25% reduction as part of an overall plan set out and phased to introduce public childcare. That is what I would love to see. I absolutely despair when I see year after year more and more public money going to the private market so that profit can be made. That is not to say that private nursing homes do not provide a good service. Yes, some of them do and some of them do not. Equally, there are faults with the HSE. I am thinking of Mulranny and of a former TD who did extraordinary work in relation to the nursing home in Mulranny. I gather it is struggling. It is a not-for-profit nursing home. A not-for-profit nursing homes should not be struggling while the providers and the companies get bigger and bigger.

On balanced regional development, my colleagues quoted the regional assembly and how the north-west region has been degraded or demoted. In Galway, I want balanced regional development and I want to see the western rail corridor. Carraroe in the Gaeltacht has great potential for development, croílár na Gaeltachta, but raw sewage is going into the water. We have had plans for donkey's years. Galway County Council and then Irish Water had plans to build a new sewage treatment system, but it has gone nowhere because the site they insisted on staying on has planning permission for a heritage centre. We are back to square one with no sewage treatment.

Similarly, Galway city on the east side is not making provision for the extension of Galway which is one of the five cities to grow. There is no plan for the sewerage system there to be upgraded. While the term "balanced regional development" is lovely, it is not there on the ground.

Finally, ba mhaith liom díriú isteach ar chúrsaí Gaeilge mar tá níos lú ná dhá nóiméad fágtha agam. Bhreathnaigh mé ar an gcáipéis agus tá, is dócha, naoi nó deich n-abairt maidir leis an nGaeilge agus iad go léir i mBéarla. Is é sin an rud atá curtha in iúl. Faraor, níl an tAire eile ann agus ní raibh aon chóip den óráid a thug sí ar fáil.

B'fhéidir go bhfuil na sonraí ansin ach ón méid atá feicthe agam, tá sé thar a bheith deacair domsa easaontú leis na ceannteidil sna meáin Ghaeilge gur buiséad frithGhaeilge agus frithGhaeltachta é an buiséad seo. Tá sé thar a bheith deacair domsa easaontú leis sin. Níl puinn breise d’Údarás na Gaeltachta agus níl a fhios agam cé mhéad leathanach atá ansin ó Údarás na Gaeltachta ag cur in iúl cé mhéad foirgnimh agus cé mhéad talún atá acu ach níl siad in ann dul chun cinn a dhéanamh de bharr thaobh easpa acmhainní.

Maidir leis an rud atá ráite go leanfaidh muid ar aghaidh leis an maoiniú atá curtha ar fáil d'Údarás na Gaeltachta agus leis na scéimeanna tacaíochta, is é an t-aon rud breise atá i gceist - mar tá mé ag iarraidh an doiciméad a aistriú díreach anois – ná an tacaíocht freisin do na scéimeanna teanga. Níl aon aitheantas anseo, a bheag ná a mhór, go bhfuil géarchéim sochtheangeolaíoch ó thaobh na teanga de, níl aon tuiscint go bhfuil géarchéim ó thaobh cúrsaí tithíochta sna Gaeltachtaí, go bhfuil an daonra ag laghdú, nó níl tuiscint a bheag ná a mhór ar an bhfadhb maidir leis na coláistí samhraidh agus na mná tí ag éirí as an ngníomhaíocht sin gach uile mhí. Tá géarchéim ó thaobh na Gaeilge de agus ó thaobh inmharthanacht na Gaeilge de agus níl pioc nó aon rud le feiceáil sa bhuiséad seo go bhfuil tuiscint ag an Rialtas, nó b'fhéidir go bhfuil, ach go bhfuil easpa tola i gceist. Tá díomá mór ollmhór orm dá bharr. Gabhaim míle maith ag an gCathaoirleach Gníomhach mar tá mé imithe cúpla soicind thar mo chuid ama.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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I call the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, who is sharing time with the Ministers of State, Deputy Heydon and Senator Hackett.

Charlie McConalogue (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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I welcome the opportunity to contribute on the 2024 agriculture, food and marine budget introduced by me and my colleagues, the Ministers of State, Senator Hackett and Deputy Heydon.

My goal for budget 2024 was to support our farm and fishing families. This has been achieved with vital livestock schemes secured, environmental schemes bolstered in funding, new infrastructure measures introduced to support farmers impacted by the changes to the nitrates derogation and support provided for the development of our fishing sector and coastal communities. This is in addition to rolling out the largest ever Common Agricultural Policy, CAP, strategic plan amounting to €10 billion.

A total of €1.942 billion has been allocated to the Department of Agriculture, Food and Marine for coming year. It is important that I clarify the difficult budgetary constraint under which this was achieved. This 2024 figure adjusts to reflect the discontinuation of more than €240 million in Brexit Adjustment Reserve, BAR, funding, as the deadline for all expenditure under that fund is December of this year. While this BAR funding was predominantly expended in the fisheries sector, in 2023 it also supported the genotyping programme for our livestock herd and the national beef welfare scheme for which I have now secured national funding to continue.

Budget 2024 demonstrates my unwavering commitment to our beef and sheep farmers. I have provided targeted supports of more than €118 million for the livestock sectors. I will continue to provide the €200 per cow payment delivered for our beef suckler cows and calves in 2023. I intend to provide an additional payment for sheep farmers which, together with the current sheep welfare scheme payments, will result in a payment equivalent to €20 per ewe in 2024. This will be the highest payment ever provided to our vital sheep sector. Beef and sheep farmers will also be well placed to benefit from the enhanced supports for environmental measures and the supports available for farmers transitioning to organic farming. My officials are currently working through the details of what is possible with this funding and further details will be announced in due course.

The budget will result in more than €700 million spent in support of farm families in their efforts to tackle the challenges of climate, biodiversity and water quality in 2024. The changes to the nitrates derogation have been the cause of much concern to farmers across the country. I have promised to support farmers in this transition and this budget will finance the first step in ensuring that our derogation is protected in the next review. Improving water quality is pivotal to achieving this aim. To support farmers in their efforts to improve water quality through investment in on-farm nutrient storage, a number of new targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS 3, measures are being introduced. My first action will be to engage with the European Commission to secure changes to the TAMS 3 investment aid scheme to allow the introduction of a separate investment ceiling for all farmers building additional storage facilities on farm, beyond regulatory compliance. This support will be available to all farmers at the prevailing rates of 40% and 60%, the higher rate being available to young farmers and female farmers.

In addition, and in support of water quality and efficient nutrient use, I will also seek approval to introduce a dedicated support measure to provide 70% support for manure storage facilities on farms importing livestock manure under a contract relationship. To further assist farmers in this space, funding to support the hugely successful soil sampling scheme and the multispecies sward schemes is continued.

I have increased the allocation for the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, by €40 million bringing the total scheme allocation to €200 million. The level of interest in ACRES has demonstrated that farmers are clearly making a positive contribution in addressing a range of climate, biodiversity and environmental issues. After the unprecedented demand for places in tranche 1 of ACRES, I am delighted to announce that tranche 2 of the scheme will open for applications in the coming weeks. This will allow us to deliver on the Government’s commitment to have 50,000 farmers participating in the flagship environmental scheme.

Building on the additional measures, I have introduced in support of the tillage sector in recent years including increased support for protein aid, the introduction of the straw incorporation measure and the provision of a tillage incentive scheme under the Ukraine response framework, I am making €8 million available to support this important sector next year. This demonstrates my commitment to the sector and my support for the work of the Food Vision tillage group.

Over the lifetime of this Government, €500 million has been spent on the seafood sector. Over the past two years I have announced a range of schemes, worth €271 million, designed to support the seafood sector and coastal communities in overcoming the impact of Brexit. In December 2022, the European Commission adopted the Seafood Development Programme 2021-2027. The funding provision made by the Government in budget 2024 will enable this programme to provide further support to the sector over the coming years. The programme will ensure that the seafood sector will not only survive but generate economic growth and sustain jobs. The programme will also provide funding to State bodies that carry out important work in the marine environment to protect our coastal natural resources.

The programme measures, supported by the budget, will include capital investment on board vessels, marine environmental requirements, control work and investments in aquaculture, as well as support for young fishers, processors and the inshore sector, and a completion of the largest ever investment into our piers and harbours in the State.

Regarding agri-taxation measures, we have a taxation policy that supports the transfer of land to the next generation of farmers and the Government is committed to protecting this at all costs.

The agri-taxation measures announced by my colleague, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael McGrath, will be key drivers of agriculture policy next year and will be of direct benefit to Irish farm families. I welcome the announcement by the Minister, Deputy McGrath, to defer the residential zoned land tax, RZLT, by one year to February 2025. While the RZLT is an important part of the Government’s commitment to increase and promote home building, genuine farmers who wished to continue farming their land were impacted. Having this issue rectified was an important request of mine for this budget. This deferral will allow for another annual mapping cycle to take place before landowners become subject to the tax and, therefore, allow a further period during which landowners and farmers can engage in the process and make a rezoning request to their local authority.

I also welcome that the Minister, Deputy McGrath, has agreed to my proposal to restrict long-term leasing relief so that it does not become immediately available to the purchasers of land. This will see the relief only become available when land had been owned for seven years which focuses the relief on genuine farmers, reduces the likelihood of speculation while protecting the support for farmers engaged in long-term lease arrangements. Further to this, the renewal of stamp duty consanguinity relief on transfers of farmland and the continuation of accelerated capital allowances for slurry storage for another two years is welcome.

These taxation supports align very closely with my Department’s policies in support of farmers to improve their environmental sustainability, generational renewal and farm safety. The renewal of the consanguinity relief for an additional five years promotes and encourages the lifetime transfer of farms, thereby enhancing generational renewal in the sector.

I am very much aware of the challenges facing farm families. The farm, food and fishing sectors are the lifeblood of rural and coastal communities and contribute enormously to prosperity and employment creation right across the economy. I am satisfied that this budget continues to support these vital sectors. I am working closely with the Ministers of State, Deputy Heydon and Senator Hackett, who will now give further detail on the budgetary measures in their specific areas of responsibility. Over the year ahead, we will continue to support our farm families and fishing communities in every way we can.

Pippa Hackett (Green Party)
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This is a budget focused on the environment, both in the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine and across Government. Since this Government took office in 2020 we have made huge strides in the organic sector. I am further backing this with funding of €57 million for organic farmers in 2024, which is more than 50% higher than the provision for organic farming in last year's budget. Since entering Government we have doubled the number of organic farmers and doubled the land area farmed organically. We are on track to hit our target to have 10% of Irish farmland under organic production by 2030. This is real money making a real difference to farm families, funding real change in the way we farm and in our environment. I will reopen the organic farming scheme to new applicants very shortly. Again, we will see the massive interest in this sector, showing that farmers want to produce food in a nature-friendly way and that Government will back them all the way. This Government is backing farmers, backing the environment and backing rural Ireland. Unlike the Opposition parties which, judging by their budget day contributions in this House yesterday, either do not understand or do not care, and failed to acknowledge farming and the significant role this sector can play in enhancing our environment and in rural Ireland. Sinn Féin managed a fleeting, token reference to farmers. There was not one word from the Social Democrats or the Labour Party on the issue.

Farmers the length and breadth of Ireland are playing their part in the green transition and the Government too is playing its part. The new forestry programme is the most ambitious in the history of the State. We are paying farmers more than €2,000 per hectare, tax free, every year for ten years to plant native woodlands of up to a hectare on their farms, without the need for a licence. We are backing farmers and foresters to be at the heart of our efforts to reduce emissions and improve biodiversity and water quality. We are paying 20 years of tax-free premiums to farmers, securing their future and that of their families. Again, this is real money, making a real difference to farm families, funding real change in how we farm and in our environment.

The horticulture industry is another vital part of our farming sector. We are backing growers with funding of more than €14.35 million for the year ahead. We will use this funding to support capital investment in the horticulture industry to deliver the national strategy for horticulture and to provide advanced payments to producer organisations in the fruit and vegetable sector.

European innovation partnerships, EIPs, as they are fondly known, have been another huge area of success during this Government's term. Locally-led results-based schemes are a win-win delivering for farm family incomes and for the environment. This is why I fought hard for the locally-led results-based model to form a key part of our cap strategic plan through the agri-climate rural environmental scheme, ACRES, co-operation projects. On top of the €200 million ACRES funding to benefit farmers in cooperation projects throughout the country next year, we will spend an additional €18 million in 2024 on new EIPs. This strong financial backing will support farmers to take targeted action at a local level to improve water quality on dairy farms, to protect and enhance habitats for breeding waders, to carry out trials on peatland farms and to support new EIPs under a call under project proposals early next year. Yet again, this is real money making a real difference to farm families, funding real change in how we farm and in our environment.

Soil health is vital for our very existence. The more we know about it the better informed we are to make the decisions necessary to preserve and regenerate our soils. We are putting nearly €9 million into the soil sampling and analysis programme in 2024. This will enable farmers to take informed targeted decisions at field level and ultimately reduce their reliance on chemical inputs, saving farmers real money and making a real difference to the environment.

Organic farmers have been sowing multi-species swards for generations and now it is going mainstream. Multi-species swards reduce emissions, they benefit nature and save farmers money. The Government is putting €2.5 million into multi-species swards in 2024. Again, it is real money benefiting farmers and making a real difference to the environment.

We have heard a lot of spin over the past two days from those in opposition. They are desperate to criticise a budget that is good for families, good for businesses and good for the environment. There is no doubt that budget day is an important milestone for any sector but announcing and allocating funding is only one piece of the jigsaw. We have a responsibility to use taxpayers' money in a strategically-focused way to bring about the long-term outcomes that we want to see. That is why we are taking long-term, targeted, strategic action to protect future generations both through the infrastructure climate and nature fund and through the future Ireland fund. These are decisions we are taking today to benefit tomorrow. Similarly, under my own remit, we are planning today to bring about the tomorrow we want to see. We have a national strategy for horticulture out to 2027. In regard to forestry, I published Ireland's forest strategy earlier this month out to 2030. The organic sector is working to build on the momentum that has begun. We are working with the sector on an updated national organic strategy which should be published early next year.

This is all in the wider context of a climate action plan that goes to the core of what this Government is about, namely, being the greenest Government in the history of the State. We demonstrated that in the programme for Government. We demonstrated it in the last three budgets and we have demonstrated it again this year. We will continue to demonstrate it as we continue on our transition to a greener, cleaner future for Ireland.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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Budget 2024 is an opportunity for this Government to ensure that we deliver for farmers and for rural Ireland. In my own areas of responsibility, I have put a particular focus on addressing the three legs of the sustainability stool, namely, economic, environmental and social. I will continue to build the networks to improve farmer safety, health and well-being with a dedicated fund of €2.5 million in 2024. This fund will be used to extend the range of initiatives currently undertaken to improve farm safety and wellness among the farming community. This dedicated funding has allowed me to target key areas such as the quality of safety training in our agricultural colleges, to roll out targeted programmes to primary school children and to get physical investments onto farms through the national farm safety measures, where we are nearing 4,000 expressions of interest. That is 4,000 farms that will now have quad helmets or will have defective PTO covers replaced. I have also funded a range of awareness-raising initiatives around key risks such as calving season, quad bike use as well as investing in health supports for farmers.

Social sustainability encompasses a wide range of areas including farm succession, farm safety, farmer health and well-being, and over the next year, I intend to target a number of these areas further initiatives through my farm safety budget.

The budget for farm safety also complements the intense work I have been doing to put farm safety at the heart of everything we do. In the previous CAP, there was a requirement to complete half-day farm safety training under the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS. Now, we have a dedicated farm safety heading as part of the scheme with a higher 60% grant rate to provide every farmer with the opportunity to invest in their farm’s safety and efficiency. It is therefore welcome that budget 2024 has earmarked a significant provision for TAMS.

On the tax side, we are extending several reliefs designed to help with farm succession and extending the accelerated capital allowance for farm safety equipment and investment. This is something I fought to have introduced a number of years ago. These support farmers who have suffered life-changing injuries and want to continue farming into the future. Very importantly, they also support investments in preventative measures that make farms safer.

We are also providing additional places on the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES. Every farmer in the scheme will be provided with farm safety training as part of the programme, ensuring we reach an even broader cohort of farmers. These courses are getting under way around the country as we speak.

Livestock is one of the major risks on farms, as we know. In addition to providing more than €100 million in financial supports for beef and sheep farmers, our new beef scheme, the suckler carbon efficiency programme, SCEP, also makes provision for providing safety training to farmers who often handle high-risk animals. Of course, farm succession is closely linked to farm safety and the Government has again reaffirmed its commitment to the present and future generations by extending tax reliefs and increasing individual thresholds.

The area of research and development is also a key focus for me. I am delighted to have secured an additional €2 million in funding for this area, bringing my Department's research budget to €22.45 million. This will be used to drive greater innovation in our agriculture, food, forestry and bio-economy sectors as we position Irish agriculture as a leader in sustainable food production. Farmers cannot deliver on environmental sustainability unless they are economically sustainable. I firmly believe the answer to the challenges faced by agriculture around climate and environmental issues lies in science and innovation. Agriculture reduced its emissions last year and we are on a downward trajectory. Also, research work funded by the Department has led to significant breakthroughs in areas such as low-nitrogen grasses and selecting for low-emitting livestock. We are also seeing some positive results in the work we have funded on methane additives, and we will share those shortly.

All these breakthroughs strengthen farmers’ toolboxes to allow them to continue producing top-quality food while doing so with a reduced emission profile. This will be a key driver of increasing the value of our food and drink exports in the years ahead. Budget 2024 allows us to maintain this momentum, ensuring we have the resources for strong funding calls to build on existing partnerships with countries such as New Zealand, and not only address challenges we face here but also to be leaders in global efforts to develop sustainable livestock systems.

We must also showcase to farmers and the wider public what these efforts are translating to in the real world. We need widespread adoption of the latest technology and management practices. That is why we are organising a major agri-climate conference that will take place on 15 November in the Aviva Stadium. Teagasc, too, plays a crucial role in driving innovation on farms and to ensure the adoption and uptake of new practices we are making an allocation of just under €168 million to Teagasc as part of budget 2024, which is an increase of 3% on last year.

Finally, reducing the emissions profile of our food production and ensuring we are market leaders in sustainable food production are central to everything we want to achieve under Food Vision 2030. Currently, we are in the lead but if we stand still, others will catch up. Bord Bia will receive an allocation of just under €57 million, which is also a 3% increase. It plays an important role in marketing Irish food abroad and ensuring we are alive to the trends in the markets we are currently in, as well as identifying those newer markets that have high potential. In the year ahead, we will continue to focus on improving our market access across a range of priority markets, in addition to building on the very valuable existing markets we have.

Claire Kerrane (Roscommon-Galway, Sinn Fein)
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I listened to the Minister of State, Senator Hackett, speak about all the opposition to the agriculture budget yesterday. Much of the conversation I heard in opposition to the budget was actually from the farm organisations. Much of what they had to say was probably more negative than anything anyone in here said yesterday. That is a fact.

When looking at the budget document yesterday, I thought a page was missing because there was so little detail on what was actually being announced. We had to wait until yesterday evening almost and there were leaks throughout the day, none of which was helpful. When it comes to budget day, we need clarity and certainty on the measures announced for farmers. That issue needs to be addressed going forward.

The budget was deeply disappointing in relation to agriculture. The facts speak for themselves; the budget allocation has been reduced and there is less money for farmers in 2024 than there was this year. That is incredible given that most farmers are still not getting a fair price for their premium produce. Input costs have never been higher and are in some cases rising. There is also the major challenge of climate action, which farmers are up for, but they need significant continued supports to assist them in doing what they need to do. Despite all of that and the major challenges we are facing, the Government has announced a reduced budget for agriculture.

At the same time, the Government are rolling out a Common Agricultural Policy with more or less the same amount of funding as the previous CAP. In real terms, that is a cut because prices are through the roof and there is inflation. CAP funding has, therefore, reduced and the Government has delivered a reduced budget at home. The Government is also sending approximately €150 million of the Brexit adjustment reserve, BAR, fund back to Europe because it has been unable to spend it. In the next breath, it tells us this budget is all about protecting incomes. Farm incomes are already inadequate and many farm families are struggling. They are working hard but they are not getting a fair price. Many are finding it more and more difficult to encourage their children to work on the farm because so many farms are no longer viable. Agriculture is in a serious situation in 2023 and what we saw yesterday will not be enough to turn the tide. The message to farmers that I took from yesterday was that they have the CAP, that is more or less it and they should not look to the Government for anything additional in the budget. If that is how it is going to be, then agriculture will be in a lot more trouble as we go forward.

Most of what was listed when we eventually received a press release yesterday evening is not new but repackaged. The forestry money is not new. The funding to be used to fund the ACRES programme is not exactly new. The suckler payment will remain at €200 and, again, that is not new. The national dairy beef welfare scheme is not new either.

I was disappointed to see another budget in another year in which farmers and young farmers have been forgotten again. The Minister recommitted to the young and forgotten farmers at the Macra na Feirme conference last December. Nearly a year down the track and there is still nothing there for them. These farmers are seriously considering their future in agriculture. They are struggling, having waited year after year for support from this Government. It should have been given to them years ago. It is disappointing that we have not seen an allocation for forgotten farmers in this budget. The suckler payment is €200. Most of the farm organisations and Sinn Féin in its alternative budget last year and this year stated that €300 is needed for suckler farmers. We know that. Did the Minister seek a €300 payment to replace the standstill figure of €200?

I welcome the increase in the ewe payment for sheep farmers. I will always welcome positives in budgets and I welcome that increase. We sought an increase to €20 last year and again this year. As I have pointed out previously, we need more than just an increase in the ewe payment. Only approximately half of our sheep farmers are in that scheme and there are questions as to why so many are not getting involved in it. That needs to be looked at. We have known for a long time that sheep farmers are in a deep crisis. I ask the Minister to at least attempt to seek funding through the Brexit adjustment reserve fund before the end of the year, at which point funding from it will be returned to the EU. I cannot understand how he can get €1.5 million for Bord Bia from that fund to promote organics but cannot get money from it for sheep farmers. These farmers have made an impact with the import deal that was done with England and New Zealand. There is also an issue with the currency rates, yet funding cannot be secured from the Brexit reserve. If Europe says “No”, that is fair enough but the farming organisations have been clear that the Minister should at least try. I ask him to do so. Many sheep farmers in this country are in crisis. In the months since they protested at Leinster House, things have only got worse. It is criminal that we will send approximately €115 million back to Europe to go into a new REPowerEU fund, rather than spending it here on the farmers who really need it.

I ask the Minister to look again at wool, on which we had a feasibility study. The establishment of the Irish Grown Wool Council is a good and welcome development but the Government must do more than just set up the council and leave it at that. Recommendations made in the feasibility study need to be implemented and we need to see what more can be done in relation to wool. The sector has huge potential and can be developed in this State.

I welcome the €8 million for tillage in the budget. It is especially important, given the poor reaction to the €7 million announced last week when tillage farmers voiced their disappointment with it. It will not be paid until January. Will the Minister engage with Irish Grain Growers and others representing the tillage sector to see how the €8 million can best be spent and how quickly it can get into the pockets of tillage farmers?

Regarding ACRES, the Minister has announced funding for the remaining 4,000 places to reach the 50,000 total. Funding a programme he announced is all well and good and fairly basic, but given the significant demand for the scheme, which was oversubscribed when it was first opened to applications, will he cut that off at 4,000 or will he allow that figured to be exceeded? Farming organisations tell us that approximately 15,000 farmers are interested, so 4,000 is nowhere near enough.

It is disappointing that there was nothing in the budget to deal with ash dieback. The independent report tells us that the scheme is flawed, yet the Minister wants people to sign up to it. That does not make any sense. We are waiting on an implementation plan for a review of the review that has already been carried out even though we know what needs to be done. Those affected by ash dieback across the State will tell the Government what needs to be done. It just needs to be done as quickly as possible.

Regarding the residential zoned land tax, allowing more time is welcome, but not just time is needed. We need a solution. Even the Taoiseach intervened and made a commitment to farmers that a solution would be found, but one has still not been found. Farmers are getting bills of tens of thousands of euro. They are going to the councils, some of them have to go to An Bord Pleanála and some have suffered costs, yet they are still getting hit with these bills. This issue needs to be sorted out as quickly as possible.

How much of the €14 billion climate and nature fund will the Minister seek for farmers? It is an important fund and farmers will need their fair share of it, given what they are going to be asked to do in the coming years.

Regarding the overall budget for farmers, he does not have to listen to the Opposition parties if it does not want to, but the farming organisations are disappointed. Much more could have been done. There is little in the way of new measures. That the budget for farmers will be reduced next year is very disappointing, given all of the challenges they face. It is unacceptable that the CAP budget is staying the same, we have a reduced budget for next year and we are sending money back to Europe that should have been spent.

Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Last year, the Minister announced a "record budget", as he described it, for the fisheries and seafood sector. The total of that budget was €337.45 million, which he stated was a 62% increase on the previous budget. Those of us who were listening to fishing communities and fish producers around the coast believed that the figures were doctored, the money was coming from the Brexit Adjustment Reserve fund, and the Minister was announcing investment in piers and harbours as though it were Government expenditure. This is redundancy money that is being given to our fishing communities because the EU has taken away so much of our quota and we have had to decommission even more of our vessels. We are giving away more of the fish in our waters and we are losing our industry. The Minister claimed that redundancy money as Government expenditure and announced a "record budget".

I checked and double-checked this year’s budget because I thought it could not be right. I looked at it again today. It amounts to a drop of almost 50% on what the Minister announced last year. It is €176.9 million. What was announced in the budget yesterday was shocking. This industry around our coast is struggling to survive. In the past 12 months, there has been a 15% reduction in production in the fishing industry, the fleet has reduced by 30%, Ireland’s fishing quota in our own waters has been reduced by in the region of 20% and approximately 1,000 people at sea and ashore have lost their jobs. The industry is struggling. I do not want to use the term “on its knees”, as I know the fishers and fish producers around the coast and they are hard-working and proud people who are trying to save their industry, but they need the Government to meet them halfway.

The Minister knows that he claimed a record budget last year and a 62% increase, but that was not true. The Government was claiming European money. This year, it will have to stand over that claim in light of the reduction of 50%. This is a disastrous budget for our fishing community and I do not know how the Government can stand over it.

Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein)
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In my limited time, I wish to focus on the climate and environment budget. Budget 2024 reaffirms the Government's commitment to a climate strategy that is not working. Despite Ireland having the highest greenhouse gas emissions in the EU and having blown almost half of its first five-year carbon budget in two years, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party remain steadfast in their determination to lead Ireland down the path of certain climate failure. Yesterday, they introduced us to the infrastructure, climate and nature fund, an ambiguous fund that lacks any detail, clarity or certainty. The fund may be available post 2026, although we are not sure when, what criteria will apply or for what it will be used. While a commitment to a future investment fund is welcome, we cannot afford to wait on a measure that is currently a notion. Notions are not actions. There is nowhere near enough in the here and now in the Government's budget. Countless viable and urgent projects need investment now, for example, the western rail corridor, the Navan rail line and the implementation of district heating in this city, and they cannot afford to wait. Indeed, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Eamon Ryan, at his press conference yesterday exampled district heating in this city as a scheme that might benefit from this fund. However, the Government's commitment is to deliver district heating in this city by 2025. As such, it would not be eligible for the fund, or so we are led to believe.

In budget 2024, we see only the most minimal increases in the Government's climate spend. Shockingly, it has decided to decrease its investment in some areas, for example, the energy transition. In our alternative budget, Sinn Féin far outstripped the Government's ambition by delivering hundreds of millions euro more on supply-side investment across a radically overhauled retrofit scheme in the context of Ireland's energy transition and across efforts to restore nature. Our alternative budget had €152 million more for residential and community retrofits and €42 million more for social retrofits. We do not know what the Government's allocation for solar photovoltaic, PV, is, but Sinn Féin doubled last year's allocation. This is the scale of ambition that we need to get us on the right trajectory between now and 2030.

Time and again, we have heard from a range of stakeholders that there is an implementation deficit. Instead of delivering a step change in respect of climate and the environment, the Government has doubled down on a path that is failing and is set to continue to fail.

Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party)
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I am pleased to be here to outline the key elements of the budget 2024 allocation for my Department. Two years ago I set out an ambition to deliver a meaningful reduction in childcare costs for families all over our country. I am pleased that today we have have been able to deliver that, with an average 25% reduction in the cost of childcare in budget 2024. This change will be effective from September of next year and will mean we have halved childcare costs in the space of two years. Across a full year, for parents using full-time care, the new savings announced yesterday will be up to €1,700 per child. I and the Green Party have always been very clear about the ambition to make childcare more affordable for parents across Ireland. I am delighted to have been able to deliver on that ambition by halving childcare costs as part of this budget.

I am aware many parents rely on childminders and the fantastic work childminders do and that is why the budget will provide funding to allow the extension of regulation and supports to childminders and to enable parents who use childminders to benefit from those subsidies via the national childcare scheme, NCS, which will again be from September 2024. With an initial cohort of 500 childminders expected to come forward for registration in 2024, some 2,000 children who use childminders are estimated to benefit from the NCS in 2014. This is absolutely crucial in expanding the range and choice of childcare available to parents.

We are making childcare more affordable, but we are also making it more accessible. We have increased funding to support children with disabilities to access childcare, with an increase in the hours available under the access and inclusion model. Importantly, we have also allocated €4.5 million to create the equal participation model, which is a new model of childcare inspired by the DEIS model to ensure the most disadvantaged children have access to high-quality early learning and care.

While we are reducing the costs for parents and improving access for children, I am also conscious of the needs of those working and the providers across the sector. I am pleased to announce a 15% increase in core funding up to €303 million next year. This means that since I first introduced core funding three years ago its quantity has increased by 46% across that period. In all, in terms of childcare, when I first came to office the State was spending €638 million per annum and in 2024 the figure will be €1.1 billion, which is a 70% across four years. That is testament to the focus this Government has placed on the early years sector.

This budget also delivers on child well-being. Budget 2024 sees the largest-ever increase for Tusla, the Child and Family Agency. Next year, my Department will provide more than €1 billion in funding for the agency, which is an increase of €90 million. Importantly, we will increase the foster care allowance next year. That will be the first increase this allowance has seen since 2009. It will be done in two stages, providing an additional €75 per week for children aged under 12 years and €73 per week for children aged over 12 years by November of next year. The first €25 of this increase will apply from 1 January, with the remaining €50 applying in November.

There is €78 million allocated to youth services in budget 2024. That is an increase of €5 million on the 2023 budget. Of that, €1 million is being provided to mainstream the youth employability scheme to provide dedicated support to young people who are not in education or work. The aim is to promote the employability of disadvantaged young people.

As Members will be aware, this is the first year in which responsibility for disability has been with this Department. The Minister of State, Deputy Rabbitte, and I are pleased to have secured €2.8 billion for specialist community-based disability services next year. I particularly acknowledge the hard work done by the Minister of State to ensure key priorities in disability came to the forefront. This allocation will support the roll-out of the action plan for disability services, including more residential and respite services, 1,400 places for school-leavers needing support and increased personal assistance hours.

Alongside these areas, €1.9 billion has been set aside to support the delivery of accommodation for those who have fled here seeking our protection, namely, international protection applicants and those fleeing the war in Ukraine. Overall, I am proud to have significantly increased our allocation by more than €330 million in core spending. This is a progressive budget with social justice at its very heart. Across the Department, we are entrusted with responsibility for some of the most vulnerable people in our country, including children, refugees, people with disabilities and children in care. In each of these areas we are delivering. We are driving down costs for all parents and we are expanding access to childcare for children with disabilities and children from disadvantaged backgrounds. We see the largest-ever State investment in Tusla and increased investment in our youth services. I acknowledge the commitment by the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, in recognising these priorities while also seeking to deliver on an ambitious and balanced overall expenditure package. The €7.3 billion allocated to my Department for 2024 gives me and the Ministers of State, Deputies Rabbitte and O'Brien, the resources to respond to the needs of the most vulnerable people in our society.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I am glad to have the opportunity to provide details of the additional €195 million that will be invested in services for 2024, bringing the total investment to €2.8 billion. Since my appointment to this role, my overarching ambition has always been to provide and improve a range of disability services available to both adults and children. This year's financial allocation for disability services demonstrates the Government's strong commitment to building capacity in this area.

My priorities for 2024 will be the enhancement of person-centred supports and services, supporting the progressive roll-out of the action plan for disability services and the roadmap for children's disability services. I am very aware the implementation of these strategies cannot happen quickly enough for those awaiting access to services and their families. I am confident the allocation for 2024 will allow crucial investment in very important services. In 2024 existing level of service, ELS, funding of €131 million is being allocated to ensure the full-year costs of additional services provided this year is met and to provide for cost increases in some service areas.

On the new development measures, funding of €64 million will provide for greater investment in a range of service areas. In residential services for adults and children, €20.5 million in extra funding has been provided to deliver approximately 100 new residential places. Respite is a priority area for me and I have seen time and time again how critical it is to supporting families and individuals with a disability who are in need of receiving specialist disability services. A €10 million increase in respite services will enable us to build on existing provision and look to alternative respite options to centre-based provision.

I am also very focused on improving access to children's disability services and in that context I have allocated an additional €8.5 million to improve children's services, including the recruitment of additional therapy positions, increasing third-level places and support for specialist children's disability services. I have also provided for the continued investment in community-based services, including €18.5 million in funding for day services for school-leavers, increased funding for personal assistance services, home support and continued investment in the community neuro teams. I will be working closely with my ministerial colleagues, the HSE, voluntary providers and disabled persons' organisations to ensure this funding has a substantial impact in 2024.

I am also happy to say that I have secured an additional €9 million in once-off funding, including €5 million for alternative respite, €3.5 million for transport and €500,000 for mobility initiative trikes. Funding available in 2024 will facilitate the progressive roll out of the action plan for disability services and the progressing disability services roadmap. These strategic plans will provide a blueprint for building capacity and services over a number of years to progressively address unmet need in disability services. I hope, along with the Minister, to launch the progressing disability services roadmap before the end of the month, which will also include provisions to support the delivery of therapies in special schools as well as action intended to tackle the backlog of assessments of need which are outside their statutory timelines.

As Minister of State with responsibility for specialist disability services, I am fully committed to the continuous advancement of rights under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, UNCRPD. The allocation for 2024 will facilitate a broader programme of work in disability equality policy. A dedicated budget will support a range of measures designed to further advance and implement the UNCRPD. In particular, we will develop and implement a new ambitious national disability strategy and an autism innovation strategy. I am also committed to finding new ways of working in partnership with disabled people and disabled persons' organisations. There will be a further call for funding under the disability participation and awareness fund which will support projects across the country that will assist disabled people to participate in local and community life. This will also include ring-fenced supports for disabled persons' organisations. Funding will continue for employment supports for persons with disability under the Towards Work and Employers for Change programmes.

Budget 2024 will also provide funding for the National Disability Authority to continue its important research and advisory work. Of course, we will also facilitate the decision support services to provide all services set out in the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act, as amended.

I must also mention that we have seen the introduction of many measures across Government that will improve the lives of people with disabilities and their carers. I thank my colleagues for their strong commitment to providing mainstream supports. These include employment-related supports, a particular interest of mine. I am pleased that the Department of Social Protection is reducing the minimum weekly hours threshold for eligibility for a wage subsidy from 21 hours to 15 hours.

In the short time remaining, I want to thank the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, for his work during the budgetary negotiations. For the first time, he had to balance budgets between childcare and disability but he gave me the opportunity to have an equal slice of funding. Maybe he held back the roll out childcare supports until September to ensure that I had adequate funding to serve people with disabilities.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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There has been a devastating sidelining of disabled people in budget 2024. These are not my words but those of the chief executive of one of the largest disability groups in the country, Mr. John Dolan. He went on to say that it is devastating to see the sidelining of disability and a tokenistic attitude to disabled people in budget 2024. He argued that the measures introduced do not come close to meeting the needs of people with disabilities. It is not exactly a resounding endorsement of the disability measures presented by the Ministers here today.

Based on the disability capacity review, disability services need at least €80 million to €90 million in additional resources every year to take account of demographic change and unmet need. Yet, according to the Government's own expenditure report, a sum of €64.1 million is being provided, comprising €55.6 million for the disability action plan and €8.5 million for the progressing disability services roadmap. Once again, disability services and disabled people are losing out, but not to worry because landlords are getting tax breaks.

Anne Rabbitte (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy should not forget the existing level of service, ELS, budget of €165 million.

Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Yesterday the Minister, in a press conference, expanded slightly on the measures for disability services but we need to hear more about exactly where the money is going. The Minister announced that there would be capital funding of €23.7 million to provide for the upgrade and development of disability services. We do not have specific details on how this will be allocated. Will some of it be allocated to decongregation? I really hope so. In 2022, only 35 people were transitioned from congregated settings into supported community living. In 2023, no further funding was made available for decongregation, which makes pronouncements by this Government about moving away from a medical, charity-based model of disability care to a rights-based model sound very hollow indeed.

On children's disability network teams, CDNTs, there is a staff vacancy rate of 34%, equating to 707 staff vacancies, according to the HSE census which was carried out almost a year ago. I believe, having spoken to a number of people, that the figures are even worse now. Yesterday the Minister announced €8.5 million to improve children's services, including the recruitment of additional therapy positions, increasing third level places, and support for specialist disability services. All of that is welcome but it is not sufficient. The Government is underestimating the problems that exist within the CDNTs. The implementation of progressing disability services has been a failure. There are almost 10,000 children with disabilities waiting for over 12 months for initial contact with a specialist team. There were 5,484 overdue applications for the assessment of need process in the first quarter of this year. This is a priority area for Sinn Féin and should be so for the Government but yesterday's announcement says otherwise. The Minister has said previously that money is not necessarily the whole problem. Obviously money and investment is needed but I am hearing that there are lots of issues with the CDNTs relating to governance and management and until they are dealt with, recruitment into those teams will not succeed.

There will be statements in the House tomorrow on section 39 and section 56 organisations and I will be speaking during that debate. I do not know, because it is not obvious, whether money has been put aside to address the pay disparity problem. Perhaps negotiations are going on to resolve that issue before the planned strike on Tuesday. I certainly hope so because a strike would have a devastating effect on disabled people and their families if it goes ahead. This issue needs to be resolved once and for all because it has been going on for so long at this stage.

In terms of the announcements in yesterday's budget relating to childcare, while there are some welcome measures to address children's needs, a number of these are short-term and will not provide much-needed long-term stability for low-income families. The one-off payments of child benefit, the back-to-school allowance, and the working family payment are all welcome but they will only have a short-lived impact for families that are already struggling. The Minister's commitment to reduce childcare fees by 25% is very welcome. However, the rationale for forcing families to wait for 11 months is baffling. There are other measures such as the extension of the free schoolbook scheme to junior cycle and the expansion of the Access and Inclusion Model, AIM, which are also very welcome. Nonetheless, it is disappointing that no future commitments were given to further reduce childcare fees. Likewise, a 74 cent increase to the universal rate of the national childcare scheme will, in reality, barely make a dent in the costs faced by parents. There are families throughout the State who are deeply disappointed by how little was invested and by how long they will have to wait as the cost-of-living crisis continues to cripple families.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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We will now move on to Department of Justice and the Minister, Deputy McEntee, who has five minutes.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The justice allocation for 2024 of €3.5 billion is a real boost in helping us build stronger, safer communities. We are doing this across a range of areas, including supporting and strengthening An Garda Síochána, establishing community safety partnerships across the country and operating a zero-tolerance approach domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. We are also investing in our courts and prisons and increasing access to justice.

I am allocating an unprecedented €2.31 billion to An Garda Síochána, an increase of over €172 million on 2023. This is an increase of 23% or €430 million in the last three years. Maintaining and enhancing our policing service by increasing Garda and civilian staff numbers is key to stronger, safer communities. This record level of funding is recognition of the need to support our individual members of An Garda Síochána who every day do superb work in often very complex and challenging circumstances. It will provide for the recruitment of between 800 and 1,000 gardaí next year. I am particularly pleased that the budget funds an increase in the Garda trainee allowance to €305, a two thirds increase on the current level in place since 2011. These increased payments will begin on 1 January, but with a backdated lump sum payment in January for those in the college between budget day and January. Specifically, €6 million is also being allocated for Garda well-being initiatives, medical costs and 2,500 units of body armour.

We recognise the devastating impact crime has, not only on the individuals whose lives have been affected, but on the wider community. More gardaí proactively patrolling in our cities, towns and rural areas as well as more Garda staff helps us to maintain law and order and makes everyone feel safer. A 25% increase in Garda overtime for 2024 will allow for continued high visibility policing and the recruitment of 250 additional Garda staff will make sure that Garda members are freed up, in so far as is possible, for front-line duties. The steady stream of Garda recruits entering and exiting Templemore will reduce the need for overtime as the year progresses.

We will open another campaign soon to help us guarantee that there are up to 200 new recruits entering Templemore every three months over the coming years.

We have all been shocked and concerned by the recent rise in fatalities on our roads. I recently announced extra funding to increase the number of GoSafe speed camera hours to 9,000 a month. In this budget, we are funding these increased hours for the duration of 2024. That should be welcomed. Taken together with very strong ongoing Garda recruitment, I hope these measures and increased numbers in our road traffic units will help to save lives on our roads.

The gross allocation of €571 million for the Department’s Vote represents an increase of €26 million on this year. The major increase in funding is to support victims and vulnerable people and will help to provide vital services to those who need them. Tackling domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is an absolute priority for me, both in providing victim-centred supports and services and also ensuring that perpetrators are punished. The budget provides an extra €12.3 million for 2024 - record funding for combatting domestic, sexual and gender-based violence. It will provide for a new agency for domestic violence, which will become fully operational in January 2024. It will also provide for additional project management support to assist local organisations in the concept, planning and construction of refuge accommodation. The funding also strengthens the nationwide supports and will help to maintain the momentum in implementing the ambitious goals set out in the zero-tolerance national strategy.

As a country, we stand firm with the people of Ukraine and can be proud of our response to the humanitarian crisis. I am pleased that we have funding of €6 million for my Department’s response. So far, we have welcomed more than 96,000 Ukrainians to Ireland and we will continue to ensure that those fleeing the conflict and seeking temporary protection here receive the support they need.

Since the pandemic, we have seen a significant rise in immigration and international protectionapplications. Additional funding of nearly €21 million will go towards increasing efficiency in processing applications to achieve more than 1,200 decisions a month in 2024.

I will shortly announce another set of successful applicants to the community safety innovation fund. This fund brings back proceeds of crime which the Criminal Assets Bureau has confiscated and invests them back into community projects. I am pleased the fund will reach €3.75 million in 2024. Next year, €2.25 million will also be provided for the roll-out of the community safety partnerships and a national co-ordination office to lead on this.

An increase of €2.5 million will bring the total allocation for the Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission to €19.2 million to support its transition to a new body under the policing, security and community safety legislation next year.

I am also pleased to have secured additional funding of €5.5 million for the Legal Aid Board and €2.5 million for probation services to support them in their essential work in diverting people from prison and offering offenders alternatives to prison. The total gross allocation for the prisons Vote is €439 million. This includes an extra €10.6 million in payroll to fund public sector pay increases and additional staff and to provide 68,000 additional hours for prison-based staff to assist with the management of the prisoner population. New staff will include a rapid prison building unit to drive the Government's intention to provide of in excess of 400 new prison spaces over the next five years. There will also be €5 million in additional non-pay funding to provide for inflationary measures and increasing costs.

The gross allocation of €183 million for the courts Vote includes capital funding of €67 million. Earlier this year, following the publication in February of the final report of the judicial planning working group, the Government committed to an historic increase of the number of judges to facilitate greater access to justice.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Minister, you are sharing time with your two colleagues and there are just six minutes left for both colleagues. You have five minutes.

Helen McEntee (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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Apologies, I thought we had ten minutes between the two of us.

Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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There are three speakers on the list. It is up to you. Sorry to interrupt the Minister. I call the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne.

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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My colleague, the Minister for Justice, has informed the House about the record justice budget for 2024, which prioritises building stronger and safer communities. The future of our communities lies with our young people, and I warmly welcome the allocation of €33 million for youth justice, which is an increase of 10% or €3 million. This will have a significant impact on individual young people, their families and their communities. Youth justice projects have changed the lives of young people and have helped them to make better choices. They offer education, training and employment supports and provide fresh starts for those who may have had a difficult start to their lives. I am particularly pleased that with these additional funds we will be able, for the first time, to offer services across the entire country so that every young person might benefit from them. No young person is born to commit a crime. Time and circumstances often lead them to committing unacceptable behaviour. We owe it to them to give them a second chance in life. It also makes our communities safer if we can get them to behave in a more pro-social way. These funds also allow for increased weekend availability and will be able to assist those vulnerable children aged between 8 and 11. The funding will resource more measures targeted at supporting families, working with schools and those young people who have proven harder to engage. Since I have had responsibility in this area, funding has increased quite significantly.

With regard to gambling, we can see from the recent report of the ESRI that the scale of problem gambling in Ireland is ten times higher than research had previously shown. As many as one in 30 adults affected are known to be impacted by problem gambling. The consequences of this can be devastating for individuals, their families and their communities. The Gambling Regulation Bill 2022 is now awaiting Report Stage and I have no doubt that early next year we will commence a new era of modern, effective licensing and regulation of the gambling industry. It is long overdue. I am pleased that the establishment of the new authority will be funded by a doubling of the allocation to €4 million in 2024. This will support the CEO-designate, Ms Anne Marie Caulfield, in leading the vital work of the authority in building a robust regulatory and licensing regime to regulate gambling in person and online. In doing so, we will reduce the harm to our young people and people who are experiencing problem gambling.

Overall, the record allocation this year for the justice group of Votes gives us the resources we need to deliver on the programme for Government.

Jennifer Carroll MacNeill (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)
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While it is very important to listen to my colleagues, including the Minister for Justice, the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth and other Ministers, outline the spending priorities of today, I will speak about the future, and the future Ireland fund that will be established as part of this budget. It probably generated the fewest headlines but it is one of the most significant things that will be done by the Government and the House in legislation to come. It was agreed and brought to the House yesterday. The future Ireland fund will take €4 billion of what is currently known as the rainy day fund and 0.8% of GDP every year thereafter. If the Government, the following Government and the one after just have the discipline not to touch it and leave it until 2035, Department of Finance officials anticipate that it will reach, through compound interest and good investment, €100 billion by 2035. If we can create a sovereign wealth fund of that scale and size, future Governments beyond 2035 will be in the very fortunate position to be able to take the piece off the top and use that for current spending.

I imagine the Ireland of 2035, with the resilience and sustainability in its public finances that comes with the existence of a fund like that, with access to the returns of it every year, the discretion to be able to spend that and the resilience that brings. We want to ensure that we can develop a fund way beyond that like Norway, which does not need to borrow and which has a fund that is so strong at this point that it will always provide sustainability for the country. I imagine, at the same time, us having brought commercially-based floating wind turbines to the west coast and the 800,000 sq. km that are there. We are the fifth largest country in the EU, including our maritime area. I imagine Ireland being able to generate electricity not just for this island but for a great part of Europe, being able to convert it to hydrogen in the Atlantic Ocean and combine that with our extraordinarily strong aircraft leasing that is looking to develop sustainable aviation fuel out of this State. I imagine the marriage of those two things happening by 2035.

This is a hugely significant decision by the Government. It is the very essence of not electioneering. It is the very essence of prudent, sustainable management not just of the public finances to date but of really planning. If there is any young person watching this debate tonight or interpreting the budget and what it means for them for the future, this fund is by far the most significant thing that has been brought to this House for some many years. We could never have imagined being in this position ten, 20 or 30 years ago. We are a small open economy that is susceptible to the shocks of the world and we have to provide for ourselves. We have to provide a resilience in our economy for the future and this fund does that if we can all just be disciplined enough not to touch it.

Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)
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The first issue I want to mention before I go into other issues is the recruitment ban that is currently in place in University Hospital Kerry for clerical and administrative staff. There are currently 50 whole-time equivalent, WTE, vacancies in that hospital in an area that has been traditionally under-resourced for years and where the administrative staff are underpinning every service within the hospital. The duties of these clerical staff include plans of care, communicating with GPs, retrieving medical health records, making appointments and supporting consultants. Imagine if there was a shortage of 50 staff or there was an announcement of 50 jobs coming to the town. There would be no shortage of Ministers willing to take credit for it. The embargo that is in place is going to cause severe problems. I know of people who are acting up at higher grades who are not being compensated or paid for doing so.

The efforts that are being made to reduce the endocrinology waiting lists and deal with cardiology are going to be affected by the lack of staff and by this embargo. I am asking the Minister to tell her colleagues to do something about it. We cannot wait until the new RHAs are appointed in 2024 before something is done about it.

On the justice side of the budget, we are playing catch-up. The Government's measures are unlikely to forestall a crisis in many areas of the justice system. Recently I received a communication from a member of An Garda Síochána in Dublin. He told me there was nobody available to take the Áras overtime in one particular station, or the Cabra overtime, so regular gardaí from Blanchardstown and Finglas had to be sent in there. Blanchardstown was then down to a minimum of one car, in an area with a population the size of Limerick. Cabra had no car, apparently, and one person left in the station. Finglas was also down to the minimum. That is the level of crisis that was going to be there when the industrial action was taken. Thankfully, there has been some progress in relation to that but we are at crisis point if these negotiations do not work out. Sinn Féin has proposed a doubling of the training allowance to try to increase the number of attestations. Every lever must be pulled in this area due to the historic issues with recruitment and retention over the last number of years. There is no harm in reiterating what numbers have been. In 2021, there were 14,200 gardaí. In 2022, there were 14,211 and in 2023 it was down to 13,900. Combined with these stagnant numbers, we now see an increase in resignations from the baseline. There were 312 departures in 2018 but 405 in 2021, 476 in 2022 and 227 up to the end of May of this year. There is of course a crisis in morale in An Garda Síochána. Only 24 had attested this year up to a few months ago, while 116 started their training in 2022. Obviously if you do the maths, there is a huge gap if we are to return to the more than 600 attestations per year.

We discussed this earlier and I know the Minister is aware of the issues relating to garda presence, the Garda Reserve and full implementation of the report of the Commission on the Future of Policing in Ireland. As I said, the roster dispute is looking more promising than it did a number of weeks ago but this agreement will not forestall further departures. The budget is unlikely to do the same either. I would be interested to see how much of the budget allocated in this area is a carryover from the last three years. There is obviously an increase in overtime with the roster that is currently in place but in many Garda divisions across the country, finding enough gardaí to actually do the overtime is the challenge. I have given one example. I have heard other stories of close to 100 days in annual leave accumulated. One can only stretch people so far before they break. New recruits are important but we are losing well-trained and experienced officers. Few gardaí are staying a day beyond their finishing date and many that I know are buying back their time to get out as early as possible.

Outside the justice portfolio and recruitment and retention, we have also received many emails from rank-and-file gardaí. They also mentioned the lack of affordable housing and having to face the prospect of emigration. Gardaí feel they are lacking support and are overburdened with paperwork and inputting. The Taoiseach seemed to be in the mood to shoot the messenger when emigration was raised with him but it is a fact that many public service professionals are leaving the country; not only gardaí but teachers and nurses are priced out of owning homes. While this is not the Minister for Justice's direct responsibility, the policies of the Government over the last 12 years are not working.

The extra provision within prisons mostly deals with increased prisoner numbers and some ICT upgrades. I would hope the Government could be more progressive in dealing with trying to reduce incarceration rates. We will shortly be introducing a Bill that will try to deal with this and have restorative justice. We will support the Government if it wants to take some of our ideas on board. With regard to the youth justice programme, while an increase of 10% is welcome, we had proposed 20% in order to deal with the crisis with young people.

Going back to the Garda issue, 136 Garda stations were closed from 2012 on and the saving has been a mere €3.2 million. Imagine if we had those Garda stations now - we might not be dealing with the problems we are dealing with. At the time, the public were promised that this would allow for rank-and-file gardaí to be redeployed to front-line duties and, of course, that never happened.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I had planned to start with something else but I have to comment on the contribution by the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, tonight. It was quite something else to spend her minutes talking about the Future Ireland fund and to say this is the most significant thing any Government has done ever in this country, that is, to allow for €4 billion to go into a fund that will, each year, accumulate 0.8% of GDP so we will have €100 billion by 2035. She said to imagine you were a young person now listening to that and how exciting your future be, knowing that we would be able to, for example, have commercial offshore wind floating off the west of Ireland and expand the aviation industry. That last sentence says it all for me. Who in their right mind plans for a future by putting commercial offshore wind on the coast instead of State-run, not-for-profit offshore wind, and at the same time says this will help expand the aviation industry? The Minister of State clearly does not understand anything about science or climate. If that is the future for the young people listening in, I hope more of them will get out and march against this Government's climate policy, which is hallmarked by an unsustainable expansion of data centres and the imposition of a cruel carbon tax that is supposed to get them to change their behaviour, when they live out in the sticks and have no access to public transport or have poorly-insulated homes and have to keep the heating on because they are old and cold. For me, that says this Government is really codding itself.

I know all the devil will be in the detail of this budget when it plays out over the next period of time but like they say, you can fool some of the people some of the time but you cannot fool all of them all of the time. This budget has utterly failed to deal with the growing crises we have in this country. The crisis in poverty is not a once-off. It will not be dealt with or go away because of once-off payments. That is what this budget is doing. It is giving the poorest a once-off payment to help them pay off debts that they have accumulated in energy and other bills, such as medical bills etc., but it is not dealing with the systemic crisis in poverty.

The housing crisis and homelessness are not a once-off. This budget has done nothing - zero - to deal with that most shocking crisis in homelessness and housing. In fact, I had some constituents asking me about this today. I live in a big working-class area called Ballyfermot. My constituency is littered with working-class areas with second-hand houses. These people are being excluded from the first-time buyers' allowance if they want to buy a second-hand home. It only applies to new housing. Where is the logic in that for a whole swathe of people who live in our city?

To deal with the crisis in climate, I have commented on what I could not believe my ears hearing from the Minister of State earlier about how we will deal with it into the future. It is just incredible. It is incredible tomfoolery to think that is what is going to happen, making out that we can rely on some far-flung technology that does not exist into the future and then all of a sudden in 2035 we will all have a great life. That is 12 years' time.

Pensioners may have gotten a €12 increase today but according to Social Justice Ireland and the figures produced by the CSO, their income will be down by 5.2% because of the lack of attention being paid to their poverty and the choices they have to make in life between food and heating etc. We all know about them. These choices are being made while profiteering and price-gouging continue, particularly in groceries. There are statistics here from Social Justice Ireland showing us that something like 95% of people are worried about the impact of rising food prices. When we discussed this a few months ago in this House, the Minister of State with responsibility for retail, Deputy Richmond, ran off to have a showdown with the supermarket bosses. What happened? Absolutely nothing. Prices have continued to rise, as have profits. Indeed, food inflation is running at 12.2% at the moment and is the biggest concern for most ordinary workers. Many of them are women.

This budget has done nothing to address the crisis of low pay for women because of the type of gender-based jobs they mainly do.

Women earning between €15 and €20 an hour will get nothing, while people who are better paid, such as me, will have a permanent fix in their income such that they will not have to pay more. As the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, ICTU, pointed out today, a nurse working overtime will pay more taxes on their income than a landlord earning the same sum on a passive income from rent, with which they do not have to do anything.

This budget shows a shocking disregard for the long-term crises in this country and it has failed utterly to deal with them. As I said, the devil will be in the detail over the coming months and we will see what comes out, but most of all, it is ignoring poverty and homelessness among children. At the same time, the Minister of State, Deputy Carroll MacNeill, tells those children to wait until 2035, when there will be windmills and more radiation. What in the name of God sort of rhetoric is that to put to people who live day to day in cruel crises, whether in homelessness or poverty or struggling to get their kids to school and keep them there, where they have to use the hot meals programme, or else go to food banks? The Government should wake up and smell the coffee because this is an outrageous treatment of people when we have never before had as much money in the coffers.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My priority for budget 2024 was to support families and households throughout the winter and beyond. We have delivered a budget that puts more money back into people's pockets. As Minister for Social Protection, I advocated for the need to look after our pensioners, carers, people with disabilities, working families and vulnerable groups, and this evening I am pleased to set out the details of the largest social protection budget package in the history of the State. The overall social protection budget 2024 package is €2.3 billion. When combined with last year's package, this means we are now investing an additional €4.5 billion in society.

Budget 2024 contains nine lump-sum cost-of-living payments that will ease the financial pressures facing many households. These include a €300 lump-sum payment to all households in receipt of the fuel allowance; a €200 payment to all those in receipt of the living allowance; a double child benefit payment to support all families with young children in the run-up to Christmas; a €400 lump-sum payment for those in receipt of the working family payment, which is a vital support for working families on low incomes; a €400 disability support grant, in recognition of the increased costs faced by people living with disabilities; and a €400 payment to those in receipt of the carer's support grant. The Christmas bonus double payment will be paid in December to support pensioners, carers, people with disabilities and lone parents. We will pay a January bonus, which will be a further double payment, to all those who normally receive the Christmas bonus. We also have an additional lump-sum payment, a new €100 lump-sum payment, on each qualified child payment. Tackling child poverty is a commitment of the Taoiseach, and the Government has put a huge focus on reducing child poverty when framing budget 2024.

Budget 2024 also delivers a comprehensive package of new measures on top of the lump-sum payments I outlined. I have secured a €12 increase in all weekly social welfare payments, taking effect from January, and over the past three budgets I have increased weekly social welfare rates by €29 a week. When we consider that not so long ago, there were budgets in which a €3 increase was the norm, or maybe it was no increase at all, a €29 increase in weekly payments over the lifetime of the Government to date is significant.

I am expanding the hot school meals scheme to a further 900 primary schools and 150,000 children next year. This programme is a priority for me. When this extension takes effect, I will have grown it from just 30 schools to more than 2,000 primary schools nationwide, meaning we are well on our way to universal provision in all primary schools. I am pleased to extend the child benefit to 18-year-olds in full-time education, something that was raised me. Most children are starting school at five now and a lot of students are doing transition year, so this extension will be a big help to families. I am also increasing the weekly income threshold of the working family payment by €54, in line with the increase in the minimum wage, to ensure families will get the benefit in their pocket. I am also extending the parent's benefit by two weeks to nine weeks, which will be a big help to young parents. I am increasing the domiciliary care allowance by €10 per month, meaning that over the past two budgets, I have increased it by more than €30. Completing our broad range of measures to tackle child poverty is the weekly increase of €4 for the qualified child payment. This means parents in receipt of a primary welfare payment will receive €46 per week for a child under 12 and €54 for a child aged 12 or over.

We are reducing the hourly threshold for employers availing of the wage subsidy scheme from 21 to 15 hours. This is based on feedback from disability organisations during our consultation. I am especially pleased to announce the first expansion of my Department's free travel scheme for many years. I am extending the free travel pass to anyone who is medically certified as unable to drive. This will be a big help to many people and I thank Epilepsy Ireland, which worked with me on advancing this proposal. I am also increasing the income disregard for the carer's allowance scheme to €450 for a single person and €900 for a couple. This is the second expansion of the carer's means test I have made in recent years and it will enable thousands more carers to qualify for the payment. In addition, I am setting up a working group at the Department of Health to examine the entire means-test system and how we can adequately support carers for the work they do.

The Government has decided the State pension age will remain at 66. To meet the additional cost of retaining the pension age at 66, it is important we begin to address the long-term sustainability challenges faced by our pension system with phased increases to PRSI. That is why we are increasing PRSI on an incremental basis over a number of years, starting at a 0.1% increase from 1 October 2024. Keeping the pension age at 66 is an important long-term benefit for workers, but the Government also wants to enhance the short-term benefits available for workers. For this reason and to coincide with the introduction of PRSI increases next year, we will introduce a new pay-related benefit system. This is an important reform to our social welfare system that will reduce the income shock experienced by people who lose their job. I will announce full details of these changes later this year as part of the social welfare Bill.

Budget 2024 was about supporting families and households who need it most, and I believe I have delivered a range of supports that achieve this objective. For example, a lone parent with two children will, between lump sums and targeted measures, benefit from an additional €2,448 from the measures I outlined. A pensioner couple will receive an additional €2,514 and a carer caring for one of their two children will receive an additional €2,580. As a Government, we are doing as much as we possibly can and I believe this is a fair and balanced budget package with a mix of targeted and universal measures, combined with a broad range of cost-of-living payments, all designed to protect the living standards of people across society.

Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party)
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As Minister of State with responsibility in three Departments, I will use my brief time to touch on some of the key budget 2024 measures in each of those Departments. Last year, with the outbreak of the Ukraine war, when Ukrainian families flowed into our communities throughout the country, the community and voluntary sector stood up to the plate. One of the key groups of organisations that reacted on the ground was the State's social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP, implemented by local development companies throughout the country. Their response was extraordinary but they needed more boots on the ground and, therefore, we were last year given an additional allocation of €10 million to employ additional people in 2023. I am glad to say that allocation has been continued into 2024, along with the allocation of an additional €1 million for the volunteer centres, which are doing extraordinary work. In addition to that, the increase in the SICAP budget for this year is also notable in terms of the core spending with an increase of €4.6 million. There have been increased pressures from operating costs in SICAP programmes and I hope this will go a significant way towards addressing them.

Another significant increase in the budget allocation is the more than doubling of the funding in the ESF+ social innovation fund, from €1 million to €2.5 million. This increase will help lever multiples of this sum from the EU and help mentor and support social enterprises throughout Ireland. There is also a doubling of the VAT compensation scheme for charities, from €5 million to €10 million, which will greatly assist charities to reduce their VAT burden, thereby ensuring they will retain more funds for their invaluable work. I thank the Minister, Deputy Michael McGrath, for his support on this measure.

I want to take a moment to acknowledge the sad passing of Chuck Feeney this week, one of the most positively influential philanthropists and a prolific contributor to so many good causes in the community and voluntary sector in Ireland.

This is an opportune time to update the House that we are on target to have our first national philanthropy policy by the end of the year. We gained a small additional allocation in budget 2024 to help us implement this policy.

I will touch briefly on some relevant measures for which I have responsibility in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. I have responsibility for the national action plan against racism, and I am glad to say funding was secured for a new office of special rapporteur on racism in 2024. I have been having bilateral discussions with relevant Government Departments since the launch of the plan, but there needs to be consistent non-political oversight of the plan, and the new office will play a key role in this regard. We have another round of the Ireland Against Racism fund in 2024 to support the implementation of the plan, along with a national awareness raising campaign. The year 2024 will also see rollout of new iterations of a number of measures that will support the integration of new arrivals to Ireland at community and national level. We will have a communities integration fund next year, and I launched applications for the national integration fund recently. I will be launching the larger asylum, migration and integration fund in a few weeks. Both of these are multi-annual funds. In a couple of weeks we will also be launching a consultation process for a new national integration strategy.

I will briefly touch on some measures within the Department of Social Protection. I chair the working group on food poverty and I want to highlight the role of the school meals programme in tackling food poverty for children, in particular the hot school meals programme. This will undergo further unprecedented growth in 2024 following the allocation of an additional €40 million in yesterday's budget. I acknowledge the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, and her passion and push on this growth. I welcome the Taoiseach's focus on child poverty and especially the measures in yesterday's budget on the increase for qualified child and working family payment. I have been advocating for this and the research I have commissioned tells us they are the most effective payments in reducing poverty rates overall in society.

I will point to a number of other measures championed by my colleagues in Government, in particular the continued reduction in public transport fares and expansion of the youth card to 24-year-olds and 25-year-olds by the Minister, Deputy Eamon Ryan. I note the extraordinary additional 25% reduction in childcare fees by the Minster for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, Deputy O'Gorman. I also acknowledge a huge achievement, which is the introduction of the new infrastructure, climate and nature fund, which will protect our biodiversity and climate targets going forward.

Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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One-off payments are welcome, but it is not accompanied by a long-terms vision for supporting individuals, workers and families, those with disabilities and those who need protection from poverty. The initial reactions from those working with families and workers in poverty and struggling to meet the ever increasing cost of living are damning. Social Justice Ireland has said that the decision to allocate substantial resources to the wealthy rather than the poorest in our society at a time when inflation is eroding the value of existing income supports and driving up the cost of living is manifestly unjust. For example, landlords will receive €600 in 2024 in the form of a tax cut equivalent to the annual value of the €12 increase to the core social welfare payments. Social Justice Ireland said it is profoundly disappointed that Government decisions benefit the better off, while the poorest are falling further behind.

In our budget submission Sinn Féin allocated €1.6 billion to increase core weekly payments for pensioners, carers, people with disabilities and others who depend on social welfare for a wide range of reasons. The Government has allocated just €1.1 billion. That is half a billion euro less. We would have gone much further in tackling child poverty to ensure that parents got one parent family payment to the age of 12 instead of the existing age of seven, and jobseeker's transitional payment until the age of 15. We would have given fuel allowance to low-income families on working family payments, and increased qualifying child payment by €10 and €5 for over and under 12-year-olds respectively for 2024. The Government's proposals fall far short.

People on disability payments and carers are being neglected. Sinn Féin would have increased disability related payments by €20 and there is no increase in carer's support grants. Child benefit is still below 2008 levels. It is €140 now, and it was €166 then. It was cut by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Given the energy costs it is unacceptable that the core rate of fuel allowance was not increased at all. Sinn Féin would have increased it by €5 and ensured that families on low incomes would have got it by extending it to those in receipt of the worker family payment.

I will address a couple of issues concerning community development. Unfortunately there was a lost opportunity to help many communities, particularly those in disadvantaged communities, who are still reeling from the austerity years. I acknowledge that we are immensely proud of the communities that have warmly welcomed those who have come to this State to seek shelter or a new life. The reality is that it has put immense pressure on education, health, housing and in particular our community infrastructure. The additional €1 million is pretty paltry. I do not believe that the funding allocated is anywhere near sufficient to meet those needs. In fact, when I was looking over the budget, intently listening to it yesterday and reading over it again today I was almost struggling to figure out how I would fit two and a half minutes into any of the additional supports for our communities.

Last week I raised again the issue of workers in our community who are seeking pay restoration to support retention of workers. We met them in Leinster House today. We met them in the AV room, and they are going on strike next Tuesday because they believe the Government has let them down again and again. Why are these most dedicated people going on strike? They are people who have stuck it out since 2008 when the initial cuts were put in place. They have watched others in the public sector get their pay restoration. They have watched with envy as these workers rightly got their pay restoration and increments and the respect of the State. Yet, these workers who are doing exactly the same incredibly important work are being left to go on strike to seek their payments. It is ironic that if these services were to close in the morning, the State would have to take them over. The State would have to do it, and would have to pay people in the public service to do the work they are refusing to pay the people in section 39, section 56 and section 10 organisations.

I will also quickly talk about the community service programme. I met a project the other day, and people talked about the increase in the minimum wage and the community service programme. They told me how difficult it was for some of those projects to raise the payment they get from Pobal up to the minimum wage. Some can obviously afford to bring it up to living wage, and they do. We need to insert something in the community services programme, in the next couple of months, to make sure those who are getting the increase in the minimum wage are the ones who need that support now. They are struggling and they will struggle in coming months.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I welcome budget 2024 as it takes important steps towards rewarding those who work diligently and help individuals earn more of their hard-earned wages. This budget displays a significant commitment to supporting households, public services, community services and businesses facing the challenges of inflation and the rising costs of living. One of the highlights of this budget is the €1.3 billion tax package that includes increasing the entry point to the top 40% tax rate by an impressive €9,200 over the past decade. This shift from €32,800 in 2014 to €42,000 next year is welcome relief for hardworking individuals. In addition, the reduction of the universal social charge, USC, from 4.5% to 4% further eases the financial burden on the average full-time worker, providing them with more than €1,000 in savings when factoring in other measures. Furthermore, the minimum wage will see a substantial increase of €1.40 per hour raising it to €12.70, which is a positive development. We must also acknowledge the potential impact this may have on staffing costs for many businesses, in particular the hospitality sector, which has already faced challenges with the recent VAT increase to 13.5%. To assist small and medium-sized businesses, this budget is in some way covering their operational costs through the increased cost of business scheme, which will offer a one time grant to approximately 130,000 firms.

These grants will be provided in tiered amounts equal to up to 50% of the commercial rates paid by the firms this year. To qualify for these payments, companies must be paying commercial rates of €20,000 or less. I have received many queries on the scheme, especially from businesses in hospitality, urging that the Government reconsider the commercial rates threshold and possibly raise it to €50,000. This adjustment would help offset their significant staffing cost increases resulting from the higher minimum wage.

While I appreciate the allocation of €800 million to support the healthcare sector, I emphasise that there remains an urgent need in my constituency with regard to an emergency department at Mayo University Hospital. This crucial project is essential for our county. I urge the Government to expedite its development. The announcement of an independent evaluation of investment priorities, fuelled by windfall corporation tax receipts, is promising. I implore the Minister to leverage this initiative to fast-track the development at Mayo University Hospital.

I am also in favour of the 0.5% reduction in the USC. That is an important step forward.

In education, it is crucial we continue to reduce the financial burden on students and parents. The reduction in college fees for families with an income of less than €100,000, halving full-time undergraduate fees to €1,500, is a step in the right direction. We must also expand State support for postgraduate degrees and increase student grants. Abolishing college fees for those earning less than €56,000 and extending this benefit to part-time and online studies will make education accessible to a broader range of individuals.

The additional €11 million package for special schools will create 100 special education teacher posts. That is really important and will improve supports for children in these schools.

On the extension of the Leap card, it would be beneficial to include private coach operators without PSO routes in the scheme, given their role in sustainability. The prioritisation of purpose-built student accommodation is also a pressing issue requiring immediate solution.

Agriculture, a cornerstone of rural communities such as mine, deserves attention. The increased payment per ewe of €20 is welcome and a positive step.

The provision of 1,000 new Garda trainees, increased Garda overtime and the boost in the Garda training allowance are steps towards building a more resilient Garda force.

The budget presents several positive initiatives while also raising important areas for further consideration.

Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I am glad to have the opportunity to acknowledge the Government's achievement in delivering such an extensive and expansive budget. This happens not by accident but by design. It happens when there is constant and ongoing international investment and a progressive taxation system which rewards work and generates revenue. Those have put us in a position to deliver this budget.

The Government has played a pivotal role in leading and ensuring the State responded to the challenges presented in recent years by Brexit, the Covid pandemic and the ongoing issues associated with the cost-of-living crisis. We have assisted businesses and families and have assisted State bodies and the public services in ensuring that response was sufficient. The budget overshoots the 5% net spending increase year to year by only 1.1% and, in doing so, strikes a balance that will counteract a decreasing but potentially debilitating inflation rate. The commitment on tax was alluded to by the previous speaker, in relation to a €1.3 billion package. I am glad to see Fianna Fáil’s influence has ensured lower paid workers were especially rewarded and considered in the package provided yesterday.

On the core spending increase of €5.3 billion, it must meet the costs to stand still while accommodating the challenge of increased demographics and an increased and ageing population, ensuring we can cater for new teachers and SNAs and remaining conscious of the 22,000 extra workers who have joined the health service in recent years.

Garda numbers have been increased to the figure required to meet the demand in communities and to do so in a way that improves the lot of the trainees who put themselves forward by providing better pay for them during that period in the development of their career. We have ensured, at a cost, that we can stand still and we have recognised the recurring health overrun over years, which is partly due to the new services provided in health. While we are still not meeting the demands we would like to meet, we are striving to do so. We are now left with the task of ensuring there is prioritisation by those in power and in government to meet the commitments made in the programme for Government, especially the commitments to look after those who cannot look after themselves to the extent that others can, for example, people with disabilities, pensioners and carers, to assist families with education costs and to address deficiencies in agriculture, including, as has been alluded to, specifically targeting the sheep sector. The package on taxation is geared towards young workers.

The budget also recognises that the cost associated with delivering a national development plan over the next four years is greater than was envisaged three years ago owing to increases in interest rates and the cost of construction and the delays associated with planning. There is provision of €2.25 billion from windfall corporation tax receipts to address a 6.5% to 10% increase across the next four years. The Government has shown the foresight not to be selfish and, rather than looking after everything and everybody using insufficient non-recurring funds from corporation tax, it has instead put in place a sovereign wealth fund and Ireland’s future fund. It will use funding from these to address the low-carbon economy and the demands that will be placed on many sectors as a result of the commitments we have made there. This has been done to make an investment that will yield a return and provide for that spending to be met even in the event of a downturn.

The summer economic statement was made in the House earlier in the year. The only change since, apart from the headline rates and commitments, has been a slowdown in the revenues associated with corporation tax. We have been mindful of that.

The Opposition homes in on housing, despite the record level of funding for initiatives aimed at various cohorts that need help and assistance, including Croí Cónaithe, the first homes scheme and assistance with deposits. There is record funding to local authority housing associations. Targets can be met. Maybe they could be met quicker but the issue with addressing those targets is the time it takes to deliver them. The greatest logjam and obstacle to delivery is in planning.

I impress upon members of all parties and none in the Dáil the need to participate, engage, scrutinise and improve the legislation being brought forward in the form of the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2023. This will present many opportunities for Members to address a planning system that has created a huge logjam preventing the development of housing, infrastructure and, ultimately, the betterment of the people we represent. We have to recognise the failures associated with An Bord Pleanála not having statutory time periods to issue decisions and also with the practice whereby those who take actions have been awarded costs against the victors in court. Our courts system, right the way up to the Supreme Court, is holding up development. That non-financial intervention in the market will challenge many here, if housing is to be addressed in the way it can and should be with the money provided by this Government in recent years.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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I will start with the increase in the minimum wage. Before I do, I point out that I am an employer so I understand where this comes from, I understand what it means for employees to get more money and I have no problem with this. However, employees need to know about the increase they are getting. Based on a 40-hour week, a person on €11.30 would gross €452 and would have a net wage of €405.92, and the employee pays €46.08 in tax and the employer pays €49.95. That is a total of €96.03 in taxes between the employee and the employer. The new payment will mean the gross payment rises to €508, which gives a net wage of €452.29, which means the employee pays €55.71 in tax and the employer pays €56.14, at a total cost of €564.14. However, the employee and the employer between them will now pay €111.85 so the Government is taking more tax again on the increase in the wage. When we work it out over a 40-hour week, due to the increase in the wage, the Government is taking eight hours back in tax before they start. Do the employees know that? The only people who are being rewarded tonight are the taxman and the Government.

There is a knock-on effect from this. Who is going to pay for the increase? It is the consumer. When people go into a local shop, a hospitality business or any business, the prices are increasing because of this. That means people are going to pay more for produce than they do at the moment, which means this is causing inflation. What could the Government have done differently to put money into people's pockets? It could have reduced taxes. What has it done? It has taken more tax and put more pressure on small businesses to increase their prices to pay the employees more, and they need this extra pay because of the inflation which the Government has now driven on again. That is what it has done.

Let us consider fuel tax, where the Government currently takes 50 cent in every €1 in tax. If the Government had taken less tax, it is not only that the price of fuel would come down for a person driving a vehicle, but transport costs would come down for those delivering food to their doors or the local shops, and transport costs would come down for those taking milk from the farmers to the co-ops. It would have put money straight back into people's pockets and the Government would not have got any extra tax. However, at the moment, the Government is taking 50 cent in every €1 in tax. It was within its gift to bring tax down and put money into people's pockets but, no, it decided to go this route, which is going to put small businesses under pressure to increase their costs. What does the Government get out of it? It gets extra tax.

I met with the local hospitality sector and I asked about the VAT increase from 9% to 13.5%. Let us take a basic bacon and cabbage dinner as an example. The Government has added 70 cent to each plate in the hospitality sector, that is, 70 cent has been added back in tax for the same people to whom the Government is giving an increase. That is what it has done. Let us take another example from the hospitality sector, where, say, somebody wants to get married or have a partnership, or have an engagement, christening or confirmation event. As a result of the VAT increase in the hospitality sector, per 100 people, the Government has added €400 to the bill. Not only has it added to the minimum wage and increased costs to cover that, it has now taken another €400 from the same people whose wages have been increased by adding it on in taxes on the hospitality sector, where these people might go out.

We then go to electricity. It costs €50 per kWh to produce electricity. We were being charged €150 per kWh last year and then the Government came in and said it was going to cap it, but it was going to cap it at €120 per kWh, so it allowed the electricity companies in this country to have a 140% profit on electricity - that is what it has allowed ESB Networks. Again, who is paying for it? It is the same people who are going to get an increase tomorrow in the minimum wage, but the Government is now taking it back in another tax through the lights in their houses. Therefore, the Government has now taken it from the food on their table; if they go out, it has taken the increase from them; and it has taken extra tax from them because of the increase in their wages. The Government has actually given them nothing and all it has done is driven inflation, and the Government is the only one that is going to get extra tax.

We then come to the Garda. The Government talks about 1,000 extra gardaí. Gardaí are leaving in their droves because the Government appointed somebody who has destroyed morale in the Garda service.

We turn to farming. I have just met Macra na Feirme at the Oireachtas agriculture committee. The budget is way down from last year’s for the agricultural sector and, yet again, the Government is driving inflation with everything that it does.

The only thing the Government is doing is creating more tax for the coffers. It is not fooling people in this country. It has created more inflation when it could have reduced taxes and put more money into the pockets of people who are struggling. If it reduced taxes on a very simple thing like fuel, it would have a knock-on effect through every producer and business in this country, through transport networks and across the board. The Government could have put an extra €50 or €60 in everyone's pocket but, no, it decided to drive inflation up, get more tax and let people think they were winning. Well done to the Government. It is easy to know you do not have one businessperson between you.