Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak on today's budget. This is a unique budget. It is the first, and possibly the last, of its kind. It is, in reality, the first ever Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil joint budget, and Fianna Fáil should do the decent thing and vote in favour of the measures it managed to negotiate.

It is said that this country's annual budget is the primary opportunity for a Government to set out its political agenda. It allows the Government of the day to give character, as it were, to its ambitions and to provide for important financial measures. However, there is very little by way of a central narrative to this budget. What was presented to us today was a hurriedly cobbled together patchwork of pet projects designed to buy off some vested interests, for the time being at least. It is a budget that was hammered together by a party that is in office, but not in power, supported by an outfit that lusts for power but is incapable of taking responsibility, at least until it becomes top dog, and with the pointless passengers from the Independent Alliance in the back seat, who do not seem to have much of a clue about how to manage the power they have. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, appears to believe that his Department is that much of a doddle, there is no new transport funding whatsoever. He must be entirely satisfied with how things are going.

Hard choices and decisions have been put off. In a budget where everybody gets something small for fear of alienating one group or another, we run the risk of doing little of any real value to our society as a whole. There is no shortage of quick fixes, but there is a lack of a real and coherent vision. As we all know, any vision for a better, fairer society must be paid for because it costs money.

For my part, and that of my party, I am sending the message we believe was sent to us by the electorate in February, and that was sent to everybody else, that we are firmly of the view that the demands for continued investment in public services, housing, education and health services, and welfare systems are far more compelling than the need to deliver the equivalent of the cost of a cup of coffee to someone on the average industrial wage in terms of USC cuts.

The Labour Party is proud of the role we played with Fine Gael in restoring this country's economic fortunes, fixing the economy, getting people back to work, and starting again that process of reinvesting in our public services. We know there is still some way to go to sustain our economic recovery and put it on a sound footing, but nowhere is the struggle to make ends meet for working families more challenging than in the area of affordable child care. The Minister, Deputy Zappone, a politician for whom I have the utmost respect, today announced a new approach to supporting families with children in child care. There are some aspects of this scheme which are laudable, but there are also elements of it that surprise and concern me. My party has proposed, in our alternative budget, that a genuinely universal scheme for all children under the age of 12 should be introduced, capping the cost to parents at €4.25 an hour for up to 40 hours per week. Importantly, we also proposed that we would build on the paternity leave system we introduced recently by adding an extra two weeks of shared leave.

Not only is there no sign of that type of initiative from the Government, the Minister, Deputy Zappone, does not provide for the payment of a living wage, or anything near it, to those who work with our children. We know that about 60% of all those who work in the child care sector, some of whom are incredibly well qualified, are paid well below what might be considered to be a living wage of €11.50 an hour. That has to be addressed now. I am surprised that the Minister, Deputy Zappone, has not done so. If we value our children, we must properly value those who work with them, but perhaps we should not be surprised. After all, this is a Government that has awarded a paltry 10 cent increase in the minimum wage, which is due to come in on 1 January. We have 70,000 people currently working on the national minimum wage and their hard work pays them very little. This increase is next to worthless as it will be eroded by inflation in 2017. Someone working 30 hours a week in a national minimum wage job gets less of an increase than someone who is on jobseeker's benefit. I thought the Fine Gael Party wanted to make work pay. Today, we are no closer to the Government amending the governing legislation for the Low Pay Commission to allow this Administration reach its own target of €10.50 for the national minimum wage during the term of this Government. This budget represents yet another missed opportunity. The Government’s commitment to the low paid lies in tatters. I am pleased to see that social welfare increases will be provided for. It would, however, have been possible for Government to go all the way and restore the additional Christmas payment in full. There is an underspend of approximately €360 million across Departments and a €129 million underspend in the form of savings on national debt interest repayments. These resources from the 2016 allocation would be well spent on fully restoring the payment that Fianna Fáil abolished when it was last in government. My party would propose an additional €375 million for the creaking health budget. That would be €70 million more than the Government plans to spend next year. This would enable prescription charges to come down to a maximum of €10 per month - €1 per item capped at €10 per month and not just a reduction of a fiver in that cap to €20 for pensioners over the age of 70. The Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Ross, has been reported as saying that this is a victory for older people. If that is the case, I shudder to think what a defeat would look like in his eyes. The extra resources we would deploy, which we have costed, would lead to an additional €20 million being allocated in respect of home-care packages. The €10 million extra allocation that this Government appears to be targeting in that direction will not even clear the current backlog.

I am stunned that the Government has halted the work started by Labour in the previous Administration - and supported at that time by Fine Gael - to further reduce class sizes. This is a mistake and under-pressure teachers will be affronted by this failure. Reducing the pupil-teacher ratio in primary schools by one point would cost approximately €6 million. I cannot find anything in the Estimates to suggest it is going to come down. I could go on about the poorly-designed and damaging tax measures targeted at first-time buyers which we all know will end up in the pockets of property developers and the shameful fact that overseas development aid does not appear to have been increased at all. We could not find any reference to it but I stand to be corrected if that is not the case.

With pension increases to kick in in March and not on 1 January, I advise that we all pop down to Paddy Power and put any spare fivers we have on an election in March or April because this budget offers "something for everyone in the audience" but no clear and coherent vision of what this society and economy should look like.