John Dolan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

This is a more than disappointing budget. After the dramatics of red lines, carefully planned leaks and statements on the plinth, it is a huge missed opportunity. Last week, I and my colleagues in the Civil Engagement group called for a very prudential policy to be adopted and we urged the Government to heed the cost of not investing in public services. We highlighted the need for the Government to demonstrate a commitment to lone-parent families, climate change, education, addiction support services and people living with disabilities. These areas have suffered from years of underinvestment and austerity era cuts.

I will begin with the subject of disability. Every one of us in Ireland was shell shocked, confused, disorientated, frightened and angry ten years ago. We could not believe what was happening. Over the next 12 months, another 60,000 people and families will experience disability for the first time. In March of this year the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, CRPD, was to be ratified but it was a false dawn. There has been no announcement of a Government project or plan or any ambition to make things right for people with disabilities. There is horrendous unemployment, rising poverty, poorer education outcomes, a long-term housing crisis and huge waiting lists for children’s services and therapies and personal assistance services. There is apartheid in public transport provision.

I am not naive. The Minister says we have more special needs assistants but they are there because of demographic pressures. Funding for the disability allowance has increased to €150 million and a further €80 million has been provided for mental health but that is a post-ratification response. These announcements are an improvement on last year’s budget, which I welcome. The response, however, must be made redundant because the Government and the Dáil ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities unanimously. I welcome the 2020 commitment to disability proofing.

I ask the Minister not to say we cannot do everything in one year. I know that is the case. This budget did not consider it important enough to unveil a whole-of-Government disability inclusion project with the ambition of implementing the CRPD over time. Níl aon tosach maith anseo - there is no good start here. The intent of Government in ratification is now in question, or at any rate its capacity to implement a Government policy, which was agreed last March, is in question.

In his Budget Statement, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Paschal Donohoe, said that Brexit was the challenge of our generation. I put it to the Government that unanimous ratification of the CRPD made disability inclusion a challenge for our generation and, more particularly, a challenge for our Government. This Budget Statement reneged on that challenge. People with disabilities were brought to the top of the hill last March and today they rightly feel that they have been slapped down. I challenge the Minister to prove me wrong. If the Government does that, I will be the first to acknowledge it.

Prudent investments in home care were mentioned. Let us talk about the hundreds of millions of euro being spent wastefully on residential care and long stays in hospital for people with dementia. There is €330,000 being spent for hospital beds per person per year on people who cannot be discharged due to a severe lack of funding for home care. An increase in social welfare benefits for carers of only €5 per week and a modest increase of €300 in the home carer tax credit have been announced. That is all welcome but falls far short of what is needed to address the needs of carers in Ireland. Earlier, Senator Kelleher called on the Minister for Health and the Minister of State with special responsibility for older people to come into the Seanad to address directly how this budget will close the dementia gap and to elaborate on the HSE national service plan and its delivery on dementia. I echo that call now.

It is welcome that some attention has been paid to the education sector, but the adjustments here are minor. The 950 new special needs assistants and the increase in the per-pupil capitation rate by 5% are a step in the right direction, but we are still way behind where we were in 2010, and we have no plan to reduce class sizes this year. Increasing the National Training Fund levy is the right thing to do, but simply providing for 3,500 new undergraduate higher education places is failing to address the fundamental problems that sector is facing. Education must be accessible to everyone in order for us to build a true Republic of opportunity and this budget has done little more than nod in the direction of that aspiration.

A commitment to gender and equality budgeting was articulated in the programme for Government and with the national strategy for women and girls, and progress has been recommended by the Committee on Budgetary Oversight in its report this year, as well as in the Government’s document accompanying last year's budget. What steps have been taken this year? Has the tax incentive for landlords, for example, been analysed for its impact on gender inequality, specifically in the context of lone-parent families? Senator Higgins has been calling for significant increases in support for lone parents who have disproportionately borne the burden of budget cuts and the failure to invest. She welcomes the €5 increase in qualified child payment for teenagers and the increased income disregard for those on one-parent family payments. However, lone parents are also disproportionately affected by homelessness and it is concerning that the refurbishment tax incentive for landlords may push the most vulnerable tenants out. Much more could and should be done. Failing to invest in lone-parent families means they are more likely to live in deprivation, they are more likely to be homeless and their children are three times more likely to live in consistent poverty.

There was a chance to invest in real, functioning and caring addiction support services in this budget. The potential longer-term effects of failing to do this are serious, putting pressure on mental health services and impacting children, as well as devastating families. Alcohol harm alone costs the State €2.3 billion every year.

On the environment, yesterday the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made public the shocking finding that we have just a few years to ensure we do not exceed the 1.5° Celsius global temperature increase to which we committed. It is staggering that the Government has today decided not to rebalance the cost of fuels or to encourage and incentivise non-polluting and more efficient fuels, despite this having been well flagged in advance. This decision was described today by the environmental pillar as two fingers to everyone under 35, two fingers to the Paris Agreement, and two fingers to the hundreds of millions living in Africa, Asia and Latin America.Actions speak louder than words. Today, the Government has sent a message that will be heard loud and clear, that Ireland does not take its international commitments seriously, does not take climate change seriously, and does not take the responsibility to protect our beautiful country. What makes all of this worse is that we will face EU fines of between €150 million and €600 million as a result of reneging on our binding promises to the rest of the world. That is a waste of money, a waste of time and a wasted opportunity to green our economy. We have a carefully crafted budget today, a budget for the moment, but one that, sadly, weakens the achievement of long-term social improvements.