Gerald Nash (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I enjoyed Senator Lawlor's contribution because he, I and many others in this House served either in this House or in the Lower House for the period of the previous Government. I do not think we will ever forget the hand that we were dealt and the difficult decisions that had to be made to refloat this economy to make sure it and this society had a future. After many tough years we know that the economy has indeed recovered. Now it is time for a social recovery.

This budget was an opportunity to fix the housing crisis structurally, to start to make education genuinely free, and to create a health service that works for everyone when they need it, not just for those who can afford to pay for it themselves. What we got instead was tinkering around the edges with bits and pieces here and there. It was a "Late Late Show" budget, with something small for almost everyone in the audience. When one tries to be all things to all people, there is sometimes the tendency to end up dissatisfying everyone.

In that sense, it is a budget without a clear focus. I am still not sure of its purpose other than the fact that it was designed to facilitate staying in office and potentially to buy an election that may very well be around the corner. It has not manifestly tackled head on any of the major issues facing us a society. I disagree with what Senator Kieran O'Donnell said earlier on. He tried to discern some kind of principle that is central to this budget. I cannot discern any particular theme, central narrative or single big objective or idea that would convince me, at least based on this and the previous budget, that the Government has any real interest in truly tackling the big social issues head on and transforming our society in the way it should be transformed.

The annual budget is a ritual that gives the Government of the day the chance to stamp its philosophy and complexion on the direction of the country. Today, we know a little more about the raison d’êtreof this Administration. For the first time in more than a decade, which was a very difficult period for many thousands of people in this country, we have real choices to make as a State. Do we use all of the extra resources that we have to provide as many homes as we can for our people, or do we decide to cut taxes? I know what side my party and I are on.

This is a conservative budget package in every sense of the word that objectively gives most in terms of tax cuts to the better-off in our society. To those who say they pay for everything and get very little in return, the most effective and proven way to make a real difference is more public housing, affordable accommodation, free schoolbooks and a radical shift to free primary care. It is the social wage and the value of that. It is utterly bogus to seek to convince citizens that the best way to improve their living standards is by spending €300 million on tax and USC adjustments that will be worth a pittance each week to most working people.

Let us look at the figures. On the income tax changes, according to Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures, only 22% of people pay tax at the higher rate.The Government is therefore spending a large wedge of public resources, part of €300 million, on a tax package for one in five workers that might be better deployed in reducing their mammoth childcare bills as opposed to providing a tiny increase in their take-home pay that amounts to damn all a week. I will give the Minister of State another example, which is both striking and revealing. Someone on the national minimum wage working a full week will gain 15 cent a week from the USC changes the Minister proposed earlier today. This will buy a grand total of two slices of Brennans bread per week. It is not two slices of bread a worker on the national minimum wage needs, it is a roof over his or her head. This tax package will deliver much more in these terms to someone on €75,000. It will deliver about a fiver a week. This is a scandalously inefficient use of available public resources.

At a time when more needs to be declared on housing supply, this budget objectively does not go anywhere near fixing the scale of the problem we face. Rather than listen to the 10,000 people who assembled on Molesworth Street last week, the Government caved into the landlords. Fianna Fáil really has some neck trailing this budget as a housing budget. It is not a housing budget but a landlord's budget. We are back to the future and it seems that the Fine Gael Party is becoming more like its colleagues in Fianna Fáil by the day. This severe case of what might be described as Stockholm syndrome sees the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil partnership announce that landlords will have 100% mortgage interest relief restored but there will be no relief whatever for hard-pressed renters who work hard for a living. To expand on this point a little more, developers will get a subsidy to build on serviced land, much of which is probably in State ownership, and landlords will be handed an incentive to buy more houses with 100% mortgage interest relief. This will see young families priced even further out of the market, competing with professional property owners who will now have additional purchasing power to buy a home. This is mind-boggling stuff and utterly self-defeating. We cannot hope to meet the current and future housing needs of our people if we continue to rely excessively and unduly on the market to do it for us. The market has never delivered and never will deliver. There is no structural solution available that does not involve the mass construction of public housing. My party has produced a large-scale, detailed, comprehensive and fully funded project for 80,000 homes to meet the most fundamental needs of people across society over the next five years, but the dearth of ambition in this budget in housing terms is absolutely unforgivable.

It would, though, be churlish of me not to recognise the increases in weekly social welfare rates and the very welcome changes to the income disregard for those who are parenting alone. This is one policy area that unites everyone in this House, and rightly so. It is concerning, however, that welfare increases will only be paid from around the middle of March unlike the tax cuts which will apply from 1 January. It is unfortunate that welfare recipients will have to wait until the middle of March for what amounts to a €4 per week annual increase, not a €5 per week increase, if one looks at it across the 12 months.

It is good to see the Christmas bonus fully restored. I only regret that it never features in the annual budget line. To avoid any confusion in September and October, we should deal with this annually and put it into the budget lines, end of story. The Labour Party proposed investing, for example, €170 million and providing a universal back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance because we know to our cost that families of small children at school are those most at risk of poverty and experiencing high levels of poverty as it is. If we are to eradicate this cruelty and give all children every opportunity they need to be the best they can be, regardless of who they are or where they are from, we need to tackle areas such as this and make primary and second-level education truly free. For under €100 million, we could provide free schoolbooks for everyone in second and primary level and end contributions that are, unfortunately, far from voluntary. This is the full-year cost, by the way, of the small USC cut, which is worth, as I said earlier, two slices of white bread to the worker in a restaurant or a shop who is on the national minimum wage. These are the kinds of choices we face, and the chance to really make monumental changes to the way in which this society and economy are structured has unfortunately been passed up yet again.