Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming into this House. There has been a lot said about the historic nature of yesterday's budget. It was the single largest budget in the history of the State and there were important elements in it to support businesses and various sectors of society. There were a number of missed opportunities and serious oversights in this budget, however, and they undermine the project to rebuild the livelihoods, lives and jobs of workers and families.

We have seen billions of euro rightly being allocated to keeping the economy afloat but it was a mistake to not look at how we allocate some of that money. In particular, when I look at the likes of housing, which Senator Moynihan will talk about, there was the promise of delivering more housing through direct builds and less through the private rented sector and yet, we saw that turned on its head yesterday. On the employment wage subsidy scheme, there was a real opportunity, not only to keep businesses afloat but to enable and empower workers to train during the hours that they are not working with their companies. The Labour Party clearly said in the run up to the budget that we need to use the employment wage subsidy scheme to both train workers and support firms, following the example of what is happening in Germany and the Netherlands. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

The other key issue for me with the composition of the budget is that there are holes in how we make our workforce and those who are out of work more resilient and ready to take up jobs in the future. To be frank, unemployment will be the single greatest challenge this Government will face. There is also an issue with income supports for those who are out of work. The number of training and skilling places that were announced yesterday are to be welcomed but there is a serious issue that if somebody has to take up the back to education allowance or the vocational training opportunities scheme, VTOS, allowance, they have to move from the PUP payment to the jobseeker's benefit and so they must take a loss in income support to take up that training.

The following point has not been aired well in this debate so far. We saw an exodus of almost 90,000 people from the labour force in the middle of this year. These are not people who would come up in the unemployment statistics, rather, these are people who have come out of the labour force and who are not looking for work. A disproportionate share of them are women and if we are to encourage women back into the workforce - we need more women in the workforce if we are to boost the Social Insurance Fund and pay for the pensions of the future - then we need to look at the issue of childcare. It was disappointing that no effort was made to ensure there was more affordable childcare for families. In the case of those working in childcare, which has a workforce that is predominantly female, people suffer low wages in that sector and it is disappointing that no effort was made to ensure greater access to affordable childcare in the country yesterday.