Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister.

This is quite a bizarre moment. We have a motion from Fine Gael much of which, essentially, involves the party congratulating itself on the great job it has done on the cost of living before going on then to declare the additional help that we need next January. It is June.

There was a lady on national radio the other evening, a number of Senators may have heard her, called Tracy, who came on to tell people how she had been affected by the cost-of-living crisis, how she had gone three to four weeks without buying her shopping and how unexpected car repairs meant she was not able to buy food. The public transport system does not get her to where she needs to go and she needs her car. She cannot work because of a lack of affordable childcare but also because she has health issues that would hinder her employment opportunities. Right now, she is relying on the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, friends and family for help.

Fine Gael's message this evening is the Government will talk to the people in January. We need a mini-budget now. Sinn Féin has been calling it for months. I cannot believe that on top of missing that call and congratulating themselves on the wonderful job they are doing, they went out yesterday with this nonsense about a 30% tax rate. They have heard the figures from my colleague here already. The health system is in crisis. My colleague, Senator Maria Byrne, in Limerick, knows well the crisis at first hand in University Hospital Limerick. Maybe my colleagues in Fine Gael would like to go down to the emergency department tomorrow and canvas views for tax cuts as patients languish on trolleys for 15 hours at a time. When we have almost 1 million people waiting on hospital waiting lists, Fine Gael's priority, how it wanted to rebrand itself, is as if to say, "Look at us, we are the tax-cutting party." Are they so out of touch with the crisis in the public services?

If the Minister does not want to go to University Hospital Limerick, I would invite her to go in front of the homeless action team's offices where we have no emergency accommodation whatsoever in the midst of the worst housing crisis in the history of the State created by her party. Fine Gael talks about housing as if it is some kind of natural disaster. "Isn't it awful", they say, "Why don't we pull on the green jersey and all try and help?" It is not a natural disaster. It is the result of incredibly poor policies over the past decade which have created this housing crisis. The Minister's message this evening to the thousands of people on housing lists across the country is the Government will give them tax cuts, as if that will fix anything.

I might invite the Minister to come to our village in Castleconnell and talk to people paying €1,400 in rent each and every month. My party has proposed a cut in their rent and a ban on rent increases to give people back money in their pockets, not next January but now, because they are hurting now because they cannot afford their bills and because the cost of diesel, already heading towards €2.20 a litre, apparently will be at €2.50 a litre by the summer, and yet, before the Minister goes off on holidays, the message from Fine Gael is that there is no problem here, the Government will have a budget in October and it will look at the matter in January.

Looking at the nonsense proposal of a 30% tax rate, an economist described it to me yesterday as "fiscal incontinence". That is what it is. We have a fiscal window of €1.5 billion and Fine Gael's proposal costs €1.7 billion. Fine Gael wants to be all things to all people but the fact of the matter is for ten years the party has failed on housing. For ten years, it failed on healthcare. The evidence is there in the hospital wards and in the waiting trolleys in Limerick.

We have the lowest proportion of first-time buyers of houses in Dublin - down to 30%. The Government is failing in so many respects in terms of public services and then the Minister talks about hard choices. Is the hard choice to introduce tax cuts for the already well-off while we have people languishing and suffering each day? Is the Minister that out of touch with what is happening in the country today?

If the Government wants to make hard choices, here is a suggestion. Why not start by scrapping the special assignee relief programme which gives millions of euro in taxpayers' money to millionaire executives in the country? Clearly, that is a step too far. That is a hard choice that Fine Gael will not make.

This is all about rebranding Fine Gael back to basics. It is the Irish Tory party or Thatcherite party that likes to promise tax cuts while it abandons public services. The housing crisis is getting worse, month on month and year on year. Last week, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage could not even commit to reducing the number of homeless to under 10,000 by the end of the year but, not to worry, there will be budget measures in January and tax cuts.

Seriously, people are at the end of their tethers. We had a housing meeting the other night full to the rafters in Limerick and heard horror stories. One man is living basically in a space for furniture - one of those places where one puts one's furniture when one is between houses. That is where he was. The emergency people had nowhere to send them and the Minister wants to talk about tax cuts.

Fine Gael has had ten years to sort out these problems. It is no wonder that we only had six minutes from Fianna Fáil and the Green Party is nowhere to be seen. I do not blame them. They are clearly embarrassed to be associated with this. They know what is going on here. Fine Gael decides to rebranding the party as a tax-cutting party, but at whose expense? Fine Gael has failed this country in terms of housing, in terms of homelessness, in terms of healthcare and in terms of basic fairness and justice and its members have the gall to come in and talk about tax cuts for the wealthy again. People are seeing through this Fine Gael Government. They are out of touch and, please God, soon they will be out of time.