Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I propose to share time with Senator Wall.

I thank Fine Gael for this motion this evening. Obviously, the Labour Party has put down an amendment to the motion.It is important that we have an opportunity to discuss this cost-of-living crisis but it is also important to contextualise it. Last week, we heard representatives of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, IFAC, talk about the vulnerability of corporate tax revenues. We also heard the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, ruling out a second budget and telling people that the cost-of-living crisis is not necessarily an urgent issue now and that they can wait until the winter. Our Government is also targeting a surplus in the public finances for next year. Therefore, I must ask the proposers of this motion if they really believe they can pull off tax cuts as well as the wish list of expenditure increases they are also calling for in this motion? Do they really believe they can put an extra few euro in the pockets of middle- and higher-income earners and yet do all the other things they are seeking to do in this motion as well?

I was struck by the pre-budget submission issued by the Irish Small and Medium Enterprises, ISME, association. It called for a levy on incomes over €100,000. Fine Gael and this Government have resisted higher taxes not on those with middle incomes but on the high-paid for many years. This is a measure that the Labour Party and other parties of the left have been calling for. Now ISME is calling for it as well. Therefore, I would like to hear the Minister's response on this point. Certainly, however, if the Labour Party were given the choice, we would want to prioritise investment in public services. We do not believe that the State can afford tax cuts now.

The reality for all those on my right here is that this is not a new cost-of-living crisis. We have a permanent cost-of-living crisis. The sooner we see this as a permanent issue requiring permanent solutions and not once-off measures, the better. For example, when the housing assistance payment, HAP, was introduced, it was thought that it would only last a few short years. Now, however, the State is spending €1 billion annually, and this amount is growing, because we cannot wean ourselves off the dependence on private landlords. Let us also consider the response to energy costs. We know from research undertaken by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, SEAI, that the difference in the energy costs between a house with a building energy rating, BER, of F compared with one with a BER rating of B is €3,500 annually. We are not going to fix this situation by giving €200 to people or with any miserly increases in the fuel allowance or anything else. We must retrofit those houses so that the cost of fuelling the energy requirements of them is resolved for long into the future. Yet the national retrofitting scheme requires households to stump up at least 20%, or more, of the cost, especially those households that do not qualify for the fuel allowance. Therefore, the Government needs to get real about retrofitting. It must see this as a public good. I see no reference to retrofitting in this motion.

We talk about the cost of childcare as well. The Minister talked about employment being the best way out of poverty. We have two Bills before the Houses now. One is the Right to Flexible Work Bill 2022 and the other is legislation on work-life balance. We know the benefit to be derived from allowing women to have flexible and remote working arrangements. We saw this during the pandemic because the number of women in employment increased. We saw that women were able to take up full-time work because they had those arrangements. Yet this Government is insisting that the right to request flexible and remote work is a perk of employment and that people must be in a job for six months before they are entitled to avail of it. What message does this send out to lone parents and to women who wish to take up employment? It is one thing to say we want more women in employment and that we wish to reduce the number of women and families in poverty, but on the other hand the Government is not undertaking the simple measures of allowing women to take up flexible work from day one of employment. I hand over to my colleague, Senator Wall, now.