Marie Sherlock (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the Chamber and thank him for being here today. As this current Government comes to the end of its term, the mark of any Government, indeed successive governments, is the permanent impact they leave on communities throughout this country. Fine Gael has been the common thread in Government since 2011 but we know that, particularly since 2016, we have seen eye-watering surpluses of €15.2 billion generated in this country, when we exclude the two pandemic years of 2020 and 2021. The projections set out in the budget documents today tell us there is an expectation that there will be surpluses worth €56 billion between 2025 and 2030. As somebody who has the budgets of 2009 and 2010 seared into my brain, these surpluses are fantastical. If someone were to have told us back in those years that our country would be in this place, we would not have believed it. Crucially, we would find it absolutely incredible that we would still have growing homeless figures, 4,000 children homeless, 20% of children in material deprivation, huge housing shortages and thousands of children with additional needs being failed day in, day out.

When I look at the €10.5 billion budget we have today, it is the stuff of dreams. I get there is a huge appetite for a cash injection into people's pockets, and I support some of the measures for workers in particular because I know there have been long-standing changes to the tax system that have been required.The key question the Government must answer is what will be left for people in their everyday lives when the once-off payments are gone. Cash is necessary. We saw how important it was during the pandemic. At times of acute necessity, as much as we had an issue with the universal nature of the tax credits, they were necessary when energy prices spiked in 2022 and 2023. The nature of the once-off payments and the cash being thrown at people on budget today is not a long-term solution. The budget does not offer long-term solutions in the context of the major cost-of-living challenges that exist in this country.

I wish to refer to a number of areas that I am particularly concerned about, the first of which is energy. The Minister of State and I know that retrofitting offers a great opportunity to permanently improve people's homes and reduce emissions. Some €475 million is being provided for retrofitting, as per the national development plan, but there is a 20-month wait time under the SEAI warmer homes scheme. Given the nature of the grants, those who do not qualify for the warmer homes scheme must take out loans or dig deep into their savings, if they are lucky enough to have them. There is no imagination as to how we reduce the cost of retrofitting for homes, and there is still a gap between the amount of the grant people are eligible for and what they have to fork out. There has been no reference today to street-by-street retrofitting, to how solar panels could be rolled out across entire communities or to the labour challenge.

All the time we hear that money is not a problem and that the blockage relates to delivery, but there is no imagination on show in this budget and nor are there solutions as to how we can ensure that there is a steady workforce and a supply of labour into the sector. The Housing Commission made a very specific recommendation during the summer about a housing construction agency, but that has been ignored by the Government. It is fine to throw our hands up in the air and say that we have no problem with money but that we just cannot get the workers. The Government has done nothing about the problem.

As my colleague Deputy Duncan Smith said in the Dáil, this needed to be a workforce budget. While that does not sound very sexy or glamorous, we should and could have looked at how we resolve the recruitment and retention issues that exist. I refer to the Garda, teachers and additional needs. The sum of €10 million is going into children's disability network teams, CDNTs. We know that 20,000 children will be on waiting lists for more than six months for assessments of need by the end of this year. The number is growing, yet no thought has been put into how we ensure that the people are there to deliver the services.

Housing is the single greatest workers' rights issue of our times, but there are is no change to the housing targets in the budget. That is notwithstanding everything we have seen this year with regard to population projections and the recognition that we need to increase the housing targets. If I recall correctly, targets were set in 2021 for 10,000 social houses and 6,400 affordable houses to be built this year. It is not even clear that we are going to achieve those targets, but there has been no change to them. What sort of ambition or imagination does this Government have with regard to housing if it is not even responding to the real need that is out there.

I am really frustrated by the increase in stamp duty for bulk purchases to 15%. When there was a kerfuffle a few years ago following the bulk purchase of houses in Maynooth, County Kildare, the Government acted accordingly, but it has ignored what is happening with the building of apartments right across Dublin and other major urban areas. I ask the Green Party whether it does not consider apartments to be homes. Does it not consider them suitable for purchase by individuals and families for living? Are apartments just to be used for social housing and cost-rental purposes? That is not good enough. Day in and day out, I meet people, especially in the constituency where I live, who have good jobs and decent incomes. They look at the cranes in the sky and they know they will never be able to purchase apartments in those buildings. They will never be able to make them homes because they are being built for rent and they are being bought up by institutional investors. The Government is sitting on its hands and allowing this to happen. Every time we raise this matter, we are told it is not viable to build apartments in Dublin. We must then make a decision on whether we want thousands of apartments to be built and owned by institutional investors for short-term rental accommodation or if we want apartments - which, because of population increases, should be the future of living in Dublin - to be part of the housing stock for long-term secure rental or purchase? This Government is not taking apartment living seriously. Not including apartments in the stamp duty increase is a real failure on the part of this Government when it comes to allowing people to have the aspiration of buying a house.

So many kites were flown in August and September in respect of a public childcare system, yet there is not a single reference in the budget to increasing of places. I do not know what it refers to, but there is €10 million extra for a capital budget for children. On the north side of Dublin, the fee reduction is welcome, but what people really need is a childcare place. We know there is a dire shortage of places at present.

I challenge the Ministers on the figures put out today in respect of a reduction in fees. What is proposed seems to amount to a maximum of €22 per week. We are not clear on how this is calculated. From talking to many parents I know, when they looked back over their invoices, although there had been a fee freeze since 2021, it was evident that their fees have been going up. There are real issues for the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth in terms of getting a handle on what exactly is happening with fees. A statement has been made regarding the reduction of fees, but we need to see the substance behind that, because while there is a lot of cash going into the sector, very little money is going to the workers. The real issue with childcare is that the money is not going to those who are holding up the sector.

There was great excitement among interested parties when the child poverty unit was set up some years ago, yet we must ask what this amounts to today's budget. There is a double payment of child benefit, a lump sum for the working-family payment, and little else. There is nothing for child poverty in this budget that represents an attempt to really to try and drive it down.

As a passionate cycling advocate, it is very disappointing that we see no increase for cycling infrastructure in the budget. We saw no increase last year and that has been repeated again this year. I would welcome any clarification in that regard, but I do not see any provision for increases in budget 2025.