That is Fianna Fáil speaking.
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The fees have gone up.
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Take that up with the British Government.
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If the Tánaiste is concerned about British policy, he should take it up with the British Government.
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The Tánaiste is very sensitive.
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You can answer it now.
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This budget comes at a time when ordinary households are reeling from a cost-of-living crisis that is out of control. Workers and families are hit by rip-off prices in every direction. It is getting harder and harder to make ends meet and to keep up, and it shows no sign of letting up. It is rent, big electricity and gas bills, runaway food prices, the cost of petrol and diesel, crippling childcare fees and extortionate insurance premiums. The list is as long as your arm. You name it, it is going up. This budget should have been a cost-of-living budget, a budget to end the rip-off and make life affordable. It should have been a budget to address, with real purpose, the big challenges of our generation, to turn the tide of crises, to deliver the affordable and social homes people need, to build a health service where you get the treatment services and care you need, and to build a better, fairer society. Instead, what the Government has served up is a budget written by Fine Gael, as Fianna Fáil watches on, which abandons workers and families to look after those at the top. There is no action to end the rip-off and no break in tax for ordinary workers but big tax breaks for developers. People are left high and dry as prices soar, confirming without a shadow of a doubt that election campaigns are where Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil make promises and budgets are where they break them. Promises are thrown in the bin by one of the most useless Governments ever.
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I want to address just some of these broken promises. Broken promise number one is the cost of living. During the election, the Government was clear over and again that tackling soaring prices and the runaway cost of living was its biggest priority. As a man once said about empty promises, is that not what you tend to do during an election? That is certainly true of you lads. The Government has delivered a budget worth billions of euro without a cost-of-living package to help workers and families. That just beggars belief. You close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and convince yourselves that households are doing fine. With a surplus of over €10 billion, the Government cannot help workers and families, according to it. Well, it could help. We proposed a substantial cost-of-living package to make life affordable for working families. The Government could have done that but it chose not to. It does not suit Fine Gael's priorities, so it got pushed to the side so it could look after the golden circles, and Micheál went along with that. Let us be straight about it. In a time of massive surpluses, abandoning workers and families like this is the choice the Government has made. Not only is it not providing help, it has actually decided with its eyes wide open to make things worse, even harder. What does that say to people who feel there is no end in sight to the rip-off? From this week, households will again be hit with double-digit hikes in electricity prices and the Government has the nerve to withdraw energy credits. It gives free rein to the energy companies to hike up their prices as hundreds of thousands of households already cannot afford their bills, and it cancels the one modest protection they had. That is the Government all over. Let the big boys make their bumper, record profits on the backs of hardworking people. No skin off the Government's nose. Sinn Féin called on the Government not to make this terrible decision. We showed it how it could provide a €450 energy credit to help people through the winter but the Government ignored that. It is the same story when it comes to food prices. In May 2023, Fine Gael Minister of State Neale Richmond puffed out his chest and told the top brass in the big supermarket chains that they had six weeks to get prices down. Do the Taoiseach and Tánaiste remember that? That was 126 weeks ago and grocery prices have gone through the roof. The supermarkets laugh all the way to the bank while working parents skip meals to ensure that their children have enough to eat. It is shameful. It underscores why people needed a cost-of-living package to get household costs down. The Government says it recognises the pressure that people are under, but its actions say otherwise. It certainly does not get how hard it is to keep a car on the road because despite years of motorists being hit by fuel price increases, the first result of the Government's budget is that petrol and diesel prices are hiked up, with the full and enthusiastic support of the Healy-Raes of the Kingdom of Kerry.
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What of the renters of Ireland? Only a few months ago, the Government came forward with a Bill that will put renters on the hook for massive rent hikes, and now it shafts them again. There is no increase in the renters' tax credit, as Fianna Fáil promised, but Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil dug deep to increase the tax break for landlords to €1,000. Little wonder that most of those pushed into the nightmare of homelessness come from the private rental sector. Renters are shafted for the Government to feather the nest of property funds, vultures and big, wealthy investors. There is no increase in child benefit. Child benefit remains stuck below where it was in 2008, nearly 20 years ago. How in God's name does the Government stand over that? What does it say to parents going out to work every day, doing everything they can to keep the show on the road? It says to them, "Tough, you are on your own." Broken promise number two is that the Government told workers that it would cut their taxes. However, as it delivers one of the largest tax cut packages in the history of the State, with €2.5 billion in tax cuts, ordinary workers get absolutely nothing, zero. Who does benefit? Developers are in luck. They have won the lotto because the Government is dishing out €250 million in tax cuts for them. Happy days. It is not like turbocharging tax breaks for developers ever caused any problems in the past, is it, Micheál? We wanted to give workers a fairer deal and the Government should have scrapped USC on the first €40,000 of income for every worker, putting almost €750 back into workers' pockets. Everyone would have got a boost, especially middle and lower income workers. We are certainly a far cry from 2016 and Fine Gael's pledge to scrap the USC, a Fianna Fáil tax. Nine years is a long time in politics. Today, the Government will not even reduce USC for those on and below the average wage, but that is you all over. This budget is anti-worker. There was self-congratulatory backslapping here yesterday and it is completely detached from the reality of people's lives. Broken promise number three is childcare. Before and during the general election, Simon Harris promised he would make childcare affordable. He pledged that Fine Gael would deliver a pathway to €200 a month childcare within 100 days of Government.
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The first 100 days of Government ran out on 3 May, which is over six months ago. That promised pathway must have run up a cul-de-sac somewhere because it is nowhere to be seen. This broken commitment means parents continuing to fork out a small fortune in childcare fees. That childcare promise was just another one of the Government's trademark soundbites. Is it not embarrassed by the way it has tried to hoodwink parents? It should, of course, have introduced our plan, which would actually deliver €10 a day childcare. It was possible. The Government could have done it but chose not to. Broken promise number four is student fees. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil put up in lights at the election that they would cut student fees. Every young person and every student that they met on the campaign trail heard how they were going to reduce the cost of going to college. Simon Harris stood here just before the summer and, with great gusto, told students and their families that he had their backs, then he took to TikTok to amplify that promise. That was just another con job because the Government delivered a budget that jacks up student fees by €500 and has the neck to tell them that it is cutting their fees.
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Be clear that students and parents will not be fooled by the Government's spin, because they will feel it in their pockets. Budget 2026 should have abolished student fees for good. The Government should be on a pathway to that. That is what it should have done, but it chose not to. We provided for a cut of €1,500 on the pathway to that. That was the right thing to do. Broken promise number five is that the Government will fix housing once and for all. How many times have we heard that pledge? The Government has caused record rents that keep going up and up. House prices are far beyond the reach of hard-working people. Homelessness is at a level we thought we would never see. More than 5,000 children went to sleep last night in emergency accommodation with nowhere to call home. It is shameful. In the election campaign last year, the Government deliberately misled the public about housing delivery figures and since then its own officials have rung the alarm bell about missing its housing targets every year up to 2030, and yet the Taoiseach actually stood up and spoke today about building on our successes under Housing for All. Mother of God, spare us. He has repeatedly claimed we are turning the corner on housing, but the fact is the Government is going backwards. It does not have the ambition or determination. It actually does not have the ideas necessary to deliver the affordable homes people need. Instead of real action, what we get are half-baked gimmicks, like its infamous housing tsar carry-on.
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Its refusal and inability to do what needs to be done has locked a generation out of affordable housing to rent or buy, left people stuck in the box rooms of their parents' homes into their 30s and 40s, and sent young people packing to Canada and Australia because they have lost hope of ever owning a home of their own. These are the consequences of the Government’s failure.
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Twelve years ago, Fine Gael rolled out the red carpet for the vulture funds with sweetheart tax arrangements, and nothing has changed. Today, its policy remains wedded to the interests of wealthy property funds, developers and big landlords over the housing needs of ordinary people. The Taoiseach today described this strategy as Government policy encouraging private investment to crowd in. What that has achieved is everybody else crowded out, which he has clarified is the Government's approach. This budget again fails the necessary work of bringing home ownership back within the reach of working people, building the affordable and social homes needed, banning rent increases for three years, delivering the investment needed to end the housing emergency and to restore the hope of a generation. It is a big fail on the Government's part. I come to broken promise number six. Eight years ago, Simon Harris promised that no child would wait longer than four months for spinal surgery for scoliosis. That promise, as we know, was broken again and again. Harvey Morrison Sherratt was one child left waiting. He died in July. His heartbreaking death should and must be a tipping point for this Government when it comes to the delivery of healthcare. However, in this budget, it knowingly underfunds the health service. It delivers a recipe for deepening catastrophe that sees our hospitals overcrowded, accident and emergency departments under huge pressure every day, a year-round trolley crisis and hundreds of thousands of people on waiting lists, waiting just like Harvey did. The Disability Federation of Ireland has described this budget as, "A devastating setback for disabled people unable to work." It states the Government's investment will reach only a fraction of the 1 million disabled people who need support. It has removed the one-off payments that made a difference last year, so it takes a backward step addressing the additional cost pressures people with disabilities face every day. It has increased the disability allowance by €10. That is insulting. It should have doubled that and increased it by €20 to give disabled people real help with the cost of living, but they have been left behind again. Fine Gael has been in government for nearly 15 years. At its rate of investment, it will take it nearly 14 years to deliver its seven-year bed plan. There is really no plan in the end. There is no sign of new money for women's health and endometriosis, nothing to reduce the cost of healthcare and no money listed for critical national strategies such as cancer, maternity and cardiac care. The Government has the opportunity and the resources to transform the health service by investing and innovating, but it makes no effort. It has no vision. It is just the same old script again and again. On broken promise number seven, the Government promised to abolish the carers means test. Our carers are the best of us, and they deserve respect and recognition. They deserve action from the Government that relieves the daily pressure they come under as they do their amazing work. The Government's election promise was specific, and it was clear - to scrap the carers means test. The budget should have delivered on that promise, but at the rate of investment provided for in this budget, it would take more than a decade to abolish the means test. That is not right.
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It is not fair, and once again the Government sells carers short. Is buiséad é seo atá scríofa ag Fine Gael. Tá Fianna Fáil ar nós iománaithe ar an gclaí ag breathnú air. I measc pacáistí móra cánach, tréigeann an buiséad seo oibrithe agus teaghlaigh chun aire a thabhairt dóibh siúd atá ar bharr an dréimire. Níl giorrúchán ar bith ann do ghnáthoibrithe, ach tá gearradh mór cánach do thiarnaí talún agus forbróirí. Tá daoine fágtha in áit na leathphingine. Níl gníomh ar bith ann chun an tsáinn a stopadh agus praghsanna ag ardú as smacht. Tá na gealltanais Rialtais scriosta agus caite sa bhosca bruscair ag ceann de na rialtais is measa riamh. Seven months ago, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil entered a grubby deal with Michael Lowry, a politician who has always shown up for those on top, by all means necessary. They tried to con ordinary people by telling them at the time that their deal was really about delivering for them, but nothing could be further from the truth. You see, it was all about self-interest and maintaining power. They would stop at nothing to protect their positions, even when it meant taking an Teachta Lowry and making him kingmaker in their Government. This is a man, remember, whose actions as a Minister were found by a tribunal to have been, "profoundly corrupt to a degree that was nothing short of breathtaking". In that grubby deal, the well-being of workers and families, and their entitlement to a good life, was not even on their radar, barely an afterthought. It was all about delivery for the privileged few over the needs of the many. So it is with this budget, which abandons workers and families to look after those at the top - a most irresponsible strategy and approach. At a time when the State has an abundance of wealth, the Government chooses to use that wealth to feather the nests of the golden circles and to cheat working people of their fair share. The same Government wastes millions in taxpayers' money on bike sheds, security huts, replacement walls and renting offices that lie empty. However, when it comes to helping workers and families the cupboard is always bare. Its promises are made only to be broken and, with no general election in prospect, as workers and families really struggle at a time when they really need support, this Government walks away. It is a cynical, self-serving and jaded Government.
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It is incapable of keeping promises made and its budget is testimony to that.
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