I will be sharing time with my colleague Deputy Sherlock. The story of Ireland over the past decade has been a story of missed opportunities. There was a catastrophic failure to build the homes we need when we could and should have done. The Government is so crippled by caution and conservatism that we are only now, a decade into a unprecedented spell of uninterrupted growth, facing up to the chronic infrastructure deficits in transport, health, education and energy that put our economic model and our society at risk. I have said it before and I will say again: Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael combined are the single biggest threat to Ireland's economy, not Donald Trump and his tariffs. Together, they have delivered a budget of broken promises for workers and dreams that have come true for developers. Ireland in 2025 is a country of contradictions - rich and poor, all at the same time. We have: record corporation tax takes, but also record numbers of children without homes; record numbers of people in work, with one in five of us on low pay; budget surpluses that are the envy of Europe, with poor public services and infrastructure that belies our status as a rich country; growing wealth at the top alongside shameful levels of child poverty; high food prices that just keep climbing; the second highest energy costs in the European Union; a housing supply and affordability crisis; rising rents; and regulation that fails citizens. All of this has not happened by accident. It is the logical outcome of policies pursued by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil for a decade. It is a Government that has wasted a boom and is happy to throw money at problems that instead require novel thinking, imagination, courage and real reform. There is a faint whiff of 2008 around the place. The Government can be fiscally responsible and investment focused, too, but Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil let their old ideology get in the way. Recent history shows us that the Government cannot keep cutting taxes and ramp up spending at the same time and expect a good outcome for our country. I am one of three survivors still in this House from the Government that marshalled Ireland back to economic growth. Another is the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, and my colleague, Deputy Kelly. The Minister should know the risks. Nobody should want to be there again. We are duty bound to remind this Government. We have to ponder some facts. Public spending has gone up by over half since 2019, with Covid-19 revealing dangerous gaps in our health service and welfare and employment model. In recent years, we have had dishonest budgets that were works of pure fiction, with Ministers trotting in here year after year seeking Dáil approval for billions of euro more in spending after the event. There are dizzying spending overruns that are now routine with less, not more, transparency on how budgets are put together. There was a summer economic statement that could have been written by a transition year work experience student in the Department of public expenditure. A medium-term framework was published a month ago with no departmental spending ceilings, and what is more, it is all being paid for by dipping into the well of unreliable windfall corporation taxes from a handful of firms while the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Chambers, go about hollowing out and narrowing the tax base ever more. This never ends well. It is unprecedented that, as the Government presents next year's budget, we did not even know the composition of the capital budget for 2025. In no other country would a government get away with this. It is a direct undermining of the powers and responsibilities of Dáil Éireann under the Constitution. It is why Labour has proposed that the Dáil needs its own independent Estimates commissioners to keep the Government in check. The threadbare revised national development plan did not include capital Vote ceilings for 2025. A total of two Supplementary Estimates for housing have already added over €1.4 billion to the budget for social and affordable housing in 2025. It took analysis by the Labour Party of the gross capital allocation to uncover that over €500 million of capital spending still had not been allocated to spending Departments at this time of the year. This is not an insignificant matter and it is no way to do business. The national development plan and the summer economic statement were predicated on a capital investment spending increase of €2 billion next year from a base of €17.1 billion to €19.1 billion. The White Paper published on Friday miraculously included a capital spending figure of €17.05 billion this year. However, following all the extra Estimates to date, nearly €500 million of capital spending remains unallocated and unaccounted for in 2025. We will have to go through a detailed expenditure report to figure out where €500 million extra will be allocated, but this is an extraordinary way to plan for investment and indicates a lack of credibility and transparency from the Government. There are no detailed answers on demographics and existing levels of service - the details we need to keep the show on the road - and nothing much on carryover costs. We also have no clarity on how equity invested in EirGrid, ESB and Uisce Éireann will be accounted for under European rules. It is simply listed as €5.5 billion of strategic capital investment in the White Paper. In short, we have a Government with a credibility problem. This is a dangerous game. Our public services need investment. Labour has shown how we would pay for that extra investment by raising revenue from, for example, restoring the bank levy and setting out €500 million, not €200 million as the Government has announced today, and other measures targeting wealth and assets. Where we spend more, we will raise in taxes. We need some honesty in the debate over tax and how we develop our country and the services on which we all rely. That debate, honesty and courage are not to be found in this budget. This is a budget for burger barons and big builders. That is the long and the short of it. Budgets are about choices, and this Government has made its and we are going to have to live with it. It has chosen Ronald McDonald over Joe and Joan Murphy, and your man from Supermac's over the man who gets up early in the morning. The Hamburglar from the 1980s McDonald's ad is back in town swiping hundreds of millions of euro in his swag bag from PAYE workers, who will see their wage increases next year swallowed up because bands and credits will not move to take account of their modest pay increases. This will come as a real surprise to those who have read the Fine Gael manifesto and would have expected an increase in the top band of €2,000 per year. That was the promise. This pledge is now in tatters. This will take some explaining, especially set against this budget's abject failure to support families through a cost-of-living crisis that for all too many has now become permanent. To be fair to the Government, it does not pretend that this year's offering is anything but modest. God knows, this Government has a lot to be modest about. Of course, things were very different this time last year. First and foremost, there was an election to be won. The election is over, but the crisis in households most certainly is not. For the people I represent, there is too much month left after the end of the money. The struggles are real. The temporary respite of one-off measures is now history. Families with children who were over €2,000 better off thanks to 2025's budget will feel the difference come January. This will bite. This is on the Government. There are no energy supports this time out. There are limited, if any, improvements in terms of childcare. There is a €500 increase in college fees. What kind of Orwellian statement did the Minister make earlier on trying to claim that this was a cut to fees? It is not. We are nowhere close to free GP care for all kids. I could go on. This time last year, the Government chose to buy the general election, and with our own money. There was a wad of €2 billion in so-called "once-offs" - the most abused and misused term in Irish politics. Money was sprayed around and, by coincidence, was hitting bank accounts around polling day. Imagine that. It was all melting away like snow on a ditch almost as soon as the votes were counted and feet under the Cabinet table again soon after Christmas. Mission accomplished; job done. About €23 million per Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael TD elected was the bill for the biggest and most brazen batch of bribes in Irish electoral history. The thing is we can support families through this difficult time and be responsible at the same time. The reality is, with some small exceptions announced today, the Government has chosen not to. Nowhere will the Government's refusal to deliver a cost-of-living package hurt more than for those who depend on the State for their income. The pandemic and the cost-of-living crisis exposed real inadequacies and gaps in our social protection, work and care systems. The temporary payments just papered over the cracks; that is all. The tide has gone out, and it is those citizens who are most in need of help who are more vulnerable than ever. If a person is on a fixed income, how in God's name is an extra €10 a week going to help him or her make ends meet when the price of basics - the groceries and electricity bills - is getting out of hand?
Sentiment score: 0.04
It will not help. It will make things worse. It is an insult. It is quite frankly offensive.
Sentiment score: -0.45
People I represent are handing back groceries at the till when they get there because they do not have the money to pay for them all. Where is the dignity in that? They are afraid to put on the radio in case they are told about another expected hike next month in their electricity or gas bills. It is frankly hard to accept the claim that the Government is all about targeting when the social protection package - the thing we use to target the most vulnerable - is so wide of the mark. Here are some of the one-hit wonders the Government recorded last year that got it safely over the line in November: not one but two double payments of child benefit; a €400 lump sum for carers; €200 on the living alone allowance; and so much cash to toss around that the Government even had a €280 grant to wet new babies' heads. The Government was literally running out of gimmick giveaways. At the time, the Opposition could not even keep up. There was the country's biggest ever social welfare package with €2.6 billion in total. I knew the social welfare talks were not going well when the Sunday newspapers were being briefed that there would be a Christmas bonus this year. Well done. Wow, congratulations, that is incredible. What an achievement. Is this what you have been reduced to this year? Trumpeting the fact that there is going to be a Christmas bonus that is actually paid out of this year's spending in the Department of Social Protection, the savings in the Department found down the back of the couch. It is absolutely pathetic. It is a pity there are no Fianna Fáil Ministers here, quite an insult to the Opposition, in fact.
Sentiment score: 0.11
I remember when Fianna Fáil used to care about the social protection system. Can someone do a welfare check on Willie O’Dea? Where is he? He must be mortified, absolutely embarrassed. When the Society of St. Vincent de Paul said €16 were needed to be added to every core weekly payment, we agreed. We made allowance for that in our costed alternative budget. As for Fine Gael, we had the usual pre-budget whining, pitting one section of welfare recipient against another, all for the headlines - nasty, unbecoming, divisive stuff. It never comes to pass, it is just for the headlines, shoring up their base. The pathetic increase this year will see citizens who rely on social welfare payments fall back. The social welfare increases of €10 a week represents between a 3% and 4% increase, less than wage growth and certainly less than those who signed up to the pension promise would have delivered. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil signed up to that pension promise. They have a lot of picking up to do over the next few years to reach that and to make sure their promises to pensioners are kept. These are the working poor, the most exposed by the decision not to make any extra payments to cover the cost of living in 2026. We did not hear from the Minister earlier about the household benefits package going up, for example. It has not gone up in 12 years. We would push it by €10 a week. The living alone allowance has not gone up in years. It should have gone up by at least a fiver to €27. We also believe child benefit should have gone up by €10. The core rates of child benefit have not gone up in a long, long time. We have had double payments in recent years but no permanent increases to the payment itself. If we are targeting, let us decide, as Labour did years ago, thanks to our colleague, Deputy Mark Wall, who really got this matter on the national agenda, to go the whole way this year and allocate the €330 million needed to get rid of the means test for the carers’ allowance.
Sentiment score: 0.09
Carers save the State €20 billion a year and for a fraction of that, we can ensure that every carer gets the financial recognition and support they need and that their selfless work deserves. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s manifestos have variations of commitments in that direction. Incremental increases to income disregards are all well and good, and welcome, but we need to do more. I acknowledge the progress announced today. Labour also agrees that there are additional costs to living with a disability. There was nothing about that today from the Minister, Deputy Chambers. There is plenty of guff in the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil manifestos. We would ensure an additional payment of €25 is made, to be brought in over two years, to recognise that reality. I say it every single year. A sign of our maturity as a country would be to agree that social protection rates need to be benchmarked and increased every year based on a mix of wage growth and a measurement of inflation. We should legislate for this, make that decision and wear it as the badge of honour of a decent society that wants to do better. We should do the same on income tax, too. For many years now, Ministers have been warning us about the vulnerabilities of our tax base. The concentration risks associated with corporation tax are well rehearsed. When we strip away the corporation tax froth, we are in the red to the tune of about €7 billion. When the music stops, as it inevitably will, it is not the well-heeled but the less well-off who will pay the price. The same Ministers again refuse to take their own advice. Looking at the budget presented today, several billion in windfall revenue will be spent next year. Corporation tax is actually bailing us out. Labour is a patriotic party. We want Ireland to succeed, but we must learn. We feel entitled to critique. We supported the setting up of the Future Ireland Fund and the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund. These funds are important to insulate us against an uncertain future, but more can be done today to help protect our tomorrow. Professor Barra Roantree said two years ago that among the stupidest of tax reliefs in a competitive field was help to buy. This year, thanks to Simon Harris and his solemn promise made on the stump, that stupid tax wheeze and others are now being extended to 2030 to provide "certainty to developers". The only certainty in all of this is that it will keep doing what it always does, add fuel to the house inflation fire. Well, this stupid relief has very serious competition this year. Say hello to the 9% reduced VAT rate for hospitality, a massive transfer of close to €700 million in a full year, from PAYE workers----
Sentiment score: 0.21
----to a sector that is adding jobs, and can boast more openings than closures. As it happens, almost the exact same amount of money is needed for a targeted second tier of child support to the poorest of families. This will be rolled over every year and the Government will get no change out of about €3 billion by the time it is done. That is €3 billion less for tax adjustments for working people and service improvements. The only people who think this is a good idea seem to be Simon Harris, Peter Burke and industry lobbyists. If this is the emergency we are told it is, why delay it until half way through next year? This is nothing but an old-fashioned stroke. At the top end, this is an industry that is super-profitable and is addicted to low pay. The likes of Supermac's posted pre-tax profits of €42 million in 2024. Food industry data suggests that about 40% of the benefit will go to the fast food multiples, with less than half going to the local independent restaurants and cafes we all want to see survive and thrive. The evidence for this is thin or non-existent. Even the man who launched the election campaign of the Minister, Deputy Burke, the one and only Michael O’Leary, said "this is a scam". That is what it is.
Sentiment score: 0.06
IFAC, the usually demure, dismal scientists, waded in last week. They usually keep their mouths shut on policy pronouncements. They said that every tax cut or tax foregone comes at a cost. They set out alternative homes for this cash. Over 11,000 nurses could be hired, or 7,800 teachers. Critically, tax bands could be moved by €3,000, saving an average worker €600. As far as the Labour Party is concerned, IFAC is right, this money would be better spent supporting children and workers. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have made their bed. These measures are never temporary. The temporary help to buy scheme is still in, and will be extended. SARP was supposed to sunset this year and is being brought back in. It was meant to be given a decent burial but it is still here. I sound like a broken record, but now, when the economy is running red hot, is the time to take counter-cyclincal and not pro-cyclical measures to dampen things down. Back in 2022 the Commission on Taxation and Welfare set out a menu of €14 billion of options for sustainable revenue-raising measures that would not harm jobs and enterprise. There are two reasons we should go for this. One, to broaden and diversify the tax base, and two, to help us meet the aging, climate and demographic challenges that are well and truly here. The simple fact is that once the plethora of performative reliefs and stunts like help to buy, the apartment VAT relief and hospitality are accounted for, only about a third of this year’s €1.5 billion set aside on the tax front goes towards the common good via the renter's tax credit, which has been extended but the rate has not been increased, and the continuation of the VAT relief on energy bills. The story of this winter will be ever-rising energy bills. Without targeted action, the 170,000 in gas arrears and the 300,000 in electricity arrears will go up and up. This Government has made a rod for its own back. Even those who did not need them got its famously untargeted energy credits, when those who needed more were left to flounder. The credit papered over the cracks. The Government was throwing cash at a problem, never asking why we have the second highest energy costs in Europe, or why we have a regulator that routinely nods through savage price rises and fails miserably to honour its consumer protection role. The Government has failed to take a State-led approach like the Labour Party would in strategically investing €1 billion to make our moonshot moment in offshore wind a reality, weaning us off imported gas, which would be good for consumers and good for climate. With families and small businesses reeling from unaffordable price rises, the answer of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, is “can anything be said for another task force?” Freezing families cannot heat their homes with reports from task forces. There are a few bits and pieces on SEAI and little improvements to grants and so on, but what has also been revealed is a failure to understand the scale of the home energy crisis in Ireland in 2025. Mark my words, this is the thing that will drive people over the edge this winter. Here is the problem: they cannot afford to pay the bill and neither can they afford to do the retrofitting that is still out of the reach of so many. I urge Government to take our advice. We have proposed further extending the fuel allowance to all of those on working family payments. There have been some moves in that direction today and we will look in detail at what has been proposed but more needs to be done in terms of extending the period for which the fuel allowance is available. The Government is using the tax system to boost the bottom line of large takeaway businesses and the developers. Why not use it as we proposed, to providing an energy income tax credit to working families in draughty homes who are earning less than €80,000 a year? The Labour Party's idea would see €400 go back into the pockets of working people, in the same way that people are used to claiming annual medical relief, a carer's credit or the renter's credit. These are simple, straightforward and, most importantly, targeted reliefs. We have no difficulty saying we would put a 20% windfall levy on energy companies’ profits and a levy on data centres to pay for them - cost neutral to the State. This is the kind of real action that will keep people warm this winter. Nothing reeks of failure more than the numbers of children we have who are poor. This should have been a children’s budget but it is far from it. Over the last 20 years, child poverty levels have averaged 18.5%. Now, it is a scandalous 21%. One in five of the children we meet are in poverty. Poverty in childhood, and the embarrassment, stigma and shame that go along with it, follows children around for the rest of their lives. However, the embarrassment and shame ought to be on the Government. For a dozen years now we have known the solution. It gets fixed with a second tier of targeted child benefit, which happens to cost the same amount of money as a full year of VAT relief for the hospitality industry. I note there has been an announcement today from the Minister, Deputy Chambers, about a €300 million package for child poverty. You will find that is just rebranded. He has put together all of the initiatives we know are out there already and put a different label on them. That is insincere and indifferent. What is the difference between children in poverty and the hospitality sector? Poor kids do not have well-paid lobbyists and their families rarely vote for Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil. I actually believed Leo Varadkar, when he became Taoiseach again, when he said he wanted to do the business on child poverty. I was prepared to take that promise in good faith. I should have known better. The Labour Party would bite the bullet and allocate the €770 million for the second tier. We would go further than the Government has done this year in terms of the welcome increases in child support payments, but we would also ensure that we had a living wage, do more on DEIS plus, which is a pioneering Labour initiative, and end voluntary contributions - all of the things that go in to making child poverty history. We would make education truly free and invest in our Cinderella youth services like never before. This is not a time for incrementalism and crippling caution. The response to child poverty demands urgency, courage and single-mindedness. Anything else is indifference and an unforgivable moral failure. There has been one consistent political figure at the top of national politics since the first child poverty target was introduced in 2000, 25 long years ago. Who is it? Micheál Martin. This target was in the first national children’s strategy signed off by the then Minister for health, Micheál Martin. Our child poverty scandal would look a lot different if we did not have such a problem with family homelessness and insecure housing. For a Government that says housing is its number one priority, it has a funny way of showing it. We managed to hear from two Ministers earlier on and not one of them mentioned homelessness. What an outrage. Since Fianna Fáil brazened its way through the general election telling porkies on housing targets, this has been the Government's record. We have had garden sheds in lieu of homes; slashed apartments standards; rushed changes to rent pressure zones, RPZs; €1.4 billion of capital top-ups because the Government got the sums so wrong last year; cuts to the tenant in situ lifeline; not enough money for housing adaptation grants; and most disgraceful of all, over 5,000 children in homeless accommodation. We have a housing Minister who is the very definition of an empty suit, missing in action. Most people could not pick him out of a line-up. A Government that could stand over the new plan we are told to expect would publish it well before the budget because that would help them lay out the spending and policy ambitions in it. Instead, the plan is being suppressed and kept under lock and key until the slow bicycle race to the park is done and dusted. Of course, we only get advance leaks of good plans. It is telling that all we have heard from Government on housing before this budget is talk of tax cuts for builders and Robert Troy having a pop at people in social housing. You would think that with his record, the Rigsby of the Dail would have been best served keeping his thoughts to himself. This budget contains little or nothing that will radically increase supply. The Government is simply all over the place on housing. You know you are in trouble when the Taoiseach launches an attack on councillors and officials for not zoning enough land. He needs to stop with the deflection and dishonesty that is his stock in trade. He needs to cop on and, for once in his political career, take some responsibility. Somehow with Micheál Martin, it is always somebody else’s fault. Quite frankly, it is this nonsense that undermines faith in politics. Anything Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have tried has failed but of course they will never fail in their fealty to the demands of developers. Apartment builders and landlords asked for changes to unit sizes, other planning law changes and amendments to RPZs, which really exposed renters. As we know this week, exposing renters is par for the course for Fianna Fáil. The Government has delivered on all three requests and now we have a VAT cut and other tax adjustments that were never asked for, with no guarantee of more supply. This is bone lazy policy. I said here previously that the situation on housing is so desperate that if some form of tax incentive scheme, time-limited and with social conditions, that would focus on turning around vacant and derelict sites was proposed, the Labour Party would be prepared to take a considered view of it, such is the emergency in our country. However, a VAT cut is just bananas. It will feather the nests and bottom lines of developers. I am looking forward to seeing the advice from the Department of Finance officials on this ill-conceived proposal. This is the very last policy lever that should be used and it is a sign of desperation. Let us be clear that neither party in government ever sought a mandate for tax cuts for developers for smaller apartments, or garden sheds as housing solutions. Of course, this is back-of-the-envelope stuff. The tax strategy group papers state that a cut to VAT on all residential construction would cost around €800 million. How would this be done for apartments only? Many projects, as we know, have a commercial and retail element too. How will that work? What about mixed-use multi-unit developments including duplexes? This will have to be thought through and it seems to me that it has not been. Our housing crisis is a supply problem, plain and simple, and it is getting worse. The Labour Party, uniquely among the Opposition parties, actually supported the proposition of the Land Development Agency because we thought it had the prospect of evolving into what we have described as a State construction company. This is something that has been rejected by the Government and in this budget there is little sign of the kind of ambition we have been showing around investment in social housing, affordable housing and cost rental. However, I welcome two changes for which I have advocated for years. These are the extension of the living cities initiative to towns like Drogheda and Dundalk and the Government decision to answer our calls here in Labour and give Revenue the job of collecting derelict sites levies. Councils can be ignored-----
Sentiment score: -0.01
-----but a business cannot give Revenue the two fingers and get away with it. Before handing over to my colleague, Deputy Sherlock, I will conclude on this. It is disgraceful that this Government has decided it will keep what it describes as its solemn promise on VAT for the hospitality sector but will break a solemn promise it made to workers about introducing a living wage in 2026. Workers in this country have waited long enough for the dignity and fairness that comes with the introduction of a living wage. They also require moves to a European model of sick pay but that has also been shelved by the Government. That is on this Government and it is unacceptable. This is a Government that prioritises the needs of business and builders over the wider common good.
Sentiment score: 0.07
Unbelievable.
Sentiment score: 0.20