Beidh daoine ag féachaint ar an mbuiséad seo inniu agus á gceistiú féin cá bhfuil na gealltanais ó thoghchán 2024. Cá bhfuil an laghdú do theaghlaigh ar chúram leanaí nó na cúirteanna saor in aisce chuig an GP? Cá bhfuil na leabaí ospidéil bhreise agus na gealltanais eile? Beidh daoine ag rá leo féin conas gur féidir buiséad a fhoilsiú agus méid chomh beag sin a chur ar fháil do na daoine atá i mbun oibre sa tír seo. People are looking at this budget today and are asking where are the promises from election 2024, where are the childcare fee cuts, where is the free GP care, and where are the 4,000 extra hospital beds. They will wonder how a Government that has so much manages to do so little for working people. They will ask how is it that a country that can boast of having the healthiest set of public finances in the EU, the highest rate of economic growth, the highest rate of domestic demand and a general government budget that is in surplus has a Government that has so much but manages to do so little for working people. They will ask how is it that well over half a million children, over 600,000 children, are either in poverty, at risk of poverty, or living in real deprivation. How is it that those families are living through an appalling paradox of plenty in a housing and cost-of-living crisis and a Government that has a target for children in poverty? No Government should ever have a target for children in poverty. No child should ever grow up in poverty. We are a wealthy country and there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who feel they are going backwards rather than forwards even though our public finances are surging ahead. They will wonder where are the bold, tangible commitments to climate action - the existential crisis of our time - so that clean and cheap energy can be for the many and not for the few and so that everybody's fuel bills can be permanently lowered? It is shameful that today this Government has barely said anything about climate. I put it to the Ministers who are in the Chamber that the question that hangs over the budget and the financial management by their Government of the public finances is not what has been spent but how it is being spent and on whom. We have to go back a long time in Irish politics to see so much being spent on so few people. That is the reality of the tax cuts we see today for developers and for the small number of business owners in the hospitality sector. A serious cut to commercial rates or other targeted supports to cafés and restaurants would have been a better bet to secure business and jobs but this Government took the other option and has handed a very serious tax cut to a small number of business owners. The Labour Party in government would have made this first and foremost a children and young persons' budget by putting in place measures to support families who work, families who want to work and families that cannot, by supporting family income and the introduction of a second-tier child benefit payment, by supporting families' ability to work through the provision of affordable and available childcare, by supporting families' ability to deal with the cost of living by extending free GP care, by expanding free public transport travel and by a permanent cut to third level fees. Instead, what did we get today? There is no extension to free GP care even though this was a Fianna Fáil and a Fine Gael commitment in the programme for Government. There is nothing on expanding free public transport to younger people, nothing on the drug payment scheme, and nothing on prescription charges. There was a mention of DEIS plus, but what good is it if we do not see any figures alongside it? A €500 increase in third level fees is an extraordinary indictment of the failings of this Government. It has abjectly failed to integrate the social welfare system and the Revenue Commissioners' system so we could have a second-tier targeted payment for families with young children in this country. We have some of the biggest tech firms in the world and still the Government cannot get its act together on this. Not only would a second-tier child benefit payment lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty but it would also ensure that the State supports can go efficiently to low-income households without any wrinkles or disincentives to work. Efficiency is supposed to be the buzzword of this Government but it is in short supply when we see the detail. A critical part of supporting families out of poverty, into work and into a decent standard of living is the availability of affordable and accessible childcare. During the election last year one could not open a newspaper without seeing Government parties in a bidding war for families, saying they would lower fees and provide more places. All Members in this Chamber are aware of parents who are telling us that they have to delay going back to work and that women, in particular, have to cut back their hours because of the lack of available childcare. It is 12 months on and there is barely a peep out of the Government now. This Government has reneged on its election promises to parents and to providers and all the while the problems are getting worse and not better. Aside from the tiny increase for the access and inclusion model, AIM, support, the Government has nothing new in this budget for parents and providers with regard to childcare. The Minister, Deputy Chambers, made an announcement of 2,300 additional childcare places but let us be clear that this is a mirage. No parent listening to this today should get their hopes up of more childcare places. Last year parents across this country were told that more places were coming. In fact, they were told that €25 million was being put in place under the building blocks scheme to grow the numbers from just short of 40,000 to 60,000 by 2028. What has happened since then? Not a single extra place has been delivered through the scheme. Applications closed in January, feedback was due in March and funding was to be spent in total by this December. Instead, the contracts only arrived last week, last Wednesday to be precise, and between all of the paperwork to be processed and the tendering not a sod will be turned this side of Christmas. To make matters worse, providers will not be able to access core funding for a whole 12 months if those works are not completed by August of next year. There is the prospect of rooms being built and funded by the State but lying empty. It is an absolute insult to those who are desperately searching for a childcare place and to the providers who want to expand. The mark of a country is the dignity with which our most vulnerable are treated within our health system. Right now there are far too many people languishing for hours on end on trolleys.

Sentiment score: -0.07

Some 750,000 people are waiting on outpatient waiting lists. Time and again children are being failed because of the huge shortage of therapies and supports to those with additional needs in this country. It is not clear to me that the health budget of €1.5 billion announced today is in any way sufficient to cover existing services, growing demand, a rising population and higher prices. The reality is that we have a health sector that is running to try to stand still. We have been here before with regard to works of fiction and then supplementary Votes were required. There is a presumption here that the €1.5 billion announced today, which is less than two thirds of last year's injection, will be enough. To me the sums do not add up. This Government can say all it wants about record investment into the sector and the need for productivity, which we in the Labour Party very much support, but we all know and we can see that the funding to the health sector is not keeping up with population growth and the rising intensity of demand. There has been a 12% increase per thousand of population in presentations to accident and emergency departments over the past six years. Crucial to this is not only the population increase but also the rising need for healthcare among our population. This is not accounting for the people in the mid-west who are too afraid to go to the accident and emergency department in Limerick nor indeed to other emergency departments across the country. With regard to mental health and the demand for care in the community, time and again we see a rising need and yet the staffing per thousand of population is falling behind. At the end of last year, the number of staff for child and adolescent mental health services, CAMHS, was lower than a year earlier. There are now fewer public health nurses across the country than five years ago. This Government can talk all it wants about preventing hospitalisation or about keeping people in their homes but demand is rising, staff numbers in certain sectors are barely moving and we have a serious capacity issue. The Government put a lot of store this year on increasing productivity in hospitals and with regard to rostering, which we in the Labour Party very much support. There is, however, a reality that this project of productivity cannot be completed without electronic health records and without more beds. We did not see a peep out of the Government today about this massive project of electronic health records. We have to ask the question: where is the money for it? In last year's budget Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were falling over themselves promising the electorate more hospital beds. Even though in 2024 the Department of Health identified a need of 3,378 extra beds by 2031, Fine Gael went out at election time and said it would deliver 5,000 if it was re-elected. Fianna Fáil was, uncharacteristically, more timid and went for 4,000 more beds. Then the programme for Government solemnly committed to 4,500 over the next five years. Of course, what has been happening? Far fewer than that have been delivered and today's announcement is even lower than what was committed to last year. Last year, we were told we would get 335 beds this year. Only 286 have been delivered. We know we need to have 453 beds per annum, according to the ESRI analysis, if we are to meet demand by 2040 and yet, today's announcement is less than half of that. The impact on the ground for patients is that more people will not be able to access hospital care and those within hospital care will not be able to access step-down and other appropriate beds. The situation in community nursing home care is even more acute. There are fewer long- and short-stay beds available in 2025 than there were five years ago. The national development plan promised 4,500 long-term and short-term community nursing home beds by 2027. The promise for this year was 160 beds and yet, we know that less than half that number, just 68, will come on stream. Today, we have a commitment of 280 beds and we welcome that but I have no confidence in this wide earthly world that this Government will deliver on that. Earlier this year, the Government came out and promised us we would have more public nursing home beds following the crisis in Emeis Ireland. It is not clear from today's budget that we are going to see any progress on that. Those commitments made in the spring of this year are all beginning to ring a bit hollow now. There are those watching on today with a disability who believe they have been betrayed by this Government, betrayed because over the past three budgets there has been a recognition of the cost of disability, there has been a disability support payment and there have been one-off payments to recognise the situation they are in, but the plug has been pulled on them today. Shame on this Government.

Sentiment score: 0.06

I want to read back a piece of the speech made by the Minister, Deputy Chambers, today because I found it fascinating he would go to the trouble of saying: For a small country, Ireland offers an extraordinary wealth of talent and entertainment. Our artists, writers and athletes are now leading the way on the world stage... He says all that and then cuts the budget to the arts and culture.

Sentiment score: 0.19

It is incredible. How are we supposed to see artists supported in this country if the Government is going to expand-----

Sentiment score: 0.16

-----the basic income for artists scheme, which we very much welcome, but cut supports to all other parts of the arts sector? I have to ask: is this the vengeance of the Minister, Deputy Patrick O'Donovan, for the Arts Council and what happened earlier this year? There are very serious questions that have to be asked of the Minister today. Mar fhocal scoir, climate action appears to have fallen off the political agenda for this Government. Already we see a massive underspend in the Department and today we see a miserly €89 million going to the energy upgrade scheme. The reality is the schemes are not working. We have seen only a 70% take-up of the schemes over the last number of years.

Sentiment score: -0.01

We have seen heat pumps with a take-up of only 30% of the targets, with only 47% of a take-up in local authorities. If we want clean, cheap energy for the many, not the few, and we want to see a permanent reduction in the cost of living and with regard to energy in particular, then we have to do things differently.

Sentiment score: 0.38