I join with the Ceann Comhairle in welcoming our special guests from County Tipperary, our Little Blue Heroes, who have come to watch proceedings here in the Dáil. They had a busy morning. They had a Garda escort and were greeted by the Minister for Justice, Home Affairs and Migration, Deputy Jim O'Callaghan, the Ceann Comhairle and Deputy Michael Murphy. I was delighted to attend the Little Blue Heroes ball in Killarney earlier this month. I thank the organisation and all those who support it for the extraordinary work they do for children and families. I pay a particularly warm tribute to An Garda Síochána. This entire charity emanated from a number of gardaí and retired gardaí. Their volunteerism and commitment are second to none. They reflect the degree to which An Garda Síochána is embedded in every community in this country. We are fortunate and thanks be to God An Garda Síochána is so embedded because it gives us the police force we have. The Government is very conscious of price increases and the cost of living more generally. Even though inflation has fallen and is down to 2%, the bottom line is that the elevated level of inflation, arising out of the post-Covid situation and the war on Ukraine, has meant that food prices are very high. That is acknowledged. We have provided substantial support over recent budgets, which were decried by the Opposition, with significant financial support to households and businesses. The Think-tank for Action on Social Change, TASC, published its annual report today. It found that the temporary cost-of-living supports such as the pandemic unemployment payment, energy credits and lump-sum welfare payments played a critical role in reducing poverty risk among vulnerable households and that without those interventions Ireland's at-risk-of-poverty rate would have increased to 13% in 2022 and 14% in 2023. Instead it fell to 10.6% and 11.7%, respectively. The supports we brought in were effective for their time without any question. We have made it clear that budget 2026 will focus on measures that are sustainable and maintainable in the long term, with a particular focus on child poverty, disability and, of course, housing. In addition to those cost-of-living measures we have brought in, last April we extended the VAT reduction to 9% on gas and electricity and maintained the reduction on others. That has benefited households by about €70 each for gas and €55 each for electricity. That is further supported by the 40% reduction in the renewable electricity public service obligation levy for 2025 and 2026 announced on 14 June by the Minister, Deputy O'Brien. From 1 June, women will receive hormone replacement therapy, HRT, free of charge. From September 2025, free school books will be extended to all students in post-primary schools. That was a major measure that the Deputy ignored completely in her presentation. All primary schools are eligible for free hot school meals. These are significant measures that are long term and that have had a real benefit in terms of bringing down costs. Free public transport for children, including those aged five to eight, will be introduced later this year. We have also acted to shield workers from a higher tax burden by adjusting income tax credits and bands in successive budgets. We are a significant importer of energy and food produce and that has resulted in significant additional costs associated with transport, logistics and our small market size. The Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, has engaged with the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to engage with the industry and provide an up-to-date assessment of it.
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We will deal with this issue in the budget, but consumer price inflation, as measured by the European Union harmonised index of consumer prices, HICP index, has eased significantly over the past two years, with the annual inflation rate in May 2025 standing at 1.4% compared with 2% in May of last year. That is below the 2% target rate of inflation set by the ECB. In April, Ireland had the sixth lowest rate of inflation among the 27 EU countries, which is quite a remarkable outcome given the strength of domestic economic activity here vis-à-vis other European countries.
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Additionally, with inflation expected to grow by 2% this year, nominal wage growth-----
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-----is set to reach 5.5%. That will result in real wage growth of between 3% and 3.5% this year. When inflation was high, we did not have that to offset it. We now have it at significant levels. That is an effective way of dealing with this issue, in addition to the measures we will take in the budget to deal with that.
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I thank the Deputy for raising this very important issue. I take issue with the term "released" from school. Children these days enjoy school and have very good experiences in our schools but they are going out to enjoy the summer holidays. Through many other avenues of government, we will endeavour to give supports to children throughout the summer holidays. More specifically, the issue of homelessness is key. A key strategy is to shorten the time any family experiences emergency accommodation and ensure they can receive social housing. We have built more social houses in the past four years than in the previous 40 years. The increase in building of social housing and the provision of social housing through other mechanisms has increased exponentially. That is a key way of dealing with homelessness. The housing first programme is also key. It was recommended strongly a number of years ago by the homeless agencies. There are now 1,000 tenancies for homeless people with complex health and social needs, with further significant numbers planned for 2025 and that is a very important intervention. We have no issue with examining the Labour Party's legislation, although is the Deputy suggesting those who are perhaps on the list for eight or nine years? A balance always has to be struck between those on the homeless list vis-à-vis those who have been on the social housing list for quite considerable lengths of time and have an entitlement as a social house as well. What will be key is increasing the number of social houses we build and doing it consistently over the next decade and more. The building of social houses has already had an impact on the social housing lists in many cities and local authority areas and also on the issue of homelessness itself by reducing the length of time people experience in emergency accommodation. An eviction ban would actually be regressive in terms of supply. Ultimately we need more supply of homes and housing. The Housing Commission made it clear the Oireachtas's approach to the rental market over the past four years was too interventionist. That is what it more or less said. I am sorry; "reactive" might be the word the commission used. The result was a dampening of supply into the market, thereby exacerbating the situation. We cannot endorse policies that would make the supply situation much worse and by definition make the homelessness issue much worse. That needs to be acknowledged also.
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Over the last five years since Fianna Fáil came back into government we have built close to 48,000 social houses - delivered. That is the most in 40 years. You would have to go back to the 1970s to get that level of social housing construction, but we need more because the population has increased. That is a factor in this. The composition of those presenting for homelessness and emergency accommodation has also changed. It is much more complex than perhaps the immediate understanding of the term or the experience of homelessness today. There is a European context to it which is very real now and there is a blurring of a lot of distinctions as well in terms of entitlements and so forth, so we have to be very clear-eyed about that. We are treating this as an emergency and as urgent and we are doing everything we can through local authorities-----
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-----and through the approved housing bodies and those involved in the homelessness area to address this issue.
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The question is?
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Am I going to-----
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First of all, I say to the Deputy that he has a tremendous habit of asserting what I said earlier, which of course I did not say at all.
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I did not rattle off any figures when I was answering Deputy McDonald.
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I did not. What I said was, I outlined what TASC, the Think-tank for Action on Social Change, said in its publication today. That is not rattling off figures. It basically said that the short-term, once-off cost-of-living packages that we introduced had a very significant impact in helping people to deal with what has been the worst inflationary spiral since the 1970s, which we had after Covid and as a result of the energy crisis resulting from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Those things did happen and there was an inflationary spiral, which we are still experiencing. The Government interventions were probably the most significant across Europe in terms of scale and impact-----
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-----but they still did not go to meet the enormity of the increases people experienced at the time. Do not say I just rattled off figures. I did not.
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I then went on to say that we had extended the VAT reduction to 9%, which we did. That is not rattling off figures. That is a fact, which has had some impact. I mentioned free-of-charge HRT coming in on 1 June.
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I mentioned the extension of the free schoolbooks scheme to all students. If you have one income coming in, we all know that every September and every summer, schoolbooks, going back to school and the cost of schoolbooks was the bane of most parents' lives. That is gone, eliminated. The Deputies did not have the good grace to acknowledge that. I do not expect any acknowledgement, but they just ignored that and its impact on household budgets. St. Vincent de Paul has said this has had a significant impact on household budgets. The hot school meals programme has been significant in its impact on children generally, and particularly children from low-income and difficult circumstances where they may not get a meal on their way into school in the morning. The free public transport will be increased from five years to eight years. This is all expenditure that frees up people's income for other expenditure. We also passed legislation, the food ombudsman Bill, to deal with, engage with and give greater transparency to the entire continuum from producer to shelf in respect of supermarket prices and the income the primary producer gets for food in this country. That legislation was passed and is there. The food ombudsman has been established - it is a different title but it is essentially the same - to deal with the issues the Deputy raised in respect of transparency. That will have teeth.
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I did acknowledge, and have spoken a couple of times today about, the elevated level of grocery prices and the impact it is having on households. Please do not say I did not acknowledge it. I did. It is the Deputy's standard practice now to make assertions that are not true. Of course prices are impacting on families and households but the taxation measures we took last year in the budget benefited low-income workers and medium-income workers, through both the USC reduction, in particular, and the income tax reductions. We did it in previous budgets as well. Those are sustainable measures to help people cope with what has been an extraordinary period of growth in prices more generally. We had a significant impact on insurance reforms, which we worked and focused on over the past number of years.
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We are looking at every aspect of cost and price with a view to getting prices down.
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I assure Deputy O'Callaghan that we understand fully the degree to which this is impacting on people, households and families, but we have taken very effective measures. They include ones that even the Social Democrats did not advocate for, such as free schoolbooks, notwithstanding the position that party adopts on so many issues.
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I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of primary care and GP provision. Undoubtedly, in rural Ireland in particular and in some urban areas, over recent years there have been challenges accessing a GP and getting a GP. On the other hand, there have also been significant developments and growth, particularly in terms of the number of places at third level. That has increased very significantly over the last two to three years. The work done by the then Minister, Stephen Donnelly, with the Tánaiste when he was Minister for higher education resulted in additional places in our colleges. It will take some time for those places to come through. We also secured additional post-graduate education places more generally. That is important. We have 179 primary care centres in the country now, which is very significant, and 50 new ones have opened since 2020. On chronic disease, 95% of GPs are now signed up to the chronic disease management programme; there were more than 645,000 patient reviews by GPs in 2024; and 92% of patients with chronic diseases are now fully managed routinely in primary care and not attending hospital for managing their condition. The number of new entrant GP training places has increased significantly in recent years and is up 350 for 2024. College and training places continue to grow and an additional 662 student places have been provided in the higher education sector on health-related courses overall this academic year, which include nursing and midwifery. The growth is there within the third level colleges but the quality and nature of the work of GPs is changing. That work on chronic disease is essential for outcomes and for the community enhanced care programme. A lot of GPs speak very highly of its impact. Overall, our figures as a country on life expectancy are improving because of the stronger role of primary and community based care and the management of chronic disease, along with public health measures and better quality of work within acute hospital services. Our life expectancy is above 82 years of age. Our mortality fell by 11% over the decade 2014 to 2022. The mortality rate for all circulatory system diseases fell by 20% in that period, with heart disease and stroke falling by 28% and 37%, respectively. There is another perspective to our health narrative which rarely gets articulated.
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The new programme in Galway will be specifically focused on rural GP medicine. A huge investment is going into primary care and this area.
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Practices in receipt of the rural supports receive the maximum rate of practice staff subsidies, significantly reducing possible staff costs for smaller practices. They also receive the maximum rate of locum support for leave-taking. A new locum support initiative commenced in May, providing GPs in receipt of rural practice supports with access to a streamlined locum-sourcing service. The annual intake to the GP training scheme increased by approximately 80% from 2019 to 2024, with 350 new entrant training places made available from 2024. Three hundred and forty-six new entrants commenced training last year, representing a 21% increase on the previous year’s intake, 286. We will continue to build on that. Recruitment of GPs from abroad commenced in 2023 under a joint HSE-ICGP international medical graduate rural GP programme. One hundred and eighteen of those GPs are currently in practice and an additional 18 have completed the two-year course.
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