I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. I recall the rushed nature of the debate on the corresponding Bill on the eve of the general election last November. As has been said on many occasions over the years, this legislation is, to some degree, a housekeeping exercise, as reflected in the Minister's comments, but it is nevertheless important that we have a Dáil debate on the matters the Bill addresses more broadly. As previous speakers noted, it was not that not long ago that the Dáil did not debate appropriations of this nature at all, with annual appropriations simply being nodded through. Our consideration of the Appropriation Bill allows us to take stock and think for a minute about the direction of public spending and how and why we allocate resources. That is the very essence of politics. Constitutionally, it is our job as Members of the Dáil to do so. There are few measures contained in the Bill that anyone will disagree with and nobody has any issue whatsoever with the Bill going through. I hope I speak for everyone in opposition on that count. It will ensure moneys are available into early next year to pay public servants, keep services going and provide for the carryover, within reason, of capital, accepting the complex and multi-annual nature of important capital projects. It will also ensure core social welfare payments are made seamlessly at the beginning of the new year. On the capital side, we ought to have a Dáil debate on our return in January on the recently published Accelerating Infrastructure plan. Such a debate has not yet happened. We in the Labour Party have given the general approach of the plan a measured and calibrated welcome, with some caveats in relation to what we view as dangerous limitations being placed on the right of citizens in this Republic to access what we might term environmental justice and to have access to the courts on important matters of justice and rights. Such is the dire situation with the delivery of housing, offshore energy, transport projects and so on, which are key to our economic performance and the success of our society, that any plan that envisages a new mission-orientated approach should be given a chance. Ministers and senior officials seem prepared to be accountable - in the truest sense of the word - for failure. A plan should be given a chance to prove its worth and value. We care about the future of the country, and we will not play opportunistic politics with a plan of this nature, but we will relentlessly hold the Government to account on any slippage and on any failures. This is far too serious a plan and far too serious a situation for us not to do that. To a degree, this kind of debate is almost at odds with the growing pattern evident in recent years of the weakening of the transparency framework around framing budgets and indeed the presentation and debating of spending plans, annual Estimates and Supplementary Estimates. This year the Dáil has been expected to approve, on the nod, Supplementary Estimates totalling around €4 billion. While this might be down on last year's figure, it is still an extraordinary ask of our National Parliament. The bizarre thing is that there is little or no real debate in this Chamber or in the line committees on the nature of the requests from Ministers for extra allocations. This has become an-all-too-frequent occurrence and now an almost routine part of the annual budgetary process. That this is the case raises very serious questions about how we do the people's business. It would be useful to have access to the Revised Estimates for 2026 in advance of a debate of this nature, so we can look at spending on a multi-annual basis in the round and make some comparisons. It is worth reminding ourselves that it is the constitutional function of TDs and the Dáil collectively to scrutinise Estimates, to amend and pass the annual budget and to hold the Executive to account. The reality is that the Executive sees the Dáil merely as a rubber-stamping Chamber. This is bad for our democracy and for the principle of good fiscal management. This year again, we were asked to nod through substantial Supplementary Estimates that are cumulatively the equivalent of the amount of revenue raised in corporation tax in any one year just over a decade ago. This puts the position we are in into some kind of context. Whether Ministers have the will to stay within the tramlines next year is an open question. We have a situation now in Ireland where budgets, as I have said repeatedly, have become works of fiction as Ministers have shown themselves incapable of responsibly controlling spending and staying within the confines of the sizeable allocations announced 13 or 14 months prior. We know for example that this year's budget saw total spending up by 12% on the 2025 Estimates. In budget 2026, we saw the largest allocation of public money ever, beating last year's record. That is required to meet the social and economic demands of a growing country, and the growing demands of the populace. It was a budget of over €9 billion, comfortably beating the last one, yet working people are still likely to be worse off than they were, largely thanks to decisions made on wasteful tax cuts brought in at the behest of noisy lobbyists. Responsible budgeting does not mean cuts. There should be no confusion about this. We can have responsible fiscal management and social and economic progress, imagination and innovation at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. It is not a zero-sum game. I have said time and again that we cannot spend more and cut taxes at the same time, put that approach on a continuous rinse-and-repeat cycle, and expect an outcome that does not prove to be negative in the end. That is all at the same time as our tax base is at mortal risk. Given what we have seen in the last few budgets, Paschal was not prudent, and with his signature VAT cut for the burger barons, neither was Simon as sensible as the moniker he has given himself suggests. The Dáil needs to exercise its rights and constitutional functions when it comes to accountability for our public spending. This is precisely why I will shortly be publishing legislation to establish an office of an Estimates commissioner, which will greatly enhance the capacity and function of the Dáil to keep the Government honest on its in-year spending plans. There is a worrying opaqueness about how we allocate resources, and how we plan. Time and again, I have criticised the opacity around the presentation of the cost, for example, of maintaining existing levels of service, ELS. This is not an abstract point. It goes to the heart of the budgetary process. It suits the Government to be less than clear about what it costs to maintain basic levels of health, education and spending on other services, so it can juggle with the numbers, make itself look more responsible than it is, or alternatively pull some rabbits out of hats on or near budget day. For years, we have all been working on the basis that the summer economic statement was the gospel, published well ahead of the October budget, allowing for clear data on ELS for the subsequent year, and making it clear as well what fiscal space was available, on a more or less no-policy-change basis – in other words, what would be available for extra spending and additional tax-cutting measures when everything else is accounted for to keep the show on the road and meet evolving demographic needs. Clear data and better Dáil scrutiny of the data and figures would also help to keep the Opposition honest. It is not just about keeping the Government honest but about having an informed debate in this House on agreed numbers. The post-budget analysis of the Parliamentary Budget Office, PBO, does not pull any punches. For this year's budget, it says "there is a noticeable absence of transparent, data-driven analysis to underpin fiscal decisions." It also states there is "now no separation between the allocation given for new measures and funding required to maintain ELS, with the exception of the pay deal impact and carryover costs." Again this is not in any way an academic point, as it makes it difficult for all of us to conclude if the spending we are doing for this year and next year will in fact keep the show on the road at all. Will it help us to meet the challenges we have? Do we need more or less? What is the objective situation? It is hard to be definitive. Similarly, there are criticisms of what is termed the weak evidence base to inform some decisions contained in the PBO's analysis. For example, not all pledged tax expenditure reviews were published. We are also reminded that there have been no spending review papers published for 2025. This is really unforgivable in the current environment and it needs to change fast. Never before have we spent more as a country, yet there is an evident frustration that I have not seen for some time, if at all, about how the country simply is not working in a way that a rich country should. We are used to seeing Ireland as a two-tier country, but in my experience in recent times a three-tier Ireland is emerging. We are speaking about the Appropriation Bill, which in general terms is about spending and the allocation of resources. We need to be clear that the frayed social contract can only be repaired if we get better at generating and allocating the resources we need to make sure that everyone feels they have a stake in this evermore complex society. I will explain what I mean when I talk about a three-tier society. The resources of the top 10% of asset owners and income earners mean they have only heard mere talk of a cost-of-living and housing crisis. It has never visited their door. We have a cohort of people where the idea of a cost-of-living crisis now has a real permanence in their lives, and where the State needs to offer a better, more hopeful future for them and their children, as their prospect of progress seems more remote from their reality with every passing day. Then we have people on middle incomes, many of whom I have never seen as angry and frustrated as they are now. They see an economy that is objectively doing well but they do not feel that is the case for themselves. That is not their own experience. They are dealing with what I might term broken promises on reducing childcare costs. We will see what the Government publishes tomorrow in its childcare plan. People spend endless hours in cars driving from a home that is some distance from where they want to live to jobs where the salary would ordinarily have guaranteed them a good life, but now it does not. Instead of tax cuts and once-off payments to lessen the blow, it is affordable homes and decent universal public services - the kind which their peers in other wealthy countries have and take for granted - that they expect, and should be entitled to expect from a good government that has their backs. It is not much to ask in a country that is wealthier economically than it has ever been, and when we are debating, as we are today, the general allocation of resources in the broad sense. Our absolute focus in the future needs to be on investment in universal public services that work, and that are accountable, to give some hope of a better, fairer future for every citizen of this country.

Sentiment score: 0.08