Niall Collins (Limerick County, Fianna Fail)
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I am sharing time with Deputy James O’Connor.

I am glad to have the opportunity to speak on the budget, which we were apprised of this week by the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Chambers. I congratulate both Ministers on their presentations and in particular, my colleague Deputy Chambers who presented his first budget to the House as Minister for Finance and, indeed, our deputy leader.

By any yardstick, we need to stand back and look at the breadth and scale of the budget that was unveiled and give due recognition and due regard to the people of Ireland who put our country in the place where we could deliver a budget of such magnitude across so many areas of expenditure. This is at a time we can look across the globe and see the impact of globalisation, the geopolitical unrest around the world and the disruption it is causing so many economies that are experiencing economic downturns or recessions and that find themselves in economically straitened times. We find ourselves in a polar opposite situation. That is down to every man, woman and child in this country and how the country has worked its way through the past few years especially. We worked our way through Covid, bounced back strongly out of Covid with a really strong, buoyant economy so much so that we experienced, unfortunately, on the back of the war in Ukraine, a huge spike in inflation, which brought cost-of-living issues. Thankfully we were in a position to address this due to the buoyancy of our Exchequer returns. We have seen year-on-year surpluses. The prudent approach by this Government has been to provide for the future through the Future Ireland Fund and the infrastructure fund. These are two very prudent rainy day funds into which we are putting significant resources. Were we to experience a downturn or slowdown in our growth and of our economy in the future, we will have that money to call on for a rainy day fund and particularly for capital projects. If we learned one lesson from the previous economic crash and the recession that followed, it was that we lost a decade in house building. That is a great priority area for this Government. We have sought to address the huge deficit in our housing stock up and down the country. We lost almost ten years. We were constrained by the troika and by borrowing limits and the amount that we could borrow and the amount we could spend. It is a pity that during those years a mechanism was not found through which we could have borrowed specifically outside that mechanism for infrastructure to keep house building going. That was one of the big lessons from all this for me.

We are in a really good situation. We do have huge challenges. We are trying to ramp up capacity in our hospitals and our construction sector and deal with issues like homelessness. We will never be without our challenges and our problems but thankfully we are in a position where we have the resources to deal with these. Our challenges relate to capacity now. We have full employment and buoyant Exchequer returns. The future of this country is in a really good place. It behoves this Government and the next and the next set of people elected to this Parliament to form a government to maintain that responsible and progressive approach to how we prudently spend our money and plan for our future despite all the challenges.

I will speak in particular on the Department I am assigned to, namely the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. It is the sixth highest spending Department with a top line budget of approximately €4.6 billion. When the Department was created back in July 2020, we set about trying to reform the further education sector in particular. Our universities were on a very good footing and in a very good place. They had a bit of an issue with funding but we have secured the funding for their future to keep them in the very positive place that they are globally and to try to improve their global and European rankings.

We have revolutionised the area of further education and, in particular, apprenticeships. We will spend €373 million on apprenticeships next year, whereas we spent approximately 20% of that amount in 2020. We have revolutionised, renewed and modernised that sector and have in the region of 75 formalised apprenticeship schemes. There are about 15 more in development. Quite importantly, we have destigmatised the area of apprenticeships. University is not for everybody, nor should it be. We have given people new, innovative and creative pathways to achieving a qualification that will give them viable jobs and livelihoods for the rest of their lives. They will also receive a skill which will be transferable right around the globe.

I will sum up by saying that the budget is a job well done by the Government and by the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform.

James O'Connor (Cork East, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Collins, for sharing time. I join in the congratulations to my colleague the Minster, Deputy Chambers, on his first budget. I do not doubt that it was a difficult task for him and the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, to piece together the budget over recent months.

I want to share some of my thoughts and feelings on the budget. There are very obvious positives around the reduction in income tax for households. There has also been a small reduction in the universal social charge. Other measures will make a contribution to households in the form of one-off payments, etc., which I support.

I will be quite clinical in focusing my comments on the issues facing small businesses. I represent a rural constituency that is full of towns and villages. I know just how vital it is to ensure that we have vibrancy among the businesses the main streets of our towns and villages in order to keep life alive in rural Ireland.

When I speak to the owners of small businesses, whether cafés, restaurants or public houses, I discover that they are quite angry with the Government in respect of what they see is a systemic underestimation of just the level of pressure they are under. It is not just down to VAT; it is to do with the increased cost of doing business. We can look at the huge utility bills which they are being hit by. There are also other aspects such as changes to employment laws, increases in the number of statutory sick days, changes to allowances and increases in the national minimum wage. I accept that there were major issues for young people being taken advantage of, whether they were secondary or third level students, who were engaging in part-time employment. At the same time, I have to outline to the Dáil what I am being told by many decent, honest small business owners in my constituency who I trust. They tell me that they are under significant financial pressures.

I am hearing that payments relating to the increased cost of business support scheme are being delayed. This must be dealt with as a matter of urgency. If record budgets are being introduced in the House, there is a need for the money raised by Revenue to be shifted from the coffers of the Department of public expenditure and the Department of Finance and put back into the pockets of those who need it the most. I take this opportunity to reflect upon that. I am listening to people and I relaying what I am being told to Dáil Eireann and to the Government.

I welcome the extra money being provided to Uisce Éireann for capital expenditure purposes. People may not necessarily feel positive overall about the performance of Uisce Éireann, but there is a chronic needed to fund wastewater treatment infrastructure in rural Ireland. I spoke at last week's meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts about the village of Ballyhooly where people do not have sufficient water pressure to shower and where their washing machines, cookers, etc., cannot function properly because of the lack of a quality water supply. The sewerage facilities in their homes are not working. Before this budget, villages like that were being told that they might have to wait up until 2029 to get funding to solve these problems. That is absolutely disgraceful. It shows that we are not doing enough to get stuck in when it comes to these places in order to try to deliver the wastewater treatment infrastructure.

The reason this is a good investment for the taxpayer to do this is that we can provide homes. Small builders can go in and hire five or six bricklayers from the local GAA club or other people who may not feel ready or may not want to go on to higher education or pursue an apprenticeship but who could work in construction. This is the type of grassroots recruitment of people to work in the building industry that happens in Ireland. That is why it is so important to enable the construction of homes in rural areas, whether in small villages or towns. This is something which must be addressed. There is an extra capital allocation of approximately €1 billion in the budget as a result of the sale of AIB shares. That is a very positive move. and I commend the Government on its decision in this regard. We need to use that money in Ballyhooly and elsewhere.

There is fury among the public regarding the waste of public money on projects that have either gone over budget, like the national children's hospital and small things - as Albert Reynolds said, it is the little things that can catch you - like the bike shelter and the security infrastructure. I am getting many messages today about the introduction of mobile phone pouches at a cost of €9 million. The small things are really annoying people. The Government needs to be a great deal more tuned in when it comes to wasting public money.

The same can be said of projects costing billions or millions of euro. The next Dáil should have a joint committee to deal specifically with the national development plan in order that we can bring in all of the relevant stakeholders, representatives of State agencies and civil servants from the Department of public expenditure and other relevant Departments and put questions to them on why projects are not being delivered on time, on budget and on scale, particularly in circumstances where problems occur. This is not to ignore the positivity around projects that have been successful; it is to address problems where they occur. That, for the Taoiseach, Deputy Harris, would be a much better idea than appointing a Minister for infrastructure.

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." I have never felt those words to be more relevant than when sitting here this week listening to the announcement of the budget and to some of the commentary that came from Government benches in respect of it. I cannot help but feel that we have been here before. This budget reeks of the infamous 2007 budget. The so-called giveaway budget of 2007 promised everything but delivered nothing but disaster in the years that followed. We had been told that it was transformational and was the biggest giveaway in decades, but what exactly did Bertie Ahern's 2007 budget bring us? It brought us a housing crisis, economic collapse and a generation of people paying the price for the Government of the day's short-sightedness.

Now, with another election around the corner, the current Government seems to be following the same playbook. We have flashy handouts and one-off payments to win votes, but no real solutions to the structural problems we are facing and the erosion of the tax base. There are energy payments going to people with second homes. Over the past three years, those people have received close to €100 million in such payments. Compare that waste of money, and that is what it is, with the false argument that happened last weekend as to whether people being paid the jobseeker's allowance would receive an extra €12. It was suggested that these people are somehow undeserving. There are 125,000 people in receipt of jobseeker's allowance. Some 72% of them on the payment for less than a year. That brings us to 35,000 people who were scrutinised over the weekend as to whether they were deserving or otherwise. A breakdown of that figure shows that most of those involved constitute one-parent families. A large proportion of those are people over 50 whose jobs became obsolete. That became the focus. That €80 million payment to second homes is for me is the biggest waste, as are the bike shelter and any of the other scandals that have come to light over the past couple of weeks.

Let us look at the facts. With record breaking corporate tax receipts flowing to the State, we had the potential to do something truly transformative. Instead of investing in long-term solutions that will improve the lives of ordinary people, we have been given a budget full of temporary one-off measures that will be eaten up by this time next year. Each Minister singularly focused on their own domain, and nobody that I could see was pulling in the direction of what this country needs, namely what were the great crusades of the past and what are the simple solutions for us all collectively. The Minister of State can look up to the sky all he wants but that will be the legacy of this budget.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the area of disability services. Families all over Ireland are crying out for support. Parents of children with additional needs have been waiting years for access to basic services like speech and language therapy, occupational therapy and respite care. These families have been let down time and again by a system which refuses to provide the care and support they need. What does the budget offer them in real terms? There is cash to help them out, undoubtedly, but that will be going to privatised services and will do nothing to address the structural needs we need to cater for at State level in order to provide the type of decent and consistent accommodation that people with disabilities and their families need. What is happening amounts to an attempt at privatisation by stealth.

Instead of committing to long-term investment in public services, the Government has thrown a one-off payment to families and left them to fend for themselves. That is not transformational; it is abandonment. We see the same pattern across the board. In housing, where the crisis continues to spiral out of control, the Government has chosen to subsidise landlords with a €1,000 renter's tax credit rather than increasing housing construction targets to actually solve the problem. In energy, where households are struggling with soaring bills, the Government has offered lump sum payments that will be swallowed up by the same corporations and is doing nothing to tackle the root cause of the crisis. The budget undoubtedly had the potential to be historic and to finally address the longstanding issues in housing, health and public services, but instead it is an absolute missed opportunity and in a very short space of time that will be proven to be correct. It was a budget designed to buy votes, not to solve problems.

In the midst of it all we have seen €9 million allocated for phone pouches. The €9 million has become a trigger for many people across society. It had only been announced before we had educators ringing all our phones to highlight that this was the answer to a question nobody was asking. It is insulting at a time when families are waiting years for access to disability services in schools and thousands are struggling to find a place to call home. I do not doubt for a second the issue of mobile phone use at primary school level is a problem. It is one that is being addressed by parent-teacher councils and school leaders. They have been providing solutions off their own backs for the last decade or more. Despite this, we have a Minister who has decided to give €9 million and yesterday was not able to answer the question of how much each device would cost per student. The Minister said it was €20 or €30. That €9 million could have been used for a DEIS plus scheme to recognise that inequality happens on a scale and many students feel it differently from others depending on where they are. If we had invested that figure in a DEIS plus scheme, we would have got 150 extra teachers or two for each of the 70 schools that should have been included in the scheme. Instead we got the pouches and it has become a trigger point for further waste.

The question we need to ask ourselves is this: what will be the legacy of a budget like this? When the money is gone and the once-off payments have been eaten up, what will we have to show for it? Will we have solved the housing crisis? Will we have built a healthcare system that supports everyone, including those with disabilities and additional needs? Will future generations have been left a fairer, more equal society? The answer is “absolutely not”. I do not doubt for a second that one-off payments will make a difference to people’s immediate lives - of course they will - but the legacy of a budget like this could have been transformational. However, the Government has chosen for it not to be.

In the brief time I have left, I point to another factor lost in this budget. For the best part of two or three years I and others have been coming into the Chamber to ask for some sort of collective responsibility when it comes to the city of Dublin. We all remember how Deputies across the Chamber, when things got bad, lined up to derail the city. One Fine Gael Member referred to the city being full of drug addicts and looking dirty. The Taoiseach, when he first came to power four or five months ago, stamped on the table and said he was going to get in front of the problem. He commissioned a task force he told us would take 12 weeks to deliver its report. We are now approaching 21 weeks since he made that statement. I am very aware the task force report has been presented and the Taoiseach has not yet read it in the course of three weeks. There was nothing in the budget about enacting the recommendations of that task force. There has been more bluster and more spin. We are going to go into an election and the city will still be left without any sort of leadership. It is another opportunity lost.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I get depressed very often when I come into the Chamber and hear the Opposition Members voice their opinions, which they are entitled to voice-----

Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats)
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Thanks.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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-----but should it always be negative? I cannot recall when I last heard a positive sound come from the Opposition. I am aware the job of Opposition is difficult at any time. In the bad times it was difficult because there was no money in the country so nobody could complain about anything. However, it is no harm to step outside the box, to use the current phrase, and examine the situation in which we find ourselves. We should be grateful that we are where we are now and that we do not have to beg for money. We do not have the IMF around the corner, we do not have it above in Government Buildings and we do not have it making decisions. We were a programme country and let us not forget it. The Opposition needs to think about that. We were a programme country so we were allowed to spend what the IMF thought it was wise to. It was here for quite a long time - the guts of five years - and it left the criteria behind it. That is something that is forgotten regularly in this House. In speeches it is no harm now and again to give a little bit of credit to the efforts made by the Government and previous governments towards recovering while at the same time trying to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. Those challenges will continue well into the future.

It is a measure of government at any time to be able to anticipate the pitfalls and be able to deal with them insofar as we can. Everybody talks about the windfall taxes. Everybody is reaching for the fruit to fall from the tree, but it does not come that easily, as the Ceann Comhairle and I know well. Accordingly, what we must plan for now and in future is stability. We must plan for the event of things going wrong. The European courts decided we were due a great windfall, but it was not really meant for us in the first place. It was meant to dissuade foreign direct investors from coming into this country. That is what it was meant to do and that is the way it was phrased and structured. That will not happen again; I can assure the House of that. We can do what we want and say what we like, but we must keep in mind that was an obstacle in our path. Incidentally, as I have said before in the House, there was a concerted campaign across the globe. It was amazing how this country, a small country, featured so much on their agenda. Mo Ibrahim, a multimillionaire, led a campaign around the world. Along with a well-known charity, he went around the globe campaigning against Ireland and saying how awful it was that we had a tax haven here and so on and so forth. He did not tell people there were equal tax havens all over the globe and in Europe as well. He was campaigning on his own behalf of course, on the basis that he was in favour of international aid and contributing to it, but it was to be aid for trade. Thus there was a barb in it, so if people traded in African countries and other less developed countries and if there was trade for his company or the companies he controlled, he would consider aiding them in a way that had a tag on it. There was no aid at all. It was just trade for trade. We just need to remember that.

I wish to defuse another argument that everything the State puts its hand to is wrong and that it fails, overspends and overreaches. The children’s hospital is used as an example. I happen to have been lucky or unlucky enough to be on the relevant committee at the time it was initiated and went through all the debate that took place around it. There never was an original costing done - that is a fact - because there was no quantity surveyor’s report and it could not have been done because it was a two-stage contract and there was another one below ground and another one above ground. Nothing happened, but people began to give guesstimates, small guesstimates of less than €1 million and so on and so forth. If that can be accepted, everything is an overrun after that. We will not build a hospital of that size, scale and complicated nature for less than is going to be the ultimate price. If we want a smaller one, by all means let us have a smaller one, but if we want to have the present one we have to pay for it. We also need to recognise that in the course of doing so building costs have accelerated over the past number of years. In housebuilding alone there has been an increase of 33% in the past two to three years or whatever it is and we all know about that. We have people saying of the hospital that as builders they could build it for less. There are 6,000 consultation rooms in it. We are aware of how complicated the building of 6,000 houses is, in the market alone, and if somebody is suggesting there would be no overruns in the same period in the building of 6,000 houses I can listen to that, but I am not prepared to believe it.

The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council made an unfortunate intervention in the sense that it gave a byword to the Opposition.

I am always conscious of the need for the Opposition to have bywords, catch phrases, throwaway remarks and that store needs to be built up at all times. I am happy about that. However, I do not think it is the job of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council to do that. It is right to draw attention to the fact it is dangerous to over-inflate the economy but inflation has come down. It has been either below or at 2% in the last 12 months. A lot of other countries in the eurozone and throughout Europe generally have been trying to do just that and have not been successful. The Government has managed to do that, albeit there have been other inflationary trends in our economy because of a whole series of things such as wars, Covid and all the things contributed to that. We have to deal with the issues that arise as they arise and we cannot be selective. There is no sense in the Government running away from the hard questions and saying it will deal with them another day.

The Government has done an admirable job. It is a good budget. We got a lot of criticism because it makes direct once-off payments. There is a reason for that. It is not a recurring payment. In terms of the economy, which the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council is primarily concerned about, it should recognise and note that. We also need to remember that for the stability of the economy in the future, comparing it to 2007 was not a good idea. The Opposition must have been glowing with delight when it heard the phrase but it was not a good idea and it raises a question mark. The Irish Fiscal Advisory Council has to do its job and in certain circumstances where adequate provision is not being made its criticism is valid and needs to be taken into account. I think the Government has kept all of these issues in mind.

I will not go through the various benefits spoken about by many in this House over the last week other than to say it was a very helpful budget. In response to the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council, there is such a thing as social cohesion that has to be borne in mind, particularly in Europe today, where large groups of people are being challenged by the so-called moving towards the right and that the right is the future, and so on. It is not. We were there before and it was not such a nice place to be. It was not as a result of anything we did in this country but it was a really awful place to be. If we have not learned enough from the experience of the 1930s and 1940s at this stage then we have a problem. There are still those around who say things such as that the Holocaust never happened. Imagine saying that the Holocaust never happened. Thousands after thousands of people were just exterminated.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Millions were.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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It was 6 million in the case of the Jewish people alone and millions of others, to the extent that about 20 million altogether were exterminated in one way or another. Their lives were terminated. Their futures were terminated. Their families were terminated. Their raison dêtre - the reason for their existence - was terminated. They had no future. We need to remember all of that and that when extremism takes over we need to have a way and means to stabilise and social cohesion is one of those ways and means. The Government and Ministers have done admirably in addressing that issue in a way that balances the demands in the budget and recognises at the same time that there are genuine causes that have not been dealt with at this stage but may well be.

For instance, the entertainment sector is not happy it did not get 9% VAT rate it looked for. There is an issue there that needs to be looked at. I have spoken about this issue previously as have several Members in the House. The Government needs to examine that to find out exactly what is happening to that industry because it has become wobbly, to say the least of it. There may be things that can happen within the industry. There may be things that should happen from outside the industry. Maybe rent costs are pushing the uncompetitive button. There are a number of things. Unfortunately, there is not enough time during this debate to go into those nuances but suffice to say I believe, for what little my opinion is worth in the House, that the Ministers and Government have done well. They have taken into account the areas that need to be touched and had a concern and compassion for those who need to be dealt with favourably. This is part of a trend that has gone on, will go on and needs to go on.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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When the Government praises this budget and says it has done a great job, that is quite a subjective point of view I want to be objective on behalf of a different cohort of people-----

James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)
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That is the way it works.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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-----than the Fine Gael TDs sitting opposite me. That is the community and voluntary sector, the sector that looks after the people who live in poverty. "Poverty" is a word that is very seldom heard in this House. It is a word the Government has forgotten. The Government speaks about inclusion. Yes, inclusion is great. It is a nice word and all the rest of it. However, I am talking about actual poverty.

Poverty is a reality for many tens of thousands of people, and particularly for children. It is also a reality for many tens of thousands of pensioners. I have just come off the phone to a friend of mine who was the CEO of the Irish Senior Citizens Parliament. One point she made to me, very strongly, was about the carer's allowance. Many, many senior citizens care for family members, some of whom are in their thirties, forties and fifties with disabilities and problems. When a carer turns 66 and gets the pension, the carer's allowance is cut in half. What sort of treatment or recognition is that of people who are doing a job that is absolutely needed? The means test, which should have been dropped and was not, has been mentioned many times in the House, but imagine caring for somebody for decades and when you come to get your old age pension the carer's allowance is cut in half a day after turning 66. That is absolutely outrageous and this has knocked an awful lot of older people into poverty.

People are saying the €12 increase is great and at least it is not a fiver but it has to be put in the context of the cost-of-living increases and also of promises made to elderly people. The Government's roadmap for social inclusion four or five years ago argued that payments for elderly people - people who have retired - need to be linked to 34% of the national average wage. That has never happened in one of the richest countries in the world and yet it is the norm across Europe for pension payments to be linked to the average industrial wage. Instead of getting €12 if the payment had been index-linked with the average industrial wage pensioners today should be getting an extra €31. It falls €19 short of doing right by them. We find more and more older people are falling into poverty and find pensioners struggling to survive.

For example, Nat O'Connor of Age Action said he is:

... relieved to see the State pension has gone up by more than a fiver... [but] a €12 per week increase does not replace the lost spending power since 2020. The core rate of the pension would need to be increased by a further €19 on top of the €12 to have the same spending power ... [as] 2020.

Imagine that, they have the same spending power as nearly five years ago. No account is being taken of how the cost-of-living increases have put pressure on the poorest people.

With regard to child poverty, we know extreme poverty among children has risen by 27% and that there is a higher chance - by 7% - that children living in poverty have a disability. According to the ERSI child poverty could be reduced by 25%, which would affect approximately 40,000 children, if the Government had introduced a special means test for child poverty on top of doubling the benefits.

Poverty has a negative impact on those it affects and the younger and longer one suffers from poverty the more one is affected. It affects the outcomes at the other end. At the other end there is the need for addiction services, family intervention supports, and justice services for young people who will end up in trouble with the law and will go to prison precisely because of the way they were born and reared in poverty.

I am going to keep saying "poverty" in this House because nobody on the other side of the House recognises that it exists. It is a reality.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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We were all poor, including those of us on this side of the House too.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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What was the name of the former Minister of Finance from Limerick?

Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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Michael Noonan.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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He stood there and said that the Government of the time was picking the low-hanging fruit first after the banking collapse in 2008 when he came into government. He said it was picking the low-hanging fruit for austerity. Those low-hanging fruits were the drug and addiction services in communities, the family support and youth services and the intervention services that were needed in the poorest working-class and rural communities. Those cuts have never been fully restored. Fine Gael has been in power since then but those cuts have never been fully restored.

When the Department of inclusion does not look after those in addiction or children in poverty, and takes it out on young people by discriminating against those on the dole and on the minimum wage, what does the Government expect at the other end other than communities that are disengaged, disaffected and alienated, and an enormous amount of problems? It is almost as if the Government has contempt. It is refusing to address the exclusion and poverty that is rampant and growing. While this economy grows, the rate of poverty is also growing among children, older people and the most vulnerable.

I condemn this budget even though we still have to see the finer details and the colour of the Government's eye. How much is it going to put into supporting addiction and youth services, and families who are excluded from society? We have to see the colour of the Government's eye in that regard. I bet it will not be inspiring and the Government will continue to leave people excluded and living in poverty. That is the condemnation for this Government. Until it is gone and some other government comes in to address the imbalance, it will continue.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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There would not be much left in the kitty in that case.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The Government has proven that for the past 11 years.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputy. We were all poor.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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It has come to my attention that RTÉ is reporting that an esteemed, long-serving, highly regarded and colourful former colleague, Mary O'Rourke, has passed away. I am sure we all want to express our sympathies to her family.

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I would like to be associated with the Ceann Comhairle's expression of sympathy on the death of former Minister, Ms Mary O'Rourke.

I have been listening to the debate for the past while with interest. Not too many of us, on both sides of the House, disagree about what we would like to get done. A lot of it is about how we get there. Many of us would like to get to the destination a lot quicker than we feel we are travelling. I believe that incrementally, this budget will gradually improve the lives of people.

I will start with a matter I am familiar with, having spent 15 years as a teacher, which is education. I will mention the further expansion of the roll-out of free schoolbooks. It is one of those things that the Minister initiated a number of years ago. We are now finally at the destination where free schoolbooks have been extended to all secondary school children. It is something that all of us have been calling for but it has taken a number of years, and a number of budgets, to get there. I welcome that full roll-out. When we talk about helping people in poverty, it is those types of actions that will make life easier for those children and their parents by tackling the costs associated with education.

We are also seeing further expansion of the hot meals programme to include all primary schools. I emphasise to those schools that have not applied for it that they should do so in 2025. I find that the people who ring our offices to give out that their school has not been selected have not applied. Whether that is because they do not have the facilities or whatever the excuse might be, I encourage the schools that have not applied for the programme in the past to do so now.

I again acknowledge that the Minister has increased the number of special educational needs, SEN, teachers by a further 768 and has provided for an additional 1,600 special needs assistants, SNAs. I have spoken often about special education during my term in the Dáil. I have seen the direct impact of the interventions we are making in special needs. That includes the massive roll-out of the number of autism spectrum disorder, ASD, classes. It is important that we have the people, the SNAs and SEN teachers, to staff those classes.

I will move to infrastructure. I was glad to hear that as part of the Apple windfall of €14 billion, the four pillars that the soundings suggest have been identified are transport, water, housing and electricity. It is imperative that we put an awful lot of our resources into those fundamentals. I will touch on the issue of water, which Deputy O'Connor mentioned earlier. I have spoken in the past about the problems in Cork city in particular. Replacing the mile after mile of cast-iron pipes in Cork city will cost hundreds of millions. I do not care what side of the House one is on. We can throw as much money at the issue as we want in the short term but, fundamentally, it is going to take time. Irish Water admits it is limited by its own capacity, on which there are constraints. It is good to see that is one of the areas that is going to be the focus of that Apple windfall in the coming weeks. I give a shout out for Cork city, in particular, because the area has experienced massive problems with discoloured water and excess manganese in the water in the past two years. There is funding that can be put into the treatment plants, in particular, in the short term to combat the worst of the discolouration and the water supply we have, which is not up to standard.

The lack of water infrastructure is one of the greatest inhibitors to development in many of our towns and villages. I often cite the area of Carrignavar, which is a perfect example. It is only ten or 12 minutes from the city centre. It is about to benefit from the new BusConnects roll-out, which will provide a much-improved service. It is only 12 minutes' travel into the city centre for the people who are working there but there has not been a house built in the village for the best part of a decade. Judging by Irish Water's current capital plan, a house will not be built in the village until 2036 at the earliest by my estimation. It comes back to my point about giving money to things such as that. We can give the money to Carrignavar in the morning but Irish Water is telling us it will take seven years to upgrade the plant, what with planning, tendering, environmental reports and so on. That is the real crux of the matter. We can throw all the money we want at stuff but unless the system changes and adapts to the needs of society, money is not going to solve many of the issues we have.

I will speak about childcare as the parent of three kids. I have a three-year-old, a four-year old and a five-year-old. Many people say to us that childcare is nearly the same kind of stress on a household as a mortgage but for many of us, the cost exceeds that of a mortgage. I welcome the expansion of the national childcare system. There will be a further 44% increase in the system and the estimates are that it will benefit most families to the tune of €1,000 per annum. That will reduce costs considerably and it is a welcome initiative. We are talking about transforming the way we do childcare but I return to my point about it being done incrementally. It will take time to massively overhaul that system.

I will move to the idea of making our communities better and building better communities. Many people have spoken in this Chamber in recent months about how people feel unsafe in city centres, in particular. Dublin and Cork definitely fall into that category. While I welcome the 1,000 new Garda recruits who are going to be budgeted for in budget 2025, I must say that if we get the same number of recruits in Cork as we have in the past 12 months, it will fall far short of what we need. In the most recent roll-out of gardaí from Templemore, Cork got only four and only one went into my constituency. There is genuine concern from businesses and people in the city centre. There is a severe drug problem in Cork city centre. It is impacting people in outlying estates because there are various feuds and drug-related recriminations for people who are building up large drug debts and so on. It is a major scourge on society at the moment. While the 1,000 gardaí are welcome, I firmly believe there will have to be extra targeting of resources to combat that issue.

I will also mention housing. Many parties are saying that they would scrap this and scrap that.

What the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, has secured in the budget has given certainty to first-time buyers in particular, in that they will now be able to rely on the fact that the first-time buyer's grant will be there until 2029. This is a major relief to many people – they are maybe a bit younger than myself, but I was in that cohort not so long ago – who are going to purchase their first home. It is a reassurance for them that they can rely on the fact that the Government has budgeted for the grant up to 2029. In recent months, some parties in the House have modified their positions on this matter. Initially, they were going to scrap the grant, but now they say they will phase it out over three years. They are trying to adapt to whichever way the wind is blowing. Therefore, it is important to put on the record the certainty that now exists for buyers going forward.

I do not believe I need the rest of my time, but it would be remiss of me not to mention business. There was disappointment in the small business community over the past 24 hours regarding the budget. Having read some of the newspapers, maybe that disappointment stems from overpromising or people trying to lead businesses up the garden path. Such accusations are being made, but whatever the excuse, the measures introduced in the budget have fallen short in addressing the expectations of many small and medium-sized enterprises. I urge the Minister of State, Deputy Browne, to revert to his colleagues and ensure that this message is heard.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Gabhaim buíochas. Ar ndóigh, níor airigh mé na blianta ag imeacht. Is í seo an uair dheireanach a bheidh deis agam cúpla focal a rá maidir leis an gcáinaisnéis. Beidh 32 bliain caite agam sa Teach seo sa chéad mhí eile. Tá mé ag ceapadh gurb é seo an 32ú cáinaisnéis a chonaic mé. Ar ndóigh, chonaic an Teachta Durkan i bhfad níos mó acu ná mé.

Is é ceann de na dúshláin atá ann i láthair na huaire – agus is rud é seo a thug muid faoi deara 20 bhliain ó shin – ná nuair a bhíonn airgead sa chiste, bíonn chuile dhuine ag iarraidh é a chaitheamh. Nuair a ídítear ansin é, bíonn daoine ag rá cén fáth ar caitheadh an t-airgead sin?

One of the things I remember about the cycle of the 2000s and into the following decade was that I received many delegations as a Minister in which people pointed to how we had a certain surplus. I believe the amount was €3 billion or €5 billion. That was after having put money into the pensions reserve fund. When the money ran out, though, they all questioned why we had spent so much. Such is human nature. I can understand that people’s expectations grow exponentially as money becomes plentiful, particularly when people are constantly talking about surpluses. In the greater scheme of things, we have good surpluses. However, we all know from running households that, if there are two incomes but then half of one of them is lost, we suddenly find that what was a good surplus every year becomes very tight rationing.

It is important to point out that, before this budget, next year's projected Exchequer balance was to have been €9.95 billion. This figure did not include the transfer of €4 billion to the Future Ireland Fund and a further €2 billion to the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund. Adding these amounts back into the overall figure would have given a real surplus of more than €15 billion. It is right that we recognise that there has been a significant turnaround.

Wages are increasing, but so is inflation and the cost of living, so it is important to realise that, if the Government did not increase welfare payments and give extra tax credits, people would be going backwards. The income tax take will be larger next year, please God, than it was this year. The first amount of money is only stand-still money in real terms.

Eleven minutes seems like a lot of time, but it is not really, so I will move on to the windfall. A commitment has been given that some of the windfall will be spent on necessary infrastructure. So far, the national development plan has been skewed towards the east coast, but there are urgent infrastructural needs outside of the major urban centres. The parts of the country I am referring to are the ones we can develop cheaply. There is space for people and we are not trying to cram them onto land that is very expensive to develop. I hope that some critical projects can be expedited. On the first list of early movers is a project that is ready to go, namely, the reopening of the rail line that lies between Athenry and Claremorris. This line would connect Castlebar, Westport and Ballina to Galway and provide a commuter rail service in the west. I put it to the naysayers that they were naysayers about the Limerick railway as well, but we are only getting one complaint about the rail line from Limerick to Galway, and that is that people cannot get on trains in Athenry because they are jammed. The service is poor, so we need more carriages, longer platforms and so on to meet the level of demand. We need the ring road for Galway, but it is not money that has held up that project. Rather, planning has held it up. I hope that this issue gets sorted.

The other major issue for rural Ireland, be it a rural constituency in Kildare or a constituency in rural Connacht, is the importance of micro-infrastructure. Many small rural roads are not safe or up to standard and certainly do not have adequate surfaces.

I have been banging on about another point for some time. We hear people talking about paying for water and sewerage services and so on. Thankfully, domestic customers do not pay for those. According to the Department of housing, 10% of houses in this country do not have access to a public water supply. For every metre a scheme is extended, it costs €300, so it is €3,000 for 10 m and so on. It gets ridiculous. It is crazy money. We need a national broadband scheme for water that, over ten years, would extend the public water supply to every house in the country. Every house should have access to broadband, electricity, water and a decent road.

Is mian liom bogadh ar aghaidh agus focal a rá faoi rud a chuir an-díomá orm sa cháinaisnéis. Aithním go ndearna an tAire ealaíne méid áirithe airgid a chur ar fáil do TG4. É sin ráite, bheadh sé fáillí, ar an seans deiridh a bheith agam labhairt ar an gcáinaisnéis, gan codarsnacht a dhéanamh idir an airgead atá an TG4 ag fáil le seirbhís teilifíse a chur ar fáil trí mhionteanga agus an méid atá RTÉ ag fáil on státchiste, idir cheadúnas agus airgead díreach. Tá sé ráite sa phreasráiteas a cuireadh amach inné gur €60 milliún a bheidh ag RTÉ an bhliain seo chugainn. Is €225 milliún a bheidh ag RTÉ. Níl aon bhealach, dar liomsa, gur féidir a mhíniú cén fáth go bhfuil sé sin cothrom ar bhealach ar bith. Tá súil agam go mbreathnófar ar an gceist sin.

I was on the social welfare committee and spent many years working on social welfare issues. I welcome the improvement in the rates and I am glad it is the same rate this year and nobody has said that since inflation is going down, we are not giving the same rate. While lots of people getting a social welfare pension have other incomes, if they have contributions paid and are totally dependent on social welfare, living off it is difficult. Often people have nothing to fall back on.

I welcome the increase in the domiciliary care allowance. I do not think we did enough in the past on this. It is still only €84 a week. It is paid by the month so it looks a little bigger but it is €84 a week. For someone with a child where there are a lot of extra costs, it is not a huge sum of money.

One issue I will mention and that I will come back to when we are debating the Social Welfare Bill is means testing. I welcome the changes in the carer's allowance but you would think that carer's allowance is the only means-tested payment. In fact, it is the most generously tested means-tested payment, as those of us who hold clinics can see. There is very little reform. The Department has been two years writing a paper that we still have not seen. I will give a simple example of how crazy the anomalies are. Many of the people who do not have a non-contributory pension were small farmers or small fishermen with so low an income that they were getting farm assist or whatever and were not eligible to pay a social security or PRSI contribution. If they were in a PAYE employment and were over 66, they could earn €200 a week and there would be no means test. If they earn that from a small farm, fishing or semi-self employment, it is means tested in a vicious way that is totally unfair. Basically a euro is taken off for every euro earned.

The same thing happens to those on disability allowance. We are talking about the carers all the time but nobody is talking about the cared for, the people on disability allowance, where, again, the means test is incredibly severe. Táim beagnach as am. Tá go leor eile ar mhaith liom a rá. Cuirim fáilte roimh an gcáinaisnéis tríd is tríd ach má tá go leor déanta, tá go leor fós le déanamh.

Thomas Pringle (Donegal, Independent)
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The first page of the budget 2025 expenditure report states: "Sustainable public expenditure requires both the delivery of better public services, infrastructure and living standards for the people of Ireland, and expenditure to be set at levels that can be maintained over the longer term." That is a far cry from what this budget actually contains, a bonanza of one-off measures with very little long-term planning and nothing to provide better public services or living standards. There have been many left behind by this budget and many promises broken. The budget in many ways gives with one hand and takes with the other. The general public sees this as well. I do not think people will be bought off in this way. They see through the Government's spin.

The Government has chosen to completely leave the seafood sector out of budget 2025. This shows that it has no interest or ambition for the fishing industry. Not a single cent of additional funding has been allocated to the seafood sector for 2025. This is in a week when the fishing industry is potentially facing a further 22% reduction in the north-western mackerel quotas, which will have a devastating impact on Ireland's fishing and pelagic processing sectors. This cut is a recommendation from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea and is due to years of reckless overfishing by Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland, as well as the UK granting access to its waters in exchange for payments. These actions have severely undermined the mackerel stock and it is Irish fishermen who will suffer the consequences yet again. There is such an injustice to it all, yet the Government refuses to stand up for Irish fishermen. It refuses to provide any further allocation of funding to the seafood sector or coastal communities that have been decimated because of the inaction of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The seafood sector gets a small portion of funding from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The funding is so low that policy and strategy gets more than twice the departmental funding than the seafood sector does. The Government may say the seafood sector gets European funding but so do many other sectors outlined in the expenditure report, yet they still receive significant Government funding as well. Our fishing industry is experiencing a severe decline. The incredibly negative impact this has had on workers in coastal communities warrants significant Government funding and intervention regardless. The fact that the Government has refused to do this will be the final nail in the coffin for our fishing communities.

We should also be supporting our small farming communities better. This budget lacks targeted measures necessary to assist farm families in managing the cost of doing business, which has increased by an incredible 73% since 2017. We need to retain the €7,000 core annual payment limit and all applicants with commonage, irrespective of parcel size or scoring achieved, should receive a participation payment equivalent to at least €120 per hectare for the first 20 ha. These are the ways that we should be supporting farm families, not handing lump sum energy credits to every household in the country, including those that do not need them. An energy credit will not make the same difference to them as it could to so many others.

This is the third budget in a row that the Government has decided to do this. It has chosen to put money straight into the pockets of energy companies rather than the pockets of those who need it most. That is what the Government is doing when it is giving out these energy credits. It is encouraging energy companies to continue to hike their prices. Why would companies ever consider reducing prices when they know the Government is not only going to let them keep on increasing them, but is actually going to pay them to do it? It is the taxpayer who is paying the large profits of these energy companies. It is time to end these handouts and start putting money back into people's pockets.

Instead of funding big corporations in the way we do, we should also be investing more in international aid. This is something that gets overlooked in every budget. Ireland's official development assistance does not go far enough to meet the ever-increasing humanitarian needs and crises caused by conflict, climate and hunger. Year after year, Ireland has failed to meet the international commitment to spend 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid, which was agreed decades ago and reiterated in the programme for Government. We are nowhere near reaching this or meeting our climate finance commitments. This is a year in which conflict has raged, climate impacts have continued to cause chaos and marginalised communities in the global south continue to have their rights violated. We need to do more to assist those in need across the world and particularly in Gaza, where more women and children have been killed by the Israeli military over the past year than in the equivalent period in any other conflict over the last 20 years.

These are all areas in which we could be investing the €13 billion from Apple. We should be investing it in meaningful change for a better and more equal society, rather than accepting the inequalities that this Government continues to exacerbate with every budget. It does it because it suits this Government to have things stay exactly the same as they always have been, to continue giving tax breaks to the wealthy and handouts to the corporations, to continue with the privatisation of our essential services, pricing out those on lower incomes and forcing them further into poverty, and to continue to kowtow to Europe on fishing and America on Shannon. It is clear nothing will ever change under this Government, while Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil and the Green Party remain in power. The public will see this and they will see this budget for what it is, one lacking any substance or ambition.

Violet-Anne Wynne (Clare, Independent)
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I noted the Cathaoirleach's remarks about Mary O'Rourke. I did not get to meet her but I wish to extend my sympathies to her family and friends.

I finally get to respond to this year's budget announcement. I have a whole two minutes to encapsulate what my constituents in Clare have said to me, namely, that this Government has failed by its own measure of success in how it treats the Clare people. There was a lot missing from this budget. I do not have time to be more balanced. If I did have more time, I possible could be, but it is all unfortunately one-sided. There is no mention of the Government's astronomical waste of money, which looks set to continue with the €9 million provided for mobile phone pouches. I presume they are coming from the same place that resulted in the Gucci bike shelter, as it is being called, the most expensive hospital in the world and the €1.4 million security hut. It could only happen in Ireland. Then we have the €2.5 billion in indemnity cases, which are set to increase to unsustainable levels.

I have said many times in this House that to ensure social cohesion, public trust and confidence, there must be delivery. Instead, the Government comes back with delay tactics in the name of reviews. It failed to prioritise those who need it most. Instead, it spread support so thin it will not keep families warm this winter. It chose once-off payments which no longer hold the meaning of "once-off".

If I hear the term "progressive" one more time in respect of tax changes, I fear I may lose my mind. The changes have been described not just by me but by the likes of Social Justice Ireland as regressive.

The public are not stupid and know wholeheartedly that this budget was significant not because an election was coming but because the Government had massive surpluses that could and should have done much more. There should have been more targeting of those who are vulnerable in the form of a cost-of-disability payment and efforts to seriously reduce child poverty, which has actually increased. That could have been done by increasing core social welfare payments but the Government did not do that. There was no mention of establishing a model 3 hospital with an emergency department for the mid-west, no mention of the abolition of the means test for carers and no pension resolution for foster carers. We need the Leap card 90-minute fare to be extended to County Clare. Those in Kilmihil are paying a whopping €81 to get to their further and higher education courses in Ennis.

The hospitality and food sector has been decimated, which has had a huge knock-on effect for our youth in terms of employment opportunities. They have been screaming from the rooftops about their struggles and the need for more support but the Government ignored them. It could have reduced the VAT rate back to 9%, which I have been seeking for the past two years, but it did not.

The Government has replaced the recruitment embargo in health with a ceiling, which is just a play on words. We now know the pay and numbers strategy is putting patient safety second. There are insufficient nurses and the Government has tied the HSE's hands in trying to fill those vacancies as we hear that the bureaucratic process takes six months and that posts cannot be advertised until they become vacant.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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I thank the Deputy.