Bríd Smith: Budget offers breathing space, not solutions

As the dust settles on this massive spin operation, I wish to call it, from the government around this year's budget, there are a few things that are clearer now. We know from many commentators that the next year will see people's living standards decline, inflation will run at over 8% for the coming year, and living standards will fall by 3% this year and 2% in the next year. The budget electricity grants and the various once-off payments have one common theme, they will attempt to deal with the effects of the current crisis, but not with the causes of that crisis. Essentially what the government are offering is a breathing space to people who are drowning in a sea of rising prices and the rising cost of living, and while payments are welcome, the process of drowning will continue. The €600 energy grant will move quickly into the profit margins of the energy companies, the €500 renter's tax credit will barely register, but will be gratefully accepted by real estate investment trusts and various corporate and other landlords. And that is why we and people before profit have argued for price controls, for rent reductions and rent freezes. Price controls, it was argued by the government, are just another way of subsidising energy companies. Well, they are not, not if the state refuses to subsidise them. Price controls are allied, if price controls are allied with a policy of renationalising our energy system, it would allow this state not only to deal with the current energy crisis, but with the looming and ever larger climate crisis. Like the weather, it seems everyone wants to talk about the broken market in energy, but few will do anything about it. We need to reverse the Thatcherite and Reagan era reforms that totally deregulate our energy system, and only a publicly owned and controlled and operated energy system can ultimately address this crisis and ultimately achieve a move away from fossil fuels. In the last week, we have seen yet another giant corporation, Shell, withdraw from the offshore energy projects, just as Equinor did before them. And leaving the unrolling of offshore energy to private for-profit companies will lead us to the same disaster as it did when we relied on private for-profit companies for broadband, or indeed our hospital provision. Except that the consequences in terms of climate targets will be even more profound. On the issue of energy poverty, one of the government's own research papers has estimated in 2016 that 4,700, sorry, 475,000 people were living in energy poverty. And we know that the recent price hikes will have driven many more thousands into energy poverty. Up to this budget, some 370,000 people were receiving fuel allowance. The various criteria and means test rules that applied essentially stopped many thousands in energy poverty from receiving the much-needed help from this scheme. So I welcome the fact that some 80,000-plus pensioners who have been locked out of this scheme will hopefully now get this allowance. But there are two problems. One is that the 80,000 won't get this help to January, and that also means that they will lose the 400 extra euro bonus as well that was promised. Winter is coming, and it is unconscionable that we recognise a problem and a dire need here, but to fair dealing with it for three months in the middle of a dire energy crisis. The wider problem is, of course, that many, many thousands more will remain in energy poverty and will remain barred from accessing the fuel allowance. This crisis should be a wake-up call for how we administer this allowance and the payments. We are rightly changing the means tests for many pensioners who have been locked out because they had a small private pension that may have pushed them over the limit. But this also applies to many other categories of households, and if we can't address it in the middle of a crisis, then we never will. Lastly, I want to comment on the Budget for Climate and the Environment. People Before Profit has consistently pointed out that the crisis in energy and the crisis in climate are intimately linked, and so are the solutions to both. It is ironic that the climate received so little attention or comment in this Budget. You would be hard-pressed to know that the Green Party were in government if they were not called out every now and again to justify carbon taxes on ordinary people. But the low-key silence on climate in this Budget is astonishing, especially when you consider that, as I said, both the energy and the climate crisis are so intrinsically linked. And when you look at the headline figures in this Budget, amazingly you will find that actually the Budget for Climate is 17% below the last year's spend, and that is driven by a 35% cut in the energy transformation heading. A 35% cut in energy transformation during a worsening climate crisis is excitedly odd. That fall in the Department's spend seems to be accounted for this year by the spend on emergency gas fire generation and on electricity grants. But in both cases, as I understand it, a large sum, £128 million and £40 million respectively, were taken from the retrofitting programme to fund them. So, despite the spin around the announced targets of 37,000 homes to be retrofitted, we are well behind the existing targets and falling further and further behind each day. Unlike our emissions reductions, our retrofitting targets are heavily weighted towards the latter years heading to 2030. Manana, manana. It is revealing that £128 million is taken from the retrofitting funding to pay for emergency gas fire generators. Regardless of the Minister's reasoning for the 17% cut in the Budget this year, I believe a Green Party should have argued to retain the funding total and use it to push for greater retrofitting programmes or to trial out free public transport. Instead, unbelievably, we are hiring in an emergency gas fire plant to keep data centres running. Lastly, I just want to say that just two weeks ago, the Fine Gael Party and Minister Faradkar went into a rage against the Commission on Taxation report, calling its members Marxists and Shinners. All because the Commission dared to suggest that we should look at taxing wealth to fund public services that we will need in the future. The truth is that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil cannot bear the idea of taxing wealth or profits. This Budget is about leaving intact a system which is overseeing growing inequality, leaving profits and wealth untaxed, leaving market delivery of key public services unchallenged, not addressing systemic reasons behind the energy crisis and the wider crisis in society. It couldn't be otherwise because these two parties have dominated Irish politics and society for the last hundred years. Winter is coming, but I'm afraid so has change for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. It's all about to get totally on this issue today. We'll see. Amazing. emissions is coming, so pretty quickly I guess that's the reason why you are hiring democracy in the future,