Paul Murphy: Budget is 'eco-austerity' that fails working people

Thanks, Count Corlea. Before I start, I want to just draw attention to something that you mentioned at the start of today's debate, Count Corlea, which is that you asked all the TDs not to distribute the contents of the budget before the budget speeches were completed. We weren't permitted to take the documents out of the room, but the Tanaiste did just that. Before Minister McGrath had even stood up to deliver his speech, the Tanaiste, Olua Varadkar, had tweeted out large parts of the the budget which is contained in the speech that was yet to be given. I understand that perhaps he couldn't contain his enthusiasm for another Fine Gael, Thatcherite budget, but I do understand that Phil Hogan previously was forced to resign over leaking the details of a budget, and I wonder whether there will be any consequences for our Tanaiste. But in any case, Count Corlea, the framing of this budget by sections of the media as some sort sort of giveaway budget is entirely false. It is nothing of the sort. It is a budget which does nothing for working people. It makes people's lives harder with eco austerity measures while providing giveaways for the rich. It's a budget which learns no lessons from the coronavirus crisis. It's a budget which pays lip service to the impending climate catastrophe, but does effectively nothing to address it. A reduced PUP, a Scrooge-like refusal to give a Christmas bonus to those recently on the PUP through no fault of their own. Shame on the Government TDs, in particular those who pretended to be against this cut, but will vote through these cuts again like they did last week. A vulnerable, the hardest, and an increase in motor tax on old polluting cars for workers who can't afford a new car and can't access public transport. Less than 1% rise in the minimum wage to a miserable 10.20 an hour for those workers who kept society and the economy moving over the past six months, and for whom they were rewarded with a clap on a Thursday night. Not an extra cent or euro for young people on social welfare, for the core rates of social welfare, or for those on the state pension. Nothing for renters. No ban on evictions, no rent control, nothing for renters. Almost nothing for youth services, so important at this time. A miserly two euro, two euro, one coin, for the qualified child payment for under 12s. Incredibly, outrageously freezing investment in childcare right now, despite the crisis already pre-existing COVID, and then being exposed and becoming worse as a result of COVID. And a completely inadequate 80 million for retrofitting our schools, when one quarter of them don't have hot water, and 80% of them don't have the ventilation that they need. Count Corley, there's an air of unreality when you listen in particular to the minister's speeches about what kind of society we're living in and the kind of conditions that people are facing. I spent some of my day yesterday with a young mother. She was waiting for her landlord to come and attempt to illegally evict her. Thanks to the community support she got, the landlord never dared to turn up, because he knew she would have been protected by her community who rallied. But there's a family reported in the papers today, John Johnson and his three sons, who weren't so lucky. They were evicted from their family home of 60 years on Saturday by a vulture fund. The family spent the weekend sleeping out under a bridge. John lost his job in a bar and he had his PUP 350 payment cut. What's in the budget for them? What giveaway is there for them? And to ensure that in the next days and weeks we aren't faced with similar shocking stories. Is the 350 euro PUP being restored? No. Are evictions being stopped? No. Is there a plan to build the 100,000 social houses that we actually need to clear the waiting lists? No. The reality is that the government today is doing the bare minimum that it can get away with. There is no plan here to address the massive inequalities in our society. No plan to fund a zero Covid strategy. No plan to deal with the climate catastrophe that we're facing. In fact, the hiking up of the carbon tax will make it more difficult for John and for other families to get by. You're just forcing working people to pay yet another tax to live in a system that they have no control over. By locking the carbon taxes is in from now until 2030, the government is trying to achieve a situation by 2030 whereby the extra carbon tax on a tank of heating oil for a family will be 250 euros. That might seem like nothing for someone on a ministerial salary, but for many people in this country, that's a large amount of money. And all of the evidence demonstrates that it will not have any serious impact in reducing carbon emissions. In Norway, for example, a carbon tax reduced onshore carbon emissions only by 2%. It's a very different budget, however, for those at the top of society. For those who Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael represent. A continuation of help to buy, which is not at all about helping people to buy or get access to their first home. It's about helping developers to profit by maintaining prices high, which keeps other people out of being able to access the homes that they need. The residential development stamp duty measure, another measure for developers, for the friends of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael. A continuation of the SARP tax relief for some of the highest earners, those on 75,000 euros plus, going up to 500,000 a year, working for multinationals. A special tax relief for them. A continuation of the corporate tax haven status of this state. With legalised tax avoidance by multinational corporations. With measures like the knowledge box, which is extended yet again in this budget. It means that those corporations pay an average of less than 6% of tax on their profits a year. Many much, much less than that, as we've seen. It's a budget to entrench the deep inequalities in our society and to do nothing to fix the vulnerabilities which have been so brutally exposed by the coronavirus. The underinvestment in public healthcare, while private healthcare is promoted over decades. Which is the reason that today we have the third lowest number of ICU beds per capita in the OECD. It's those decades of historic underinvestment and pushing a two-tier model. With this budget, we get promised an extra 66 new ICU beds. No firm commitment to reduce hospital waiting lists by any amount. Instead, we have continued outsourcing, privatisation, leasing of private hospitals so they can profit further when we should be nationalising the private hospitals and building a national health service. The lowest level of education in the OECD. Which means we have the highest pupil-teacher ratio. And we see the consequences of that now in terms of crowded classrooms and inadequate facilities in our schools. The government says, well, we'll go from 26 to 25. What difference will that make for a crowded classroom? The continuing housing crisis exposing the consequences of effectively stopping building public housing and funneling in this budget now over 2 billion euros a year. Not to build public housing, but to go into the pockets of private landlords. This budget does nothing to challenge any of those issues. Because it's committed to remaining within the framework of Thatcherism. Where the market rules, where it is unthinkable, as Leo Varadkar suggested in his tweet the other day, unthinkable to tax the rich or the big corporations. And where basic public services can really be better provided by the private sector. At the heart of the budget this year should be a zero Covid strategy. Even in the last week, we've seen the government reject the public health advice, because they're committed to short term private profit. At the expense of public health today and the longer term interests of our society and of our economy. Instead of the roundabout of lockdown and partial reopening and lockdown again, we should be driving, pursuing a strategy driven by public health to eliminate community transmission of the virus. That means investing in testing and tracing. It means doubling our testing capacity. It means investing in community public health teams. It means investing in an additional 300 ICU beds to have the capacity that we need. Not the 66 the government promises us. It means building a proper national health service. It means full sick pay for all and the government does nothing on sick pay in this budget. It means giving people the capacity to do what's necessary by restoring the PUP payment, by banning evictions and banning rent increases. The same applies in terms of tackling the climate crisis. Because addressing the Covid crisis actually coincides with taking the measures we really need to tackle the climate crisis. But what we have from the government is the same neoliberal approach which permeates everything that they do. Look at the section on climate change in Minister Donoghue's speech. There's two things. One, the government pats itself on its back for the climate action bill, which is nowhere near adequate and which has a punchline of a target of pursuing zero carbon emissions by 2050. Nowhere near enough, far far too late. An advanced country like Ireland has to be targeting net zero carbon emissions by 2030. And it has the carbon tax, which is simply eco austerity. What we need is a socialist Green New Deal based on public investment, public ownership and democratic planning. Investing in free, green and frequent public transport. Investing in sustainable agriculture. Investing in renewable energy. Investing in green jobs, including care jobs. In building a national childcare service, national health service and a properly funded education system. A four day week or 30 hour week without loss of pay. And public ownership of key polluting sectors. And democratic planning to transition in a rapid and just way to net zero carbon. How that coincides with Covid, I'll demonstrate to take the example of public transport. I mean, right now we need to double the amount of buses, of Lewis's, of trains that we have on the road and the tracks. We need that so people can socially distance while they're on public transport. But then we need that in the medium to long term as well and more as part of a strategy of providing free, green and frequent public transport. So that people can get out of their cars and so that the second biggest emitting sector in Ireland, which is transport, can have the emissions substantially reduced. The same applies to retrofitting. People are going to be asked to spend more time at home. There's almost nothing here from the government in terms of retrofitting. We have the highest household energy use in the entire European Union. And we need a massive rollout of a retrofitting plan. The same in terms of investing in renewable energy. The same in terms of investing in healthcare and education. Obviously the point that the government will make is where's the wealth going to come from? We're heading into this enormous economic crisis. The second enormous economic crisis in just over a decade. And just like with the last crisis, the question will be posed bluntly. Who will pay? Will it be rich and big corporations or will it be working class people? Will we have another decade of austerity, of cuts to public services, of extra tax burden on working people and all the consequences? Rising deprivation, poverty, mental health crises. But it's worth noting that while people worldwide have experienced massive cuts to their income, massive dislocation of their lives. The enormous wealth in our societies has not simply disappeared. Billionaires worldwide have increased their wealth from April to July by over 27%. A total wealth of over 10 trillion dollars. They got richer by betting on the stock exchange while workers around the world were thrown out of their jobs. But the same is the case in Ireland. Take the example of Larry Goodman. He profits every which way. He profited from the meat factories while the virus ran rampage through them and the government turned a blind eye. He profits from the deal between the state to rent the private hospitals. A deal the details of which have still, despite repeated attempts to get them, still not been published. Even profits from the very renting of the building that the Department of Health sits in by the state. Total household wealth in Ireland is almost 800 billion euros. It's increased by over 170 billion in the last five years. And the top 10% control over 50% of it. The top 1% control 15% of it. Corporate profits have exploded. There's many, many more statistics that could be given. The point is, the rich are extremely rich and they're getting richer. And instead of this budget for them, we should be implementing a Covid tax on the richest in our society. There's a European wide campaign to do just so, containing four emergency taxes. Applying those to the Irish economy, the amount of money that could be raised is astounding. A 3% extra tax on corporate profits exceeding 5 million would raise over 2 billion. That's 2 billion that could be raised easily without touching the income of a single worker or a small or medium business. A 3% wealth tax on the richest 1% of people in Ireland would raise 3.6 billion. A 1% tax on the assets of investment funds and holding companies, excluding pension funds, would raise 22 billion euros. Finally, increasing the tax on transfers of assets, excluding shares and residential property, would raise 600 million. In total, that's 28 billion euros plus. Enough money to really transform or to begin the process of transforming our economy and our society. The kind of money that could be invested in a Green New Deal with socialist policies. To conclude, these are dark and depressing times for many across the country. Ordinary people need to see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That not only can we defeat this virus, but we can build a better society. Where everyone has the right to a home without breaking the bank. An Irish National Health Service for when they need it. Truly free, quality education from preschool to university and a living wage for all. This pandemic has highlighted all the inequalities in our society and all the problems in our public services. Decades of underfunding have let our health services hanging by a thread. And our classrooms among the most overcrowded in Europe. This should be a wake up call that we cannot go on this way. There must be no going back to the neoliberal model. That instead we must take on the super rich tax avoiders, challenge the rack renting landlords and tackle the big business polluters. We need a socialist economy where the major wealth and resources are in public hands instead of private hands. And are planned democratically to meet the needs of people and our planet. This government of course refuses to do that. It represents those who benefit from this system. They are failing to provide people with a real hope for the future. A vision for how we can crush Covid and rebuild better. For that we are going to need a left government with socialist policies and mass mobilisations from below. I want to say something that I want to say something. ık