Ivana Bacik: Ambulance Strikes Expose Government Failures

Taoiseach, increasingly we are seeing the consequences of your government's failure to support working people. Today, National Ambulance Service workers are on picket lines across the country. Our ambulance drivers and paramedics who do such heroic frontline work have been driven to strike over pay and conditions. Like so many, they are struggling to make ends meet on their current pay rates. And as a result, the Ambulance Service cannot recruit or retain the staff they need. So crews are being asked to provide increasingly complex care under relentless pressure. Unfair and above all unsafe. They have my solidarity and that of my Labour Party colleagues today. Taoiseach, it's not just ambulance staff. Across communities, people are grappling to get by instead of being able to get on. Because of your government's policies. And just like in the 80s, a generation of young people are again facing a stark choice between adulthood in their childhood bedrooms or a new life overseas. Now unlike the 80s, there's no shortage of jobs here. Instead, it's runaway costs and a poverty of government ambition on housing and on public services that are driving them away. Taoiseach, ag dul har láir ag lor ag abra, ag dul ar imircha. Níl ráidh ag cú, ach imacht har sáile. And that's having devastating effects. Just last week in Glasnevin, I met a woman in tears telling me she was about to, her words, lose her second child to emigration. Her children, like so many, are leaving Ireland because they see no future for themselves here. No prospect of owning or having a home of their own. A former constituent, now in Perth, tells me that from his graduating medicine class of 350, 100 have joined him in Australia. An extraordinary figure, Taoiseach. Extraordinarily, 60 of his classmates are working at the same hospital with him. And he said the move has been made easier, although it's far away, because there are so many Irish people his own age who are there with him. He says life is just so much easier here. The fighting talk from Minister Chambers this week is an admission that your government is not spending wisely. And we know, and Labour have said it, before the election, money was no object. You were rolling out gimmicks to buy people's votes with their own money. Now, when communities actually need supports, you've deserted them, while continuing to favour the burger barons, the big builders. When your harebrained VAT cut comes in on 1st July, working families will still be worse off. Who won't be worse off? McDonald's franchisees across the country stand to be €20 million better off. Supermax, with revenues of nearly €300 million, will save €12 million due to your VAT cut. No evidence this will be passed on to consumers. Taoiseach, the message you're sending ordinary people, you're on your own, we've made our choice. But there is another choice. Last week, Labour put forward a mini-budget, which would offer a substantial package for PAYE workers and struggling families. Taoiseach, we're asking you now, tomorrow night when it comes to the vote on our mini-budget, will you support the mini-budget? Thank you, Deputy. Will you support the targeted measures? Time is up, Deputy. Taoiseach will respond. First of all, Deputy, in relation, as I said, to the National Ambulance Service and in terms of the dispute, I've outlined already how the government entered into good faith negotiations, agreed a very comprehensive outcome, the unions recommended that outcome to the members, it was defeated by the members. But no one can charge the government with acting in bad faith in respect of this. We acted in good faith and will continue to act in good faith and the HSE as well. But there is a way to resolve it and the way has to be through the industrial relations machinery of the state. And I would urge all involved to engage in dialogue to resolve this. And in terms of more generally, the bottom line is, you quoted the 1980s, like for God's sake, there was 17.5% unemployment in the 1980s. It was shocking. Don't compare the 1980s to now. I know, I lived through it. I lived through it. There's no comparison. It was depression after depression because of decisions that were made at the time. And there's no comparison to the current day. And we need to have a sense of perspective in how we debate things. And yes, young people do leave the country for different reasons. The housing issue is similar all over the world. You go to Canada, for example, it's far more difficult to buy a house in Canada than it is in Ireland even. Or Australia, for that matter. It is. I've talked to young people who've been in Australia and who've been to Canada. But I would make the point, about 31,000 come back into the country. In 2025, about 31,000 Irish came back into the country. 35,000 went out. Our population has grown exponentially actually over the last two to three decades. And you must know that. That employment alone, I think, went up 8.5% between 2020 and 2025. It went up 52% between 1995 and 2025. And therein lies the challenge to public expenditure and services. I would acknowledge that. In terms of the overall size of the economy, it's growing very significantly. Our GDP, our GNI star, whichever way you want to measure it, has grown substantially over the last decade. Population has grown with it. And therefore, the challenge to meet public services is also growing with that in terms of education, in terms of health, policing and so on like that. And that brings its own challenges. And we then add on to that about four to five major global seismic shocks from Brexit to the pandemic to the war in Ukraine to tariffs from America to the war in the Middle East. And yet the Irish economy is staying resilient. Employment is staying very resilient in terms of the number of people that are employed in our economy. It's now over 2.8 million, which is a record in the history of the state. Now, I accept there are challenges. And I accept there are many, many issues. The most important one being housing in terms of enabling young people to be able to buy houses that they can afford and that they can rent. Thank you Taoiseach. Time is up. Time is up, Taoiseach. Deputy Bachie. Well Taoiseach, I always acknowledge the global shocks and the global context in which absolutely the government has to make responses. And just as I acknowledged that it is a different context to the 1980s, but the similarity is in that we are losing so many of our own young people, of people who have come through medical school here and who see a better life, a better future for themselves in Australia, for example. And here at home Taoiseach, it's your government's response that has caused a crisis, the cost of living crisis has exacerbated it. Notwithstanding the global shocks, there were choices your government made and could still make. And that's why we put forward the mini-budget last week, to put forward to you an alternative set of choices, a set of targeted supports. Not fat cuts that benefit large businesses, but rather targeted supports for working families for PAYE workers who feel left behind. And you're out canvassing as I am across Galway West and Dublin Central. You're hearing it too. People are feeling this in their pockets. Thank you Deputy Batshig, time is up. The Taoiseach will now respond. Well, there is no doubt and you are doing everything possible to help and support your people and your community who are suffering. There is no doubt about that and the big challenge we face every day, every week, every month, that was our request for the government to respond. We have not exacerbated the global situation. It's a ridiculous assertion. Allocating €750 million to the haulage industry, to farmers, to contractors, to PAYE workers, yes, in terms of the reductions in diesel and in petrol, which is universal across the board. How is that exacerbating a global crisis? There are challenges and there are pressures on families and certainly the global situation is overwhelmingly responsible for that. Everybody knows that. There's a war in the Middle East that's resulting in a 20% contraction of vital supplies and that's a big problem.