Cian O'Callaghan: Finance Bill lets pensioners and renters down

Go raibh maith agat, László Comhairle. Firstly, while we are broadly supportive of the measures in this bill, I have to say this is not a sustainable approach. Social Democrats believe there needs to be targeted measures and indeed investment that will permanently bring down the cost of living. That's completely failed in the government's approach. Government has failed to take action to help pensioners who are unable to heat their homes. The whole issue of pensioners and people on low incomes reliant on home heating oil has not been properly addressed. Government has failed to help renters who cannot make ends meet. Indeed, this government has made the cost of living crisis even worse for renters in terms of the increased rents they're facing, putting an already very struggling and exposed group of people under more pressure again. Indeed, the government is failing to help families to put food on the table. When you read the reports today from the family carers of Ireland and the work they did where they spoke to 3,000 carers and they talk about the financial isolation that they're under and the financial strain is making their world shrink. There's thousands of carers are saying they're cutting back on food and heat to make ends meet while at the same time they're paying out for crucial equipment such as wheelchairs for their loved ones which of course should be funded by the public system and it's absolutely outrageous given the resources disposal of this government that's not been properly addressed. These measures are untargeted. They ignore the root causes of Ireland's affordability crisis and unfortunately the war in the Middle East has shown no sign of coming to an end and the energy crisis is not going anywhere. So this finance bill, while it will cost half a billion euro, its impact will soon be forgotten. If we look at what's happened with home heating oil and the increases of 67, almost 70 percent between February and March of this year alone and this being the sharpest increase anywhere in the European Union and you're talking about people reliant on home heating oil. It can often be older people, it can often be people on low incomes and particularly in rural areas where a lot of people are on lower incomes they're very heavily affected by that. So they have not been properly supported by the measures in this bill. We look at what's happened in terms of inflation and that's been mainly driven when the core increases and that has been on energy bills increasing by 15.5 percent. People simply can't afford these increases. Now when you look at Ireland and we have the highest electricity bills in Europe, we have over 300,000 households in arrears and this is a direct result of a baffling failure to invest in our infrastructure. It's incredible that since Fine Gael have been in office in 2011 that we have no offshore wind farms. In fact the one wind farm that we did have has been decommissioned since. We've actually gone backwards in that respect. We lost last year over half a billion euros worth of wind energy which was wasted because our crumbling grid infrastructure couldn't cope with that wind energy. Now to be an island on the edge of the Atlantic and not to be availing of this we should be a net exporter of course of wind energy and we're nowhere near it because of this government's failures. We've seen the issues with pensioner poverty. Incredible stark figures released by the central statistic offices showed a consistent poverty rate for those over 65 increased by 70 percent in just one year. So we're seeing people who've worked and done their very best all their life being pushed into poverty and when they should be supported in their retirement years. So to Democrats we put four proposals in this. For example the targeted 400 euro energy credits for households earning less than 70,000 euro a year. That would be a start, would make a bit of a difference. We also need to invest in things like solar for all our plan there so that you know existing grants would be doubled for people who want to install solar panels and so we could make solar panels a realistic option for people on lower and middle incomes. Those who aren't covered by the current schemes and those who can't really can't avail the current grants because they don't have the matching funds. That would be a once-off investment that would bring down people's energy bills, would bring them down year after year after year, would be a long-term investment and would help us meet our climate targets and would reduce our exposure as a country to energy crisis shocks. It's the kind of thinking that we need and that is sorely lacking. When we look at this government and the budget promises, the promises that you made at election time indeed for example on affordable child care was to be cut to 200 euro per month and instead we've seen absolutely minimal progress in that. There was promises that third level fees would be phased out, instead they were actually increased. There was a promise of a cost of disability payment, 500 euro payment was meant to be introduced instead. In the last budget we saw the incomes of disabled people actually slashed by up to 1400 euro because of decisions that this government made. A situation where child care in Ireland is exorbitantly expensive and very difficult to access and that is making the cost of living crisis even more difficult. Families we see in relation to homelessness, record number of people now homeless and shockingly we've 5,604 children living without a home which is absolutely devastating. I'd like to address as well the situation with workers from Northside Homecare who are taking industrial action this week. They do long and hard hours taking care of the elderly and they're another group of people who are really suffering under this cost-of-living crisis despite the incredibly important work that they do. They are on just above the minimum wage which is, you know, for the work that they're doing is, you know, people have been working there for 20 plus years still just above the minimum wage, no recognition of the work that they're doing and I would really call on you and your government colleagues to actually intervene to ensure that there's a proper wage for people doing home care work. There should be a sectoral wage agreement for that sector. It's utterly indefensible that these workers do incredibly important jobs if they're doing it for not-for-profit companies or if they're doing it in the private sector rather than directly employed with the HSE. They are not getting the HSE going rate. It's grossly unfair and the government needs to stop sitting on its hands on that and actually take some action. Last can correlate the measures in this finance bill follow a familiar pattern from this government. Instead of targeting resources where they're needed most, money is spread evenly reducing its impact and crucially the government is failing to invest in measures that will reduce the cost of living permanently. That's what you need to be doing. I do wonder will this government ever learn if they were serious about tackling the cost-of-living crisis they would target resources where they're needed most and they crucially would build resilience and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. That is absolutely essential for tackling the cost-of-living crisis, for preparing us for the next one and for helping us meeting our climate targets. Unfortunately this finance bill does neither. Go raibh maith agat.