Brian Stanley: Calls for Rent Caps and Windfall Tax

Sir Marcus, Minister, the cost of living is rising at an alarming rate. Right across the board, middle and low income households cannot keep up, particularly households on below £75,000. Those on £650,000, £60,000 and £70,000 used to be counted as being well off. They're not now. Rents, mortgages, electricity, gas, motor fuel, food, health insurance and much more, they've all increased, not in single figures, but double digit figures on every hike. Meanwhile, wages and incomes increased by 1 or 2% or not at all. And in the case of housing, rents are skyrocketing due to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's decision to remove the rent pressure zones. However meek they were, and a lot of us on this side of the house wanted them nailed down tighter, the facts are that the removal of them means that double digit figures are what is happening. And a two bedroom unit in County Leash has gone up by 34% in one year, the rent is. 34%, that's the increase. Mortgage repayments are now higher because the overall capital sum being borrowed to keep up with Gallup and house prices is increasing. And in the case of Leash again, 12, 13, 14% of an increase in one year. Electricity and gas, they're increasing today, 8%. On top of all the recent increases, home heat and oil, up 50-60%. Motor fuels have increased. And where do you leave health insurance? We'd better not forget about that. Health insurance, which families and households and individuals are forced to get because we haven't got the slaunch care yet, that's gone up two and three times a year. Huge increases, 6, 7, 8, 9% in each time. At the same time, public money is being wasted. Government and state projects have costs overruns and that needs to be curtailed. Value for taxpayers' money. I will always argue for money for projects, but we have to get value for taxpayers' money. IT systems that don't work. Construction projects that finish up double the cost of their budget. Layers upon layers of management and bureaucracy in public bodies that should be rationalised and streamlined. And all of this and much more needs to be history. And can I just give you one example? In relation to school projects, extensions for schools, the Department of Education has framework agreements for those. I'll give you one example of a two-classroom unit, ASD with an all-timber outside finish. £2.7 million. One 30 or 40 miles away, which I can show you and I brought to the attention of the Department today, £2.05 million. It's completed in brick. It's a bigger unit, has the ancillary rooms and has everything else in it. So these framework agreements need to be re-examined. I hope, Minister, you're listening to what I'm saying to you because this is an important issue, and the senior officials, and this is brought to the attention of the Department of Education. These framework agreements, I'm saying this in a serious way, need to be looked at. So what do we need to do? There's a whole lot of things to be done, but a couple of immediate things we need to do is to extend medical card cover until we get the slauncher care. Slauncher care, the public health system, which it's envisaged in it, that has to be prioritised. Short term, we need to extend medical card cover to ordinary workers and families who can't go to doctors and get medical treatment because they can't afford to. And that will help all those people who don't have medical cards but can't afford health insurance. We need to bring in a windfall tax to be imposed on the large energy companies, including the windfarm owners, where there are high profits. Once profits go over a certain amount, that money should be used and ploughed into retrofitting for middle income families who don't qualify for the free scheme, and on the other hand, they can't afford to match the funding for the other schemes. I'm saying that to you, there's an opportunity here. The people in the middle are caught. If you're on social welfare, and rightly so, you get the free scheme, if you're on fuel allowance. If you're on over, people who are under 75,000 generally, they're caught because they can't afford the retrofitting or the electric car. The minimum wage needs to be increased to a living wage. We need to reintroduce the rent caps for each county. We need to speed up the solar and retrofitting of households. And we need to scrap the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission as it stands, or else reform it. Because in my time here, I've heard it and I've seen reports of it, and it's a toothless tiger. It's turned out to be useless. And what I would say to you is that last year, there was £9.5 billion in excess that was given out, and nothing happened to workers, nothing happened to taxation. For those middle income workers, those people on between £20,000 and £70,000, they got nothing, zero. So this year, don't forget about them. Adjust the tax plans to favour those low and middle income workers. Don't miss the opportunity this year again.