Paul Murphy condemns bill guillotine and steep welfare cuts

Firstly I want to object to the guillotining of this bill, it's a sign of the arrogance of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that after 100 years in power together or by themselves they routinely ram important bills through the Dáil without proper scrutiny. I suspect we'll see more of it next week as well. They do it because it's politically convenient for them. Turn to the details of the bill, I note a sneaky little cut in it that the minister was very quiet about, didn't get mentioned on budget day, whereby the government is going to increase the amount of money that people can be docked from their dole if they're deemed not to have complied with so-called labour activation measures. Previously the most that they could be docked was 44 euros a week, this is now going to be increased to 90 euros. So someone who is on the standard rate of job seekers of 244 euros a week can now have their payment cut to just 154 euros. Previously the lowest that they could be cut to was 188. It feels like the minister is returning to the IE Daniel Blake style social welfare reform. Your attempts at persecuting people and disability payments failed earlier this year in the face of a powerful campaign of disabled people who overwhelmingly rejected it and the green paper which contained the proposal. But now it seems that in the context of an unprecedented budget surplus, you have licked your wounds and returned to the same Tory playbook. With these cuts you are deliberately burying people, sometimes literally below the poverty line. Immiserating people who depend on social welfare will not force them into work, it will just drive them into further misery. In England it has led to suicide and even starvation amongst people who have had their benefits cut. If that happens here it will be the government's fault. The surplus, the 24 billion euro surplus that you have just means that the cuts is even more of a disgrace. Cutting someone's dole who has kids doesn't really hurt the adults involved, it hurts the children even more. You are doing this at a time when one in seven children, more than 176,000 kids, are living in poverty. At a time when one in eight parents are using food banks, when one in four can't afford to put food on the table. The public should be aware that this type of performative cruelty is the real politics of Fianna Gael and Fianna Fáil. If they get back into office after the coming election, I can guarantee that there will be no repeat of once off payments that are contained in this pre-election budget. They will be the first things to go in budget 2026 and what will remain are the permanent regressive measures that are in this budget. The increases to weekly social welfare rates of 12 euros a week are below inflation. People who depend on social welfare are being left further and further behind by this budget. Social justice Ireland says that this government will leave a regressive legacy and that it has yet again resorted to a distribution of resources that will ultimately benefit the better off. No surprises there. We know now what to expect after 100 years of Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael. The only answer is to get them out. The same cuts will also be applied pro-rata to the discriminatory lower rates of dole for young people. I have repeatedly raised this as an unjust form of age-based discrimination against young people. The Minister had a golden opportunity with her multi-billion euro surplus to reverse this austerity-era cut to social welfare for young people. It was brought in when the Labour Party were last in government. Again, let that be a warning to anyone considering the Labour Party in advance of the next general election. But the Minister chose not to reverse this cruel cut. Let them emigrate is the message from this budget to young people. The same message given by Fianna Gael and Labour after the crash. It doesn't seem to matter whether the government has a deficit or whether it has a surplus. The message to young people is the same. Pack your bags and get on a plane. There's nothing for young people in this bill and nothing in this budget. I want to raise another austerity-era cut that the Minister has declined to reverse. Again, introduced by the Labour Party. In 2012, Joan Burton doubled the number of PRSI contributions needed to qualify for the contributory state pension from 260 to 520. People have approached me about this issue saying, look at everything that I've paid, but look at what I am entitled to even less than the non-contributory pension. Other PPPTDs are also getting representations. People who were in their 50s in 2012, who have now reached pension age, only to find that they do not qualify for the full contributory pension. This mean and unnecessary austerity cut is now coming home to roost and it should be reversed. There's an opportunity in this budget to reverse it. I call on the Minister to address this with report stage amendments tomorrow and reverse this cut. I also want to raise issues that have arisen with the new system of pension auto-enrolment. This will be a bonanza for private pension funds, but there will be no such bonanza for workers. It turns out they are going to be taxed not once, not twice, but three times. Once on their wages, twice on their contributions, and a third time when they draw the pension down. Employers are to get tax relief on their contributions, but no relief will be given to workers. The answer is not to continue with this system, which amounts to privatisation of pensions by stealth, but to provide all workers with a decent universal state pension. There is also very little in this budget and in this bill for carers and disabled people. The insulting means test for carers allowance has still not been abolished, despite the inspiring campaign from carers on this. We and people before profit included abolition of the means test in our costed alternative budget. We proposed replacing it with a non-means tested living wage for carers of at least 15 euros an hour or 525 euros a week. The government had the money to do it, and it refuses to do it. In contrast to the government's approach of once-off payments that will be taken away next year if they get back into office, we proposed permanent changes to reduce the cost of living both now and in the long term. That included capping food and energy prices and taking the energy system into public ownership to control the price of energy. Totally different to what the government would ever consider. But to control prices, you need to control production. If you don't own it, you can't control it. We also proposed raising all weekly social welfare rates at 300 euros and bringing in an additional 50 euros a week cost of disability payment. Rather than cutting employers PRSI, as happened in this budget, yet again, despite the fact it was already the lowest in the EU, we would raise it and raise an additional 3 billion euros. We would abolish the USC for all workers earning less than 100,000 euros. We would replace it with a higher income social charge on the highest earners and a wealth tax on multi-millionaires that would raise over 8 billion euros. These are the kind of radical, socialist, transformative measures that a genuine left government could introduce. The resources are there to transform our country for the benefit of the many instead of the few. It is a political choice not to do it. I would encourage the public to make a different political choice in the coming weeks or months and make the political choice to get Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael out. Why... Why... Why... 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