Workers and families are not getting the services for the taxes they pay, which are instead being “wasted” by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil “consistently”, Sinn Féin’s deputy leader Pearse Doherty has said.
Mr Doherty said Fine Gael was “failing to get the fundamentals right” despite being in government for more than a decade.
Speaking during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil on Tuesday, the Donegal TD noted the Summer Economic Statement was due to be published on Tuesday afternoon and said there needed to be a “change of direction”.
Mr Doherty said while the Irish economy had “much to celebrate” in terms of businesses, a talented, agile workforce and a record tax take, during the same period housing had deteriorated into a “disaster” while the crisis in health had worsened, “with no prospects of improving”.
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“Our young people are once again emigrating as they lose hope of having a future here in Ireland,” he said. Mr Doherty added there had been a continuation of “slow and gridlock politics and a complete failure to get the basics right so that we can deal with the challenges of today and plan for the future”.
He said the “national shame of homelessness” had continued unabated while the homelessness figures were “breaking all records for all the wrong reasons”.
“Our people are sick and tired of listening to Government making announcement after announcement and empty promises when you fail to deliver on the core issues,” he said.
“Year after year you have failed to deliver affordable homes, a failure to address rising waiting lists in our hospitals and a failure to address the cost-of-living crisis.
“Year after year, these problems haven’t gotten better; indeed, they’re worse.”
Budget package
In response, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said Budget 2024 would include a tax package of more than €1 billion to help families and a spending package “much greater than that” allowing for increases in welfare payments and the State pension.
Mr Varadkar said most or all of the windfall corporation tax receipts would be set aside and used to pay down debt and future payments such as pension liabilities, infrastructure projects and demographics.
The Fine Gael leader said Mr Doherty was “wrong” in his assumption that a change of government would “somehow make the situation better”.
“Of course a change of government would make things much worse,” he said.
Mr Varadkar said if they had followed the financial advice from Sinn Féin over the past 12 years there would be a very different Summer Economic Statement.
“We wouldn’t be talking about full employment; we would be talking about how we would find money to pay jobseekers’ benefits,” he said.
“We wouldn’t be talking about record levels of trade and investment; we would be talking about a budget deficit, how we’re going to borrow the money to close that deficit, what the interest rate would be and how we would curtail spending and increase taxes to cover that.”
