Richard O'Donoghue accuses budget of punishing working families

Thank you, Ciancorla. Minister, I'm going to start off, and people might always know me as I'm passionate, I'm actually speechless after seeing what you've brought into the budget, and it isn't often that I'm speechless. I also feel empathy for the people that work in this country. I've had families on to me again today and said, Richard, we were hoping that we'd have something in this budget that would help us for our families to survive. Instead, the more I work, and I'm taking on extra hours, the more I am now paying tax, because I got a wage increase, he said. My wife got a wage increase, and now the tax bands haven't moved, so now what we're going to do is we're now going to pay more tax. But he said, we have another problem, he said, Richard. Because we're now going to pay more tax, we're now getting caught that we don't get any relief for our family, because they said, we're borderline that we don't get anything for the support of our family. Both of us working, we've built our own house, we've paid for our own house, we've mortgaged up to here. Our children, one of them is now going to college, and now we're getting 500 euros towards our college fees, which last year we got a thousand. A 50% decrease, plus I'm paying more tax. At giveaway budget last year, we thought there was hope that the government were actually going to look after the people, the working class people. Today, I'm saying to you Richard, I will be better off at home not working. My family will qualify for more if I wasn't working. My children will get educated in this country if I wasn't working. How am I going to make my children go out to work and ask them to work for the vulnerable, which they have no problem doing? Work for their future, which they have no problem doing, so they can support people that are more vulnerable than we are. When our own government are putting us, treating us like, not second class citizens, not third class citizens, they are not even treating us as citizens. They said, I thought slavery was gone out of the dictionary until it came to this government. That's what they are saying to me, Minister. The USC charge, which was brought in as a temporary measure, the government now said, we are now giving me more benefits on the USC charge, which should have been gone already, Minister. You brought in as a temporary measure, you kept it there. When are you going to stand up and look after the working person? If you are self-employed in this country, you price a job for somebody, you have to go in and do it on budget, on time, to make a profit where you pay your taxes. That's accountability. They said our government can go on and spend £853 million overspend on a children's hospital, which is curved, which means extra maintenance after it has been built. It can never be extended onto. All the furniture, all the blinds, everything is special order, more expensive, when it should have been about the caring in the hospital. Build a box. Put all the caring stuff into that box and look after the vulnerable people. How many nurses, doctors, assistants could have been paid for by the embarrassment overspend that you have done in the children's hospital? How many hospitals could have built on the overspend that you have done in the children's hospital, which is not even opened? UHL in Limerick, a report that took 16 months to produce, came in and told you what was needed in UHL. People are in here giving out about UHL every day, and I was one of them. And it now transpires that UHL are looking after more patients coming through their doors because of Limerick, Northcork, Northcarrie, Clare, Tipperary. By head of capita, they have less people on trolleys, based on the numbers that go through other hospitals. Fact. It came out in the report. We have asked you to lift the band so we can have more people working in the hospital, so we can look after the care of people. You didn't do that either. But now a report is coming out and giving you the answers that I gave you on the first day in this Dáil. I have been given it to you. Every opportunity under health I have been given it to you. But no, we have to waste money on hospitals that are not even opened. On design. So from now on I want this Government design, deliver a building and give the care within the building. That is what I want, design delivery. Iske Ayrn. They are all about building houses, building houses, we are going to give this rate to build apartments. You can't build anything without infrastructure. And you are spending billions upon billions giving it to Iske Ayrn and they haven't brought in one project, on budget, on time. Would you be in business tomorrow morning if that was the case? No you wouldn't. You give 10 euros to the elderly. 10 euros. Even though on the other hand you then put up the price of a bag of coal. Food at inflationable cost. You give 10 euros. The people that worked all their lives are now hoping that they will get the benefit of what they worked all their lives. You gave nothing to the farming. You gave nothing to tillage. Nothing. You then come across and you look at people in this country that are on transport. What do you do on transport? We will increase the carbon tax again. Did you not look at the age of the vehicles on the roads at the moment? People can't afford to upgrade their car. So no, what we will do now is we will put on carbon tax on those vehicles. That's what you have done. Carbon tax on the vehicles is the trucks coming from the port with the food into this country and all the other machines. Up and down the country from the Dublin port they charge tax. Transport costs. Putting on tyres on vehicles. A cross the board. What do you do? It's another tax. This government at the moment is actually drug. And I hope people have in their memory going forward that they don't return the same people again.