Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 2 Oct 2024

As Minister for Social Protection, I am conscious that while inflation is falling, the cost of living continues to impact families and households across the country. When you go to the supermarket, you might have the same groceries in your basket, but the bill is a lot higher at the checkout. This budget is about giving people a bit of extra help and putting money back in their pockets. It is the largest social protection budget package in the history of the State, with over €2.6 billion worth of measures. It focuses on supporting pensioners, carers, disabled people and working families.

Older people have worked hard all their lives and they have helped to build up this country. I want to make sure they are looked after in their retirement. This budget will see double pension payments in October and December, a €200 living alone lump sum for widows and older people, a €300 lump sum on fuel allowance and, from January, a couple over 66 will be able to earn €1,048 per week and still qualify for the fuel allowance, ensuring thousands more pensioners will qualify for a payment. There will be a universal companion pass for all over-70s so they can bring their son or daughter or a friend on the bus or train with them. With my rural hat on, I know that country people do not like driving in Dublin, so I think this is going to be a very popular measure. The State pension will be increased to €289 per week from January, representing a €41 increase in weekly pensions over the lifetime of this Government.

I am sick to the teeth of people giving out about child benefit being a universal payment. Do working people not deserve some support? Young families are under pressure. They are working hard, paying their mortgages and paying childcare, and I want to help them. This budget will see a double child benefit payment in November and a second double child benefit payment in December in the run-up to Christmas. I am also increasing maternity, paternity, adoptive and parent’s benefit to €289 per week, meaning these payments are now on a par with the State pension as the highest in the social protection system.

We are introducing a new treble child benefit grant for newborn babies from January. I have been contacted in the last 24 hours, as I am sure the Leas-Cheann Comhairle has been, by many women whose babies are due to arrive in December. They are worried that their babies will arrive too late for the double child benefit payment at the start of December but too early for the newborn grant in January. As a mother, I do not want to see any woman or baby miss out. I am pleased to inform the House that babies born in December will be eligible to receive the newborn grant when their mother receives the first child benefit payment in January. Do not worry - the Christmas babies will be looked after. I thank my colleagues, in particular Deputy Alan Farrell, who raised this matter with me.

The good news is that when those babies get a little bigger, they can look forward to receiving a hot dinner when they start primary school. It is one of my proudest achievements in politics to have grown the hot school meals programme from a small pilot project to universal provision in 2025, which will see every primary school child in the country receive a hot dinner in the middle of the day. The hot dinners are a great leveller. All the children sit down and eat together. There is no stigma attached to it. All the children are treated equally. Not having to think about what goes in the lunchbox every day is one less thing for busy parents to worry about when they are heading out to work in the morning. I will also be working with the Department of the Taoiseach and other stakeholders to deliver a pilot project to tackle holiday hunger over the holiday periods.

The Taoiseach, Deputy Simon Harris, asked all Ministers to focus on child poverty as part of this budget and he supported Ministers in driving forward this agenda. The child support payment will replace the old IQC payment and is targeted at low-income families. I am increasing the rates to €50 per week for under-12s and €62 per week for over-12s. Annually, these payments are worth €2,600 for each child under 12 and €3,224 for each child over 12. These are targeted payments to tackle child poverty. In addition, I am increasing the income limits in order that more families can qualify for the working family payment and there will also be a €400 working family payment in November.

I will move on to the issue of carers. As we all know, family carers work 24-7.

I recognise our family carers. I listen to them and I have worked hard to try to enhance the supports available to our carers. Last year, I passed the legislation to ensure that long-term carers will have access to the State pension. This year's budget will see double carer's payments in October and December, a €400 carer's lump sum in November and carer's benefit will be extended to the self-employed. The carer's support grant will be increased to €2,000, its highest ever level and carer's allowance will be made a qualifying payment for fuel allowance. There had been no changes to the carer's allowance means test for over 13 years before I was appointed Minister for Social Protection. Since coming into the Department I have doubled the means test income limits from €332 for a single person and €665 for a couple in 2021 to €625 for a single person and €1,250 for a couple in 2025. This means that in 2025, a couple will be able to earn €1,250 per week and have €50,000 in savings and still qualify for the full carer's allowance payment. I know that more needs to be done on the means test and more will be done in future years if we are given the chance. When one looks at the pitiful supports provided to family carers in Northern Ireland, carers know exactly who they can trust.

There is also a major package of supports for people with disabilities as part of this budget. This includes a €400 cost-of-disability grant in November, two double payments in October and December, and a €20 increase in the domiciliary care allowance to €360. There is a €12 increase in weekly disability payments. Disabled people will also benefit from other targeted supports such as the €300 fuel lump sum and the €200 living alone lump sum.

Next year, 2025, will see the introduction of two generational reforms of the Irish social welfare system. The new pay-related benefits scheme will commence on 31 March 2025 and the first enrolments under the new auto-enrolment pension scheme will commence on 30 September 2025. As Minister, I have driven these two major reforms. I designed them and passed the legislation and I am delighted to announce the start dates as part of budget 2025.

This week, I will sign the commencement orders to ensure that there can be no going back and this will become a reality in 2025. This is my fifth budget as Minister for Social Protection. I have learned at this stage that no matter what we do, it will not please everybody and there will always be calls to do more. We cannot do everything but we can and we should give a helping hand to those who need it most. When one looks at this budget in its totality, the lump sum payments, the weekly increases and the targeted measures, I believe this is a package that delivers for our older people, carers, people with disabilities and working families.

Members should ask whether this budget makes life a little bit easier for people. I believe the only answer anybody can give to that question is "Yes".

I take this opportunity today to emphasise the importance of community work in all its various forms across the country. We invest in built infrastructure and in public services but infrastructure and public services do not, in and of themselves, create communities. The glue that pulls it all together is very often our community organisations and workers and, invariably, our volunteers.

We do not always give this reality due recognition. The pandemic, the invasion of Ukraine and the cost-of-living crisis have underlined how important community is and how important it is for us to invest in community supports.

Over the past four years, I have ensured that significant supports have been provided to community and voluntary organisations to help them weather the storms of Covid-19 and the cost-of-living crisis. One of the first challenges I faced as Minister of State was the funding deficit of community groups funded under the community services programme, CSP. Many were at risk of closure at the time due to Covid-19 but I secured funding to ensure their survival.

Building on that, I reviewed the community services programme, restructured it and introduced a new funding model which has provided additional funds to those organisations working in areas of highest need. Yesterday, I was glad to confirm that I have secured an additional €3 million for the CSP in 2025. Over the budgets of this Government, I have increased the funding to the CSP by 17%.

There is no community programme that has such a wide reach and has more contact with people most in need on a daily basis than the social inclusion and community activation programme, SICAP. It has been my mission, not just to strengthen and grow SICAP, but to grow awareness and appreciation of the programme at the highest levels in government and in Departments. I have grown the budget for SICAP by 36% over my time in office and yesterday I was happy to announce a further increase for the programme for 2025.

I want to mention our volunteer centres. During my time in Government I have launched our first national volunteering policy and I have heavily invested in our volunteering infrastructure to ensure that we have a volunteer centre in every county in Ireland. Including yesterday's budget increase, I have grown the overall volunteer centre budget allocation by 44%.

Our investment in volunteer centres is some of the best value for money we can get. Volunteer centres encourage and support volunteering locally by supporting and guiding individuals who wish to give their time freely but they also engage hugely with local groups and match up available skills with need.

Speaking of volunteers, I want to acknowledge our public participation networks, PPNs. This is an extraordinary network of over 17,000 groups nationally. Every local authority area has its own independent PPN funded by my Department and the local PPN is absolutely key in local policy formulation and in facilitating participation and representation of communities at a local level.

The PPNs are a relatively new structure and I am glad to say that during my time as Minister of State I have conducted a review of the PPNs and, in collaboration with the network, we have recently completed an implementation plan coming out of that review. The national network of PPNs is growing. We have a new path forward so I was especially glad to announce a significant increase of 15% yesterday on last year's budget allocation, leading to an increase of 36% since budget 2020.

I have also had the opportunity to develop new community-based programmes. I have introduced a new community development programme that goes back to the core principles of bottom-up community-led development and I saw the amazing and impactful outcomes of that programme at an event in Athlone only last week.

Earlier this year, I established a new community connection project. This project will fund 30 new community workers across the country who will have a particular role in addressing community division and misinformation on people seeking protection. It will run in parallel with a research project that will gather localised best practice in preventing and addressing division and tackling misinformation. It will work in collaboration with the community engagement team I have established in the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth.

Before I finish I want to mention what I think will be an increasingly important programme going forward, beyond this Government. In 2022 I launched the empowering communities programme. Based on the Pobal HP Deprivation Index, I selected 14 of the most disadvantaged communities in the country and put community workers on the ground in these areas. The geographical areas selected are relatively small with a view to facilitating intensive community work in those areas that need it most. Since then, I have been able to expand the programme to three other locations and yesterday I was delighted to announce a €1 million expansion of the programme. I place particular emphasis on this programme because despite progress in many areas in Ireland, there are still areas around the country in towns and cities and rural areas which continue to be left behind. I believe the empowering communities programme will be central going forward to significantly increase social inclusion and social cohesion nationally.

This is a good budget for every household in the country and for every individual. As a Minister of State in the Department of Finance, it gives me great pleasure to rise to commend this budget for the House but also to speak to the conditions that have allowed us to deliver a good budget.

The conditions of our economy do not happen by accident. They are not some fluke, as some people would imply. This is the product of over a decade of prudent, sensible, financial management in the face of serious issues. This was the coming out from a financial crash that devastated our economy and led to nearly 16% unemployment; the travails of Brexit; a Covid-19 pandemic the likes of which we have not seen in a century; a war in Europe the likes of which we have not seen since the Second World War; and a cost-of-living crisis that has impacted every household of every size and every business. Yet, we stand here to deliver a budget on the back of an economy that is still growing. Inflation rates are some of the lowest in the European Union and we have more people in work in the country at the moment, 2.7 million people, than the 1950 census shows we had living in the State.

The earning power of Irish people at the moment is the highest it has ever been in history. It gives us an opportunity to have a record tax take, not just corporation tax but also income tax and VAT. This allows the Government to recognise some things. I hope we all agree that Members all enter this House with the same ambition. I acknowledge that we all want to do it in different ways, which is good and proper, but we all want to make people's lives that little bit easier. We want to help people. That is the core of why we sought office, I hope, and I would like to say that of all colleagues. In this budget will see a cost-of-living package to be delivered this side of Christmas that will go directly to the people who need it the most. It will also ensure that all those people in the State who pay their tax, who work hard and play by the rules get a little bit of their own money back.

Equally, within the Department of Finance we are able to introduce an ambitious taxation package that recognises the fact that Ireland has the lowest rate across the European Union where someone goes into the highest tax bracket. It is right that we have increased that threshold by €2,000 to make sure that some day, we hope, we get to a threshold of €50,000 before someone pays the upper rate of income tax. We have seen a cut to USC on earnings up to €70,000. That is right. This is not introducing 22 new taxes that will stymie an economy and punish people for working hard or for trying their best in society.

Beyond that we also see taxation measures being used best in the way we want to deliver housing. No one can deny that this budget is ambitious in building housing with 10,000 social homes to be built. We will see renewed figures in what we seek to deliver. Last year, we delivered more than 33,000 homes and this year it will be 40,000. In this budget there are measures on the one hand that will work to make sure individuals can build the homes and also deter such scenarios whereby 200 homes were bought by institutional buyers last year. This increase of stamp duty will equally see that the people who worked hard all their life, who bought their own family home and paid tax on it once, if not twice, can leave it to the next generation. Of course, taxation will, and should, be paid but the threshold at which taxation is paid is increased in the recognition of rising property prices and of rising contributions.

There are two other points that are crucially important. I read some of the comments today from the armchair economists who said this will fuel inflation. Irish inflation has come down drastically after the really high inflation rates of the previous two years. The flash inflation rate for September has Ireland at the lowest in the European Union at 0.2%. This budget provides for the infrastructure development of the State. The sale of shares in AIB will allow us play huge money not just into housing, but also into energy and water provision, and to make sure that our country continues to be attractive to foreign investment and continues to be able to support indigenous economic growth. This is why those infrastructure projects that are so desperately needed will get the real support and funding from this budget, never mind any discussion about any other windfall measures that will need to be spent and discussed in the first quarter of next year.

Crucially, this budget responds to the need of the population and of our businesses to make sure we can continue to grow our economy. Without a growing economy any promise made in this Chamber or any commitment to impact the societal and community needs of our country is just hot air. We must have a growing economy and an ability to plan for the future. Once upon a time we had a rainy day fund and it was lambasted by many Members in this House but when it rained we needed that fund desperately, such as at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Respectfully, the Deputy can interject thereafter. We have a situation now where we set two funds up recently that will enable us to plan for the future. More than €15 billion will be invested in those funds to ensure that when we need that support, or when the economic tides change globally or indeed domestically, that we have those funds not only to dip into but also to invest and generate a return for future generations.

This is an ambitious budget for an ambitious country that knows we can and will continue to develop economic growth and that unlike before we have our economic models spread across a number industries such as life sciences, pharmaceuticals and med tech, the tech sector, and - crucially within my own brief in the Department of Finance - in international financial services, a sector that employs 57,600 people and will employ a further 9,000 in the coming years. I commend the budget to the House.

Is buiséad agus cáinaisnéis é seo a léiríonn easpa físe, nach bhfuil uaillmhianach agus, i ndáiríre, nach bhfuil aon chruth air. Tá sé gan tuairim nua mhór agus gan phlean mór agus nach mbeidh aon rian de nó tionchar aige go fadtéarmach. Budget 2025 has shown us that this Government is out of time and out of ideas to fix the problems in our society. I have heard the Government try to take the narrative or the rhetoric of the future in terms of the budget, but the truth is that the legacy of this project will disappear like snow on a ditch. The fact is that this budget is about today and not tomorrow. When comparing the Sinn Féin budget we would have brought forward against the Government's budget, the difference is on a massive scale. The Sinn Féin budget would deliver much greater capital spending not only in housing and in health, but also, crucially, on the energy sector and on climate change on multiple scales to that proposed by the Government.

There is no disputing one fact. For all the spiky responses from the Government benches, I have not heard a single contribution from the Opposition that has disputed the fact that the Government has spent a lot of money. When we have the good fortune to spend a lot of money what vision do we have, what legacy do we leave, and what are the choices we make? Those are the questions. The Government has made the choice to focus its tax cuts so that somebody on €150,000 will earn three times the kind of tax cut that somebody on €40,000 makes. The Government has made the choice to give a tax cut to landlords. As far as we can see, this cut is one that everyone in the Department of Finance has rubbished and raised concerns about. Former ESRI experts have outlined this cut as one of the stupidest tax reliefs they have ever heard of. That is said with the bar set quite high. The Government has decided to continue very favourable tax regimes for the banks and for other categories of people, and it has instead failed to make the necessary investments. I do not dispute that a lot of money has been spent but the Government could have properly tackled housing at long last. I agree with Deputy Eoin Ó Broin that the Government has raised the white flag. I know the Government tried to dispute this but it keeps backing policies that are not working, are making the situation worse and will not deliver the scale of social and affordable housing that is necessary.

The Government could have delivered, or begun to deliver, €10 per day childcare. In the context of my own portfolio, the Government could have begun the process of, or committed to, abolishing the means test for carers' allowance. What it has done is where other people would feel the benefit of the budget, but those who do not currently qualify for carers' allowance will not see the benefit of an increase in threshold until June. Will the Minister of State, Deputy Emer Higgins, bring that forward to January?

People with disabilities deserve a great deal more. We have spent a year talking about the additional costs of disability with a Green Paper and so on. To her credit, the Minister for Social Protection has withdrawn her flawed proposals but she has done nothing in this budget to recognise the additional cost of disability. The increase in the payment for people on disability should have been €20 at the very least, rather than allowing them at the base rate. Clearly there needed to be a recognition of the increased cost of disability.

Sinn Féin would have increased the income threshold for carers to €730 for a single person and €1,460 for a couple, much beyond what the Government is doing and a substantial step towards abolishing the means test. We would have also introduced a pay-related carers' benefit, which the Minister should consider. She spent some time saying that people are giving out about the child benefit payment, but it is certainly not us. We had advocated a double payment. What is more, child benefit is still below where it was at in 2008 when it was cut by Fianna Fáil on the back of austerity and paying off the banks. It has not returned to that level and there has not been an increase in four or five years. We would have increased that by €10.

While I welcome some of the measures proposed, these were policies we had demanded for many years, including free school books and meals and other long-standing policies that Sinn Féin advocated.

There are objectives that we have put forward that the Government has listened to. It is clear that the Government has read the Sinn Féin alternative budget, but in terms of vision as to where this leaves Ireland in 12 months, two years or 12 years, I do not think the legacy is there.

Another budget and another round of short-term supports for business. It appears that the Minister for enterprise massively overestimated his capacity to influence his Cabinet colleagues because he was all over the media publicising his own down-to-the-wire negotiations pleading for the VAT reduction sought by some in the hospitality sector, but he failed to convince anyone. It looks like a back-of-an-envelope scheme, although I hesitate to even call it that, that was cobbled together at the last minute. It is another one-off payment for struggling businesses when what they need is a real and meaningful contribution that recognises that the cost of doing business for SMEs is putting them under severe pressure.

The Minister's latest attempt at providing supports fell far short of what was required. While SMEs were calling for help, the Government was putting one convoluted scheme after another in place, with ever more complex ways to access funds. Massive amounts were returned to the Exchequer, not because they were not needed - they were desperately needed - but because the Government could not design a scheme that was fit for purpose. As with those schemes announced in the previous budget, we will have to wait for the detail on this one. This latest scheme of the Government will be judged on whether it is accessible for SMEs. Many will be excluded because they do not have a rateable premises or because their rates are too high. This is the case for many businesses in the Dublin area and the Government will know this because it left them out of previous schemes.

What did the Government do for enterprise? It decided to pit business against workers by telling workers on the minimum wage that they will only get an increase of 80 cent per hour. In what way does this recognise that there is a cost-of-living crisis? In what way does this help the lowest earners to keep up with their bills? This is the biggest signal yet that workers will have to wait for a different government if they are ever to get the living wage. Working adults aged 20 and under are still on sub-minimum rates of pay, where they will stay until there is a new government. Instead of helping SMEs to pay their workers a living wage and ensure they have access to appropriate levels of paid sick leave, the Government tells workers that they will have to wait. It does not need to be either-or.

On the other hand, Sinn Féin would have supported businesses to be able to keep up with rising costs while ensuring that workers can get the pay increases and the sick pay they need and deserve. That is why we proposed a €250 million PRSI rebate package for businesses employing workers on low incomes. We value labour and workers. This is why we proposed a decent raise in the minimum wage of €1.10 per hour, as the next step in the plan to move to the living wage. That is why we have also tabled legislation that would change the Low Pay Commission to the living wage commission. We are serious about delivering for workers, because we understand that people on low incomes need a hand up but the Government is more interested in giving its old pals, the vulture funds and the corporate landlords, another dig-out. Workers know who is on their side and so do our SMEs. We have listened and we do not buy the Government line that there has to be a choice between supporting workers or supporting business. A Government that is serious about action over spin can do both but that is not this Government.

We believe in growth that supports working people but the Government is hoping that workers will be dazzled by the spin and the big numbers. I welcome the decision to release some of the money in the National Training Fund. Sinn Féin tabled legislation to enable this fund to be accessed some time ago. It is really good to see that the Government is finally catching up with us.

This budget fails utterly to recognise the housing crisis or its impact on businesses. The lack of affordable accommodation for workers and families is shameful and is also a serious impediment to growth. In my constituency, the Fingal Chamber of Commerce tells us that the slow delivery of infrastructure, and specifically housing, presents a threat to Ireland's competitiveness and reputation, resulting in a direct impact on recruiting and retaining workers and worryingly, the ability to attract additional FDI. Almost 43% of businesses in Fingal said that the availability of housing rental accommodation is a serious issue. Chambers Ireland has said that the greatest challenge facing SMEs is the lack of available talent, which is driven by affordable and appropriate housing being unavailable across most of the country.

I will end on this. The parties that caused the housing crisis will not be the ones to fix it. The Government that thinks that a house costing €500,000 is affordable will most definitely not be the one to deliver affordable housing.

This budget is a missed opportunity to deal with some of the lost years of austerity that have caused massive damage in our communities. I have no doubt that everyone who meets community organisations hears them time and again say that we have still not recovered from those years. We hear excuses about why things cannot be done all the time; there is no money or resources and then in the so-called "good times" we hear that it cannot be done now for this reason or that reason - fill in the blanks with whatever excuse.

Let us consider the community services programme. I acknowledge that there have been some advances regarding it. However, there appears to be no attempt to start to move towards a living wage. There is not even a single reference in the entire budget to a living wage. We have people working away, doing brilliant work and getting the plaudits and the claps on the back but not getting what we would all agree we should be striving for, which is a living wage. It is a wasted opportunity, given that these social enterprises are located in many working-class and disadvantaged communities.

There is an increasing number of children in consistent poverty, and one-off payments do not tackle the core issue of this consistent poverty and disadvantage. There is mention in the budget of an extra €1.6 million for supports for volunteers, philanthropic organisations and public participation networks, PPNs. This comes nowhere near what is required to properly support our communities in the challenges they face on a daily basis. We met PPN representatives recently in Leinster House. They outlined how seriously underfunded they are, given that they started with 5,000 groups and now have more than 22,000 groups affiliated. Their ask for all of this work on behalf of our communities was an increase in staff and core funding of €1.5 million. I do not know how the maths work out; I am sure we will see the detail as we go along. What allocation was there in the €1.6 million? Only €1 million in extra funding was allocated to the community centre investment fund. This is despite the fund being massively oversubscribed during the application process over the last couple of year. It is clear there is huge demand for the upgrading and refurbishment of existing community centres and the provision of new ones in our growing towns and villages. Sinn Féin would allocate €1 billion of the Apple tax to community, youth and sports facilities. This is the type of big investment needed in our communities across the State. Communities are facing significant challenges coming out of the savage cuts of the austerity years and a catch-up on a massive scale is required. That is what we are proposing.

For example, in my constituency, we have a huge and growing population, yet we do not have one single purpose-built youth facility. Many operate from rooms in the community centres. Some rooms have to be cleared and given back to the community centre for other groups the following day, causing huge disruption. In many of our sports clubs, members are changing in containers, with no toilets or shower facilities. Clubs such as Tyrrelstown recently got a new container and lovely dressing rooms. This is brilliant news but there needs to be a medium-term plan to build a proper, purpose-built sports and youth facility for the massive, growing community in Tyrrelstown. Corduff FC will soon be celebrating 50 years in existence. Its clubhouse is a container. Let us imagine what the club could achieve with a proper, purpose-built facility. Hartstown Huntstown FC also uses containers. Plunketts GAA Club is going to spend thousands of euro renting all-weather pitches for the winter. St. Mochtas, Erin Go Bragh and Clonee are other clubs in the same situation. The list is endless and that is just west Dublin. I guarantee that every TD in the State could mention dozens of their youth and sports organisations that are without proper facilities.

This will be seen as a one-off budget that seeks to buy votes but does not fundamentally challenge poverty and disadvantage. Community is at the core of tackling poverty and disadvantage. The people in those communities are doing more than their bit. All they ask is that the Government backs them with proper facilities supports. I do not believe that this budget does that. It is a lost opportunity and I know that if I am ever honoured enough to be on the other side of the Chamber, I will do my bit and Sinn Féin will not let the people down.

Níl mé cinnte faoi sin. Like the four budgets before it, this year's budget is unprecedented. It provides more than €6 billion in capital to help us to deliver social and affordable homes for our people.

It is the most that any Government has ever invested in housing. It is made up of more than €3.1 billion in Exchequer funding, an additional €1.25 billion to the Land Development Agency, which the party of the Members opposite would abolish, and €1.65 billion in Housing Finance Agency funding. On top of that, we have an additional €1 billion for Uisce Éireann, bringing its overall funding to €2.7 billion. As we all know, Uisce Éireann is pivotal for the future delivery of housing.

In every single budget, we have built on the previous year. This is clear to see in the number of homes we are delivering. This has increased from 20,000 homes in 2020 to what we estimate to be close to 40,000 in 2024. By any fair assessment, that is serious progress although challenges undoubtedly remain. We have managed to do this despite a global pandemic and the brutal war in Ukraine and the associated challenges. Our construction sector is growing and is expected to keep growing while those in the rest of Europe are declining. More people are buying their own homes than we have seen since the mid-2000s. Some 500 first-time buyers are buying homes every single week. This upward momentum will continue and grow as a result of this Government's budget.

We are investing more than €2.3 billion in affordability. A combination of Exchequer and other funding will support the initiatives we have put in place, such as the affordable housing fund, which allows our local authorities to build affordable homes for our people; the secure tenancy affordable rental scheme; the help-to-buy initiative, which puts €30,000 of the tax people paid back into their pocket to help with a deposit and which Sinn Féin would also abolish; and the first home scheme. We have seen more than 12,000 people register for the first home scheme and there have been 5,500 approvals to date. The help-to-buy scheme has been extended to the end of the decade, providing certainty and stability to home purchasers and home builders alike. Those who are saving right now should know that this Government has their back.

We have allocated €2 billion for the delivery of more social homes through our local authorities and approved housing body partners, which are crucial to delivery. This is the most we have ever invested in social housing and will mean more homes for those who are the most vulnerable, that is, our elderly, those with disabilities and those without a home to call their own.

We have allocated €303 million for the delivery of homeless services with a particular emphasis on ensuring that households at risk of homelessness are prevented from entering emergency accommodation and that those in emergency accommodation are supported to exit into secure tenancies as quickly as possible. This level of funding will be kept under review throughout 2025.

An increased renter's tax credit for both this year and next has been announced. This is €1,000 per renter to help defray the cost of rent, which we know is too high for many. While the renter's tax credit will assist in the immediate term, our delivery of cost-rental homes through a further €390 million under the cost-rental equity loan and secure tenancy affordable rent scheme with additional funding via the LDA will ensure a continued strong pipeline of affordable rental homes, over 4,000 of which have already been approved.

In just over four years since this Government came into being, we have introduced many different schemes and initiatives focused solely on delivering more social and affordable homes. Each of these schemes is delivering for our people and significantly so. One consequence of their success has been the reaction of the Members opposite. They get particularly exercised by our schemes, which they know are working. So exercised is Sinn Féin that it has gone as far as to propose scrapping, abolishing, ending and restricting most of our initiatives to take the legs out from under home buyers. Through its alternative housing plan, which I will call "A Home You Will Never Own", it has put on record its absolute hostility to home ownership. I am not deterred and nor is this Government. As we see real progress being made under the schemes, my focus has been on ensuring that we have the necessary funding to deliver and accelerate them, which we do. I am confident that, under budget 2025, these schemes will continue to deliver for people right across this country.

I have heard a lot of faux outrage from the Members opposite about new housing targets not being revealed in the budget. I have always said that the revised targets would be published in October and we will do that. Our revised housing targets will not be plucked from the sky but will be based on evidence and on the good work carried out by the Housing Commission, the ESRI and others. We have never been found wanting as regards financial provision in our housing budget. This remains the case today.

Our built, natural, architectural and cultural heritages are an intrinsic part of who we are. They provided our lifeline during the Covid pandemic. This Government has invested like never before, making the greatest investment in the history of the State. We have had another record budget this year, which underscores our commitment. Our core heritage funding has increased by almost €18 million to a total of €172 million, an increase of 11.5% on 2024. This includes €90 million in allocations for capital spending and €82 million for current spending.

On the National Parks and Wildlife Service, two years ago, when I met the Children and Young People's Assembly on Biodiversity Loss down in Killarney, I promised that this Government would do all in its power to protect nature. We have done that. Core funding for the National Parks and Wildlife Service has increased by €15.7 million to a total of €78 million, an increase of more than 25% on 2024. This includes €29 million for our national parks and nature reserves, an increase of €5.4 million on 2024. This will enable us to protect, enhance and restore nature and to create new national parks where we can. We have already done that with Brú na Bóinne and Páirc Náisiúnta na Mara. It also includes an increase of €6.5 million for science, research and nature protection to €23 million, which is up 40% on 2024. This will enable us to conserve more species and habitats in the wider countryside and meet our legal obligations under the birds and habitats directives. It will further support our ongoing and really fantastic work on wildlife crime. We are making significant progress in that area. It will also allow us to plan for the implementation of the nature restoration law, which again this Government has led on.

With regard to water quality and the implementation of the water action plan, funding has been increased by €4.5 million to almost €40 million, an increase of 13% on 2024. This will enable us to invest in water protection, restoring our free-flowing rivers and removing barriers, working with the farmers, State bodies and local authorities.

With regard to built heritage and monuments, support for the built heritage and national monuments and the National Monuments Service has increased by €1.65 million to €27.5 million. This enables us to support even more communities across the country to conserve the local and built heritage through the really fantastic grant schemes, the built heritage investment scheme, the historic structures fund and the community monuments fund. Over 3,000 projects have been supported under these schemes to date.

Funding for the Heritage Council has been increased by €2.2 million to €18.8 million. This is to support its incredible work in raising public awareness through Heritage Week, the biodiversity officer programme and the heritage officer programme.

As we look ahead, we have seen an increase of €100 million in core funding for heritage over the lifetime of the Government. We started with €70 million in 2020 and now have more than €170 million and are heading towards a very significant increase in 2025.

On electoral reform, the Electoral Commission, An Coimisiún Toghcháin, is doing its work. The Government continues to support that.

I thank all of my team on the heritage side. Looking at the progress over five budgets, that trajectory needs to continue into the next government.

I welcome budget 2025, which was announced yesterday by my colleagues, the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Chambers. It will make an enormous difference to people's lives, particularly to those of many families.

Turning to my own Department, budget 2025 provides very important funding in areas under my responsibility. In the area of planning, budget 2025 makes provision for the largest ever budgetary allocation to An Bord Pleanála, totalling more than €38 million. An additional €6 million has been provided to the board to support a sanctioned staffing level of more than 300 people, which has now nearly been met. This will assist in enhancing the delivery of key housing and infrastructure projects. It will also facilitate the elimination of backlogs and ensure enhanced capacity to operate to new statutory timelines as the organisations transforms to become An Coimisiún Pleanála further to the enactment of the Planning and Development Bill. We are also making €13 million available for additional planning, recruitment and training at local authority level.

This will support more than 213 additional full-time planning-related posts in local authority planning services, as well providing support for training and an enhanced planning skills pipeline underpinning the ministerial action plan on planning resources, which will be published to coincide with the finalisation of the Planning and Development Bill 2023.

I am particularly pleased to welcome the increase in funding for the private homes grants of €100 million, which is an increase of €25 million on the 2024 allocation. This increased funding underpins the implementation of the recommendations I brought forward under the review of the housing adaptation grants for older people and people with disabilities. It will, therefore, ensure the scheme will continue to be fit for purpose and deliver effectively for older people and people with a disability.

Scaling infrastructure for the future is crucially important and, as outlined, regarding the direction of travel and the pathway in this budget, we are scaling our infrastructure to meet future demands. The strategic use of the €14.1 billion Apple windfall will address known challenges in housing, energy, water and transport infrastructure. This significant financial boost will help to future-proof our economic, enterprise and industrial model, ensuring we will have opportunities for future generations.

I watched the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and his Ministers of State give their budget press conference yesterday. I do not think I have ever seen the Minister look so uncomfortable. He appeared not only deflated but at some points even defeated. He was almost like a man who did not want to be there, which was not unlike his very brief presence today in the Chamber. When we look at what happened yesterday, it is hardly surprising that the Minister was so uncomfortable. Billions of euro in additional expenditure were announced by almost all the other Ministers in their press conferences but in the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage virtually nothing extra has been allocated for the delivery of social or affordable homes. The Minister can come in here and talk about €6 billion having been allocated for next year but that figure is a fiction. It is just like when the Government said that €5 billion would be spent this year. That has proved to be a fiction, and the €4 billion announced the year before that was also a fiction.

Probably the best way to explain this is the fanfare about the allegedly increased funding for the Land Development Agency. In his budget press conference a year ago, the Minister said he was going to allocate an additional €6 billion of capitalisation to the Land Development Agency. He had not even discussed it, let alone agreed it, with his other Ministers. Days, weeks and then months passed by. Only at the end of December was there a Cabinet agreement that, in fact, instead of €6 billion, it would only be €1.25 billion sanctioned at the end of last year, with a further €1.25 billion to be provided this year but without any clarity on the source of funding. Yesterday's announcement of €1.25 billion in funding for the Land Development Agency is the third time this funding has been announced. It was announced last October, last December and now. It is not additional funding. It is funding for the LDA to deliver on the existing targets within the existing Government plan but with nothing additional. In fact, there is still a €3 billion black hole in the LDA's finances, creating uncertainty as to whether it will deliver on its programme out to 2028.

When we look at what was announced yesterday the total extra capital spend for housing was a paltry €330 million. That is the sum total of what the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, secured in his budget negotiations. This is why there is no increase in the delivery of social and affordable homes next year in existing targets. The Minister is right in that he always said he would revise those targets at the end of October, but that is too late for 2025. This means we will not get any increase in much-needed social and affordable homes next year on existing targets. That means that house prices and rents will continue to rise and so too will homelessness. One of the few areas where there was a significant increase in funding was in homeless emergency accommodation, where an extra €61 million was announced. This was an admission by the Government that homelessness next year is going to continue to rise. I am not surprised by that.

Interestingly, the €100 million extra the Government and the Minister greatly celebrated for the inflationary and controversial first homes scheme did not come to pass. It has only been increased by an extra €30 million and the targets remain as they were originally at 2,000 purchases for next year. The Minister talked about the renter's tax credit. An extra €250 will be of no use if the money goes in one pocket and out the other in the form of a rent hike by landlords. It is essentially a payment to landlords and not to tenants. Sinn Féin has always argued that unless rents are capped at the same time as increasing the tax credit, the credit will be of no real benefit to renters.

On the adaptation grants, the Minister of State, Deputy Dillon, said there is an extra €25 million for them. Unfortunately, he has now left the Chamber, but that is not what the budget book says. It states there is €25 million for disability grants and €75 million for adaptation grants. That is a total of €100 million, and that is what was in the budget for this year and it is what the budget book says will be there for next year. There is no increase in the funding for the retrofitting of social homes, despite the fact that many of the people living in those homes do so in serious fuel poverty. Again, we have been given two different figures on defects. The budget book says the funding is €70 million, the same as this year, while a sum of €100 million was mentioned at the press conference yesterday. Either way, this goes nowhere close to tackling the scale of Celtic tiger-era defects and defective blocks or other materials. Looking at the budget as a whole, when it comes to housing it is a wasted opportunity. It is more of the same and means that nothing will change next year.

We have set out a very clear alternative. It would have seen an extra €2.4 billion of direct capital investment in social and affordable homes next year to double output. We have also published a detailed and fully costed alternative housing plan to show how we can deliver real affordability, end long-term homelessness and increase the supply of private homes at more moderated prices for first-time buyers. What the Minister made clear yesterday and in his very brief appearance here today is that next year things will continue in the same way if this Government is in power. House prices will rise, rents will rise, homelessness will rise and people will continue to be unable to get secure and adequate affordable accommodation. That is why what we really need is a general election, a change of Government and a change of plan to start tackling this housing crisis.

The international media has been describing Ireland as a country with more money than sense over the last few weeks. Unfortunately, very few people would be able to disagree with that statement, including anybody who has seen the scandals in relation to the bike shed, the waste of money and the lack of cop-on in relation to the security hut, the €225 million of Exchequer funding that has just gone to waste in a number of rail projects and the modular homes that are twice the price we had bargained for. There is also the national children's hospital and the delays and increases in costs we are seeing occur there. It is clear that there is a real problem at the heart of this Government in spending people's money well.

It is always easier to spend other people's money and we saw that approach yesterday. There was a real urge just to splash the cash and not care too much where it goes as long as the Government could tick those boxes and say everybody got a little bit. What we saw yesterday was a Government in election mode. It was not a Government in an investment-in-the-future mode. It was not a Government thinking about its role in directing positive change for this country and having a vision for it. What we saw was a Government trying to buy off small cohorts of people one by one.

I would love to know what the discussions were when all the Ministers were sitting down with their officials looking at the budget and how they worked out where they would prioritise. Did they think about what they would give new parents, ask if a €240 bonus would keep them happy and then tick that box and move on? There was a missed opportunity here to do something really positive that would leave a legacy. It is a huge amount of money just to fritter away and not leave a legacy behind. While people will welcome and appreciate the few hundred euro extra in their pockets because many of them are struggling, what they got yesterday will not make a blind bit of difference to them in the long run.

I will give a few examples.

I am going to talk about the baby boost. It is absolutely incredible how the Government is able to spin the figures. Everywhere in the media and in every forum where a Government representative is talking we hear about a €420 baby boost. The reality is that parents were entitled to €140 so the increase is actually €280 and only approximately 60,000 parents will be able to avail of that in any given year so it is actually quite a small amount of money. The reality is that the money, while it will be welcome because the birth of a baby is a very expensive time in any family's life, will be gone in the blink of an eye and those families will then have to worry about childcare. How they are going to pay for childcare? Are they going to be able to get childcare, even if they can afford it? Are they going to be able to get flexible and age-appropriate childcare for their children? That is really where this Government has missed an opportunity. It would have been so much better, and the Social Democrats would have been absolutely delighted, had the Government announced that it was going to invest heavily in a public childcare system, something that will be strong and be there for years, a new model of childcare based on what we have in education. It would be something that parents could rely on rather than the current approach which is just to give bits and subsidies to the private sector. It is really unfortunate that the Government has not done that. The Green Party wants to see a public childcare system and apparently Fine Gael wants to see it as well. I am not sure what Fianna Fáil's position is on it, although I did hear that the Tánaiste said it was a hare-brained idea. However, at least two thirds of the coalition want to see public childcare so why did they not put it in the budget? Why did the Government not invest in it? It is something that would make a huge difference to parents. It would be transformative. The Government has a huge amount of money available to it. It should make transformative changes rather than frittering it away with payments of a few hundred euro here and there that nobody will notice or remember in six months or a year.

Finally I will refer to the other aspect of my spokesperson role which is climate and the environment. The Minister, Deputy O'Gorman, was talking earlier about the 6.8% reduction in emissions that we saw last year. I am going to welcome any reduction in emissions but I want to bring a dose of reality here. First, a 6.8% reduction is not sufficient and second, the reduction that we saw last year was not primarily from any Government policy. That reduction was there because we had a twelvefold increase in the electricity that we were taking from England and those emissions were not counted in our accounting system. The other primary driver was the fact that fertiliser use fell, which was welcome, but that was driven by high fertiliser prices. We need to see a much greater focus on climate but we also need to get rid of the spin. The last thing we need is the public thinking that this Government is making progress on the climate crisis. We are certainly not making the kind of progress that we need to see and it is not just me saying that, but the EPA and the Climate Change Advisory Council. It will be clear to anybody who can read any of their reports that the Government is not doing enough when it comes to climate, nature, biodiversity and our environment.

I am going to talk about the health budget obviously. This year's health budget is about more services and faster access for patients, more capacity and urgent reform. The total health budget for next year is a record €25.8 billion, representing an increase of nearly €3 billion on 2024. In addition to this extra €3 billion, over €900 million of one-off funding from previous years has now been agreed as recurrent funding. New measures in this budget total €335 million.

This funding is very welcome and much needed to provide care to a growing and aging population, roll out new and improved services, reduce costs for patients, increase the speed of access for patients and reform and modernise our health service. We have funding to hire more than 3,500 more healthcare workers. Given that there are currently around 3,000 vacant funded posts in the HSE, this means that between now and the end of next year the HSE is now funded to hire an additional 6,500 healthcare workers. We have funding to open another 335 hospital beds and 615 community beds and to expand services for patients in many different and important areas. This includes cancer care, women’s healthcare, trauma services, dementia services, maternity care, palliative care, rare diseases, cardiovascular health, stroke services, neurology, organ donation, genetics and more.

In budget 2025 one big area we are focusing on is cancer care. I have allocated an additional €33 million to cancer care which will have a full-year allocation of around €46 million. This includes €10 million for cancer medications, €2 million for post-mastectomy products, nearly €2 million for bowel screening and around €16 million for the national cancer strategy, with a full-year allocation of over €22 million. Critically, as part of that, there is a full €5.5 million in recurrent funding for all of the amazing cancer support groups we have in all of our constituencies. They have really welcomed that funding.

This will be the fifth health budget in a row where we have prioritised women’s healthcare. We are investing an additional €35 million in women’s health. HRT medication will be provided free of charge from January 2025. Eligibility for free IVF will be extended to include donor-assisted IVF as well as for couples who already have one child.

I am investing €30 million in new medicines coming from targeted savings within the medicines budget. Waiting times, as we know, remain too long but important progress is being made. The average outpatient waiting time has fallen from over 13 months to just over seven months in the past three years. That is nearly a 50% reduction in average waiting times and I really want to commend our healthcare workers all over Ireland. It is an extraordinary achievement. It has taken huge effort, blood, sweat and tears, long days and weekends but to have halved the waiting time in this country in just three years is remarkable and I salute them for having done it.

We are investing €420 million in waiting lists next year, an increase on last year. This includes €230 million in funding to the NTPF and €190 million for the HSE to continue the work it is doing on reducing waiting times for patients. Critically, we are moving this funding from being one-off to recurrent. It was always very valuable and well used by our healthcare workers but it was uncertain. It is now recurrent so not only can they drive on, they can plan for years into the future which is very welcome. We are also opening six new surgical hubs which is going to make a difference.

This is the second year in a row that the number of people on trolleys is going to fall but we know that we still have a long way to go. In this budget we are staffing six new injury units around the country and funding expansions for five emergency departments. We have been working hard to increase the services pharmacies can provide. We passed new legislation and the expert group has reported on things like prescription extensions, common conditions and so on. It is going to bring in a new era of community pharmacy in our country. To that end, I am allocating €25 million for next year, with a full-year allocation of €50 million to facilitate an agreement between my Department and the Irish Pharmacy Union. Preliminary talks have been going on for some time but we are putting €50 million on the table so that my officials and the Irish Pharmacy Union can get into formal talks now about delivering what is needed in communities.

There is no doubt that we have a lot more to do to improve productivity. While we have invested and continue to invest significantly in our workforce, bed capacity and in other infrastructure, we must, as a matter of urgency, modernise how care is delivered. A lot of progress has been made over the last few years but more is required. We must have a highly productive health service. It means the maximum amount of care for patients and the best value for taxpayers.

I am allocating dedicated funding to develop advanced practice for health and social care professionals. I am progressing the role of physician assistant and funding training courses for operating theatre assistants. These are two new roles that we are bringing in. Critically, I am allocating €23 million in recurrent funding for our new e-health strategy. We are going to have the patient app at the end of this year, shared care records at the end of next year and we are now building up a big team, several hundred strong, to deliver our e-health ambitions over the coming years.

Waiting times, trolley numbers and costs for patients are falling but we have more to do. We are about half way through our journey to deliver the healthcare service our country deserves. This budget is another important step on that journey.

I am delighted to announce a further investment from budget 2025 for health and well-being, and the national drug strategy. Some €9.5 million will be used to support a range of health and well-being initiatives, including physical, sexual and reproductive health. Building on the success of Sláintecare healthy communities, we have secured €1.2 million to extend the programme to four additional locations in 2025, benefiting an additional 100,000 people. Work will commence on plans for expansion to an additional 12 areas. In addition, €500,000 will be allocated to support breastfeeding - this is National Breastfeeding Week - including the recruitment of additional lactation consultants to provide specialised support services targeting areas of disadvantage.

Regarding obesity measures, I am delighted that in budget 2025 we will fully fund phase 1 of the model of care and provide initial funding to start phase 2, which we would hope to fund in 2026. We are funding measures relating to sexual health, men's health, mental health and vaping, as well as a male cancer survivorship and rehabilitation programme in Dublin and Cork.

For the ongoing implementation of the national drugs strategy, I am happy to unveil an additional €4.2 million in budget 2025. With this additional funding I want to ensure that drug and alcohol services are available in all parts the country for those who need them. The money will enhance access to services for high-risk drug users for the prevention of drug and alcohol use among children and young people and for minimising the harms of drug use. The measures in this funding include community-based drug services to be expanded by €2 million, with three WTEs to meet increased treatment demand. In addition €1 million will provide for 24 WTEs in order that integrated community alcohol treatment services can be rolled out on a national basis. New services will be established in HSE Dublin and midlands and HSE in Dublin and south east. Existing services will be expanded to ensure full geographic coverage across all health regions. The plan is for €1.8 million to be provided for the service in 2026. In total an extra 34 whole-time equivalents will be employed to deal with drug addiction and alcohol addiction which is a very welcome development.

Overall this budget is good in respect of providing the necessary care and treatment required by people who have addiction problems.

I am pleased to update the House on a very positive budget for mental health and older people. The total allocation for mental health services for 2025 is just under €1.5 billion, which represents an increase for the fifth year in a row. I have secured additional funding of €127.5 million in order that our services can grow and meet demand, and €16 million for new developments on which I will now give more detail.

I have allocated an additional €2.1 million for 45 whole-time equivalents to open the remaining 18 beds in the new Central Mental Hospital, Portrane. Some €2.5 million will support CAMHS to increase core staffing, reduce waiting lists and develop a new CAMHS emergency liaison service. An extra CAMHS hub team will provide crisis cover for services. I have also secured the most substantial investment to date in our national clinical programmes of €5.7 million for an additional four adult ADHD teams, two eating disorder teams, two early intervention teams in psychosis and two dual-diagnosis teams, that is, for 96 whole-time equivalents.

The additional four ADHD teams will complete the nationwide roll-out for ADHD in adults. There will be approximately €1 million for measures on suicide prevention and Traveller mental health, including expanded counselling and bereavement support. I am also pleased to announce a €2 million initiative to increase access to counselling in primary care with a specific focus on providing counselling support for men.

Regarding older people, budget 2025 will bring our investment in services close to €3 billion next year. This is an increase of €349 million, the largest allocation ever for older people. I have secured over €120 million for home support hours to help people stay in their own homes for longer. In 2025 we expect to deliver 24 million hours to almost 60,000 people.

For the fair deal and the nursing home sector, I have secured an additional €72 million to meet next year's demand and help nursing homes with rising costs. A total of 615 additional community beds will be delivered in community nursing units and community hospitals throughout the country.

Dementia continues to be a priority for me. Some €17 million has been invested in new dementia services and supports since 2021 and we will provide a further €2 million to improve access to dementia diagnosis and care. There will be five new dementia advisers, bringing the total to 34, and increased funding for dementia day care at home. The share of home-care hours to be ring-fenced for people with dementia has increased again this year to 20%.

This time last year when I took to my feet, I warned that the Government's funding of the health service was chaotic. I said that the health service would need a very significant bailout, in the region of €1.5 billion at least and possibly higher. I was joined in this by the head of the HSE but, as the Minister might recall, there was serious pushback from the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and the Minister for public expenditure and reform who said that we were alarmist, that we were wrong and that the health service would not need that level of additional funding, only for in the summer economic statement the Government having to come in to bail out the health service with €1.5 billion to make up for what we had warned the Minister about in recent years.

Almost all of the €3 billion that has been announced as so-called additional funding for the health services is, as the Minister knows, money for the health service to stand still. We are playing catch-up for years of not funding existing levels of service, ELS. None of this, or very little of it, will go towards new measures. In fact, the Minister only secured €120 million in additional current expenditure beyond what was already committed for new measures. I know the Minister says he is repurposing money elsewhere from ELS and from money that goes from non-core to core and so on to allow for new measures but in reality, the current additional allocation according to the Government's own expenditure booklet is €120 million. That is a fact. That is what is in the Government's booklet, as presented on budget day.

Worse than that, when I took to my feet last year, I warned the Minister about not funding the national cancer strategy. Therefore, I welcome the funding this year, of course. However, last year the Minister was not in a position to do that because he was left naked without any additional funding at all and there was very little scope for any new measures. That is the reality of how the Government chaotically funded the health service last year. It has been stop-start funding for all of these national strategies. It was the same with new money for new drugs and the Minister had to go and scramble to find money from savings elsewhere to save face.

For all the talk about reducing waiting lists, they have barely come down. I acknowledge that the number of long waiters has come down, but the number of people waiting for care has pretty much remained static - there is about a 4% drop. Community waiting lists have gone up by about 50%. They are hidden waiting lists and we have to drag that information out of the Government almost on a quarterly basis because are not published. Many children with disabilities cannot get access to services. The Minister of State with responsibility for mental health talks about additional funding where she includes ELS money while presenting that as new money. The actual additional money for new measures for mental health is a drop in the ocean compared with what is needed to deal with all the challenges we have in mental health.

We have not turned the corner on the trolley crisis, far from it. The trolley crisis is now an all-year-round problem and not just in Limerick but in many hospitals. We should rightly point to the exemplars of hospitals that have done well, but many hospitals have not and much of this is down to capacity.

I welcome, as I always do, additional funding that goes into the health system. I welcome every single euro of additional funding in the budget that goes into providing better healthcare services. However, I must also call out the failure in how the Government has chaotically funded the health service over recent years, how it has been forced to play catch-up at a very expensive time by way of having to pony up €2.5 billion just for the health service to stand still because of the failures of the Government and the failures of the Government party leaders to property support the health service.

This is my fifth time responding to a mental health budget. While the Minister of State can mention record budgets all she wants, people want results and I will talk about results. I am going to talk about the Government's legacy in mental health after five years. When it took office, 2,115 children were waiting for CAMHS appointments. Today that figure stands at 3,681, a 74% increase on the Minister of State's watch. Five years ago 223 children had been left languishing for over a year for a first-time appointment with CAMHS. Today, 504 children are waiting for an appointment, a 126% increase on her watch. We have had damning reports into CAMHS by Maskey and the Mental Health Commission. They have pointed to children misdiagnosed, mistreated and lost in the system. Five years ago, there were 72 operational CAMHS inpatient beds and today that stands at 51.

There were only three adult inpatient beds for eating disorders in the State when the Minister took office and, surprise, surprise, today there are still only three adult inpatient beds in the State.

In 2020 we had a scandalous 9,689 children on waiting lists for primary care psychology. Fast forward to 2024 and we now have whopping 18,368 children waiting. This is the Minister's legacy. It is a legacy of heartbreak and children being denied every opportunity to reach their full potential. Sinn Féin has a plan to resolve this. We have an action plan for mental health. We have solutions to solve the problems that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have created in mental health.

This budget is certainly not about the lack of money. There is a lot of money washing around at present. The level of surplus in the financial coffers of the State is probably unprecedented. It probably even got better for the Government when €13.8 billion landed on its table, even though the Government spent €10 million trying not to get it. It is a very good day for the Government.

Particularly in the past three or four years, the cost of living and inflation have eroded a lot of workers' income and their standard of living. This has had a significant effect on how workers see themselves in relative terms. There are grave inequalities in terms of housing, health and income and they are systemic in society. We need political will to really challenge these systemic forces in society. We only have to look at housing, which is a key issue. It was the key issue in the previous election and it will be the key issue in this coming election, when we have 15,000 people in emergency accommodation. We have tens of thousands of people waiting to go on the public housing list. These are situations which I, and many people in the Opposition, do not feel the present Administration can address. It comes back to will and the political choices that people have.

Tax is a reality. We all pay tax and in most cases taxes are progressive. There is one tax that many people feel very aggrieved about and this is the universal social charge. It was a temporary measure during the crisis to pay off the bad debts and the bad policies of Fianna Fáil. Why are people still paying the universal social charge? Many people find this tax odious in terms of why they continue to have to pay it.

I want to speak about health inequalities. I acknowledge the statement from the Minister for Health on progress in the health service. Sometimes we have to put party politics aside when we see progress in health and that is good. There are also health inequalities that still exist to this day. A total of 50% of the population still relies private health insurance. Why is this the case? There should be just one health service rather than a two-tier health service, which is based on income. If people have enough money in their pockets they can get the treatment they want but if you are working class on a low income you have to wait, and sometimes you have to wait for years. This is a grave inequality that has to be addressed.

With regard to what Deputy Ward said about the overall budget for mental health, we still have not reached the level of having 10% of the overall budget, which the Mental Health Reform coalition states we need to reach. At present it is still 6%. It is well below where it should be. Again, this is a faultline in our health service that has to be addressed.

Will we ever see this level of surplus again? Who knows. We saw large surpluses 15 or 16 years ago and then it all went south after that. This is an historic opportunity to address the grave inequalities in housing, health and incomes. Can they be addressed? Many in the Opposition do not think so. As long as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are in power, we will always have these systemic inequalities in our society. It comes down to choice and the forces the Government looks at. Does it look at the forces of the free market and capitalism or the forces of putting people before profit? This is why this opportunity has failed.

I am delighted to inform the House that I have secured a budget of almost €12 billion, which is a 9% increase on the funding achieved in budget 2024. There is an increase of €712 million in core current funding and an increase of more than €360 million in core capital funding compared with the original national development plan allocation for 2024. These are the headline figures but my focus in budget 2025 is very much on what it means for school staff, parents and families.

I meet parents the length and breadth of the country and I know how stressful, challenging and difficult it can be for them. One parent recently told me they felt like they were on a hamster wheel and I really do get that. In budget 2025 I am announcing that the free book scheme will cover all students, from primary school right through to the completion of the leaving certificate examinations. This will alleviate the financial pressure on parents of 940,000 students. It is important to acknowledge and thank our school leaders and school staff for their work and commitment in implementing the free schoolbooks scheme this year and for all they do in so many ways for the young people in their care in the world of education. With regard to the schoolbooks scheme, the Department of Education will allocate an administration support grant to primary, special and post-primary schools in the 2025-26 school year, based on the size of the school, to assist with the additional work required.

I know that finding special education school places can be an enormous stress for parents also. In the budget we will hire another 1,600 special needs assistants and 768 additional special educational needs teachers. This will open up 2,700 school places next year for children with additional educational needs. I acknowledge there have been delays in finding places for some children with additional educational needs this year. I welcome the fact the National Council for Special Education has confirmed to me it has 24 places available for the 16 children still in need of them and that the issues regarding the need for school places will be resolved in the coming days.

Since becoming the Minister for Education more than four and a half years ago I have prioritised the summer provision programme and I am pleased to confirm the budget provides more than €65 million in permanent funding for the summer programme for children with special educational needs and students at risk of educational disadvantage. I am also pleased to confirm we have had a 20% increase in the number of schools offering the summer programme this year. This permanent funding will allow us to continue to cater for the continued growth of the summer programme.

I know that mobile phones in schools are an issue of enormous concern to parents and I will provide funding to secondary schools to procure mobile phone pouches or other storage solutions in order that students get a mental break from their phones during the school day. I have heard some Deputies criticise the €9 million allocation for this scheme as a waste of money but I have made this decision based on international research, which has highlighted the negatives of having mobile phones available in the classroom and in school grounds.

Last year a report by UNESCO, the UN's education agency, recommended that smartphones be banned from schools to improve learning and to tackle classroom disruption and cyberbullying. UNESCO cites evidence that removing smartphones from schools in Belgium, Spain and the United Kingdom improved learning outcomes. It noted that having a mobile phone nearby with notifications coming through is enough to result in students losing their attention from the task at hand. One study found that once distracted, it takes students up to 20 minutes to refocus on what they were learning. I believe this new scheme will support positive well-being among all our pupils. It will help them to learn in their classrooms, make friends and engage with one another without the distractions that can arise from mobile phones.

I know too that many parents feel under pressure to support their schools with voluntary contributions.

That is why I am increasing the State funding for primary and secondary schools, known as capitation grants, by 12%. That is in addition to the 9% increase in capitation last year. This will improve the funding that schools have available to them to cover their costs. We are also going to provide €45 million for schools from the cost-of-living package to help with their day-to-day running costs, such as heating, insurance and electricity. We are also going to ensure that our schools continue to have a supply of excellent teachers, with budget initiatives such as the new bursary for science, technology engineering and mathematics, STEM, teachers. This will provide student teachers in third or fourth year of STEM undergraduate initial training education qualifications with a €2,000 payment each year for the final two years of their programme. There is a clawback provision: any student teacher getting the payment will be required to undertake in writing to refund the payment in the event of their not completing a minimum of two years consecutive service in schools. Up to 800 student teachers are expected to be eligible for the bursary from the 2025 to 2026 academic year.

I also know the importance of providing career progression for our existing teachers. That is why I am announcing that there will be 1,000 additional school posts of responsibility. We will also have free upskilling courses for staff, and funding for the new primary curriculum and senior cycle reform. We have a significant package in the budget to tackle educational disadvantage, with more education supports available for children who are at risk of leaving school early. We will also commence the roll-out of the Traveller and Roma education strategy, which I was pleased to launch recently.

I am including two other significant measures in the budget to help parents with the cost of living. I am going to continue to exempt junior cycle and leaving certificate students from the usual examination fees, and I am going to keep reduced school transport scheme fees in place for families, which will remain at €50 for a primary school student, €75 for a post-primary student and €125 for a family ticket. I am also keen to progress the recommendations in the latest review of the school transport scheme, and provision has been made for that.

Finally, I will draw Members' attention to the capital budget for school buildings, which is increasing by more than €360 million to €1.3 billion next year. This will allow us to progress more than 350 school building projects, which are already under way, and bring another 200 school building projects to construction. Overall, the education budget is worth almost €12 billion, which is the single highest amount ever. It will help reduce costs for parents and families as well as continue to improve our vital education system.

I am pleased to share details of my Department’s budget for 2025 as Minister of State with responsibility for special education and inclusion. As Deputies are aware, ensuring that children with additional needs receive an appropriate education with the supports they require is a priority for this Government.

Since being appointed to this role last April, I have visited almost 30 schools in nine counties, met with 35 different organisations representing children with additional needs and attended 14 sessions with groups representing children, their parents, teachers, special needs assistants, SNAs, school leaders and special interest groups. All these engagements have provided me with valuable insights and perspectives on the day-to-day challenges and issues within special education and the measures needed to help children reach their full potential and prosper in school.

It is these insights that have framed the special education budget for 2025. The total funding package I have secured totals €2.9 billion. This represents a 6% increase for 2025, or €159 million. By way of context, some 250,000 children with a special educational need are accommodated in mainstream schools with supports. Approximately 28,000 children are either in a special class or a special school.

Central to providing an appropriate school place for children with special educational needs is provision of special education teachers and special needs assistants. This budget will result in an additional 768 special education teachers and 1,600 extra SNAs being employed to support children in school. This is the highest ever number of SNAs allocated. In 2025, therefore, we will have more than 23,000 in our education system. We will also have some 21,000 special education teachers employed.

These additional teachers and SNAs will allow us to open another 400 special classes in both primary and post-primary for 2025, bringing the total number of special classes to over 3,700. It will also allow us to create an additional 300 places in special schools. Some 2,700 children will benefit through provision of more special classes and special school places.

A number of measures are also under way to ensure that children with special educational needs receive early confirmation of a school place. I have established a task force for Dublin 15, which is an area under particular pressure. This task force will be independently chaired and will include parents, schools, my Department, the National Council For Special Education, NCSE, and other stakeholders. It has been instructed to establish demand for special classes and special school places as early as possible, using data on waiting lists and known demand. The task force, in conjunction with my Department and the NCSE, is also working to develop a common application system for primary special class places, which will avoid the need for parents to apply to a number of schools. The NCSE, which has additional resources allowing it to increase the number of special educational needs officers, SENOs, from 65 to 120, will also visit 800 schools in September and October this year to begin forward planning.

I have also secured additional capital funding of €80 million, which will allow my Department to order modular accommodation and get building works under way so that classes are ready for September 2025. This Government recognises the practical challenges for schools and parents in meeting the needs of children with additional needs. To help with this, budget 2025 will see targeted investment in a number of other areas including €62 million for the summer programme, which is enormously important for the most vulnerable children in our society; the creation of a special education innovation fund to develop and pilot some of the interesting ideas that special interest groups have raised with me directly; and supports for training, increased capitation and transport grants.

On my many school visits, transition from primary to post-primary school has been a key issue that is brought to my attention. Having to go from a familiar one-class setting in a primary school to multiple classes in secondary school and be part of a much larger school population, and the logistical challenge of navigating it, is far more complex. All these issues have been raised with me. To help with this, budget 2025 will see targeted investment for the first time in assisting primary schools to help manage the effective transition of children with the highest level of need into post-primary education. I am also pleased that additional supports will be provided to post-primary schools to co-ordinate provision of special education supports. I will continue to work hard to support children with additional needs and work with all stakeholders to ensure an appropriate education is provided for these.

From speaking with principals and school leaders, to say they are disappointed would be one of the greatest understatements. It is a sentiment also expressed by representative groups and parents. I note that the Minister, Deputy Foley, has left the Chamber. That Minister was told, heard and ignored what was being outlined in detail by school leaders.

A few months ago, principals from across the country again came to Leinster House to detail the extraordinary pressure schools are under. Seven out of 10 primary schools had run a deficit in the previous 12 months. Heating costs were up by more than 37% and electricity costs by more than 35%. While schools struggle to keep the lights on and pay their monthly bills, this Government chose to allocate €9 million to smartphone pouches when its own document clearly states an additional €10 million in capitation. Tell me without telling me where your priorities lie. Clearly, they are not in ensuring that schools are properly funded or no longer reliant on the voluntary contributions of hard-pressed parents. When that decision to allocate €9 million for mobile phone pouches was made, the Government chose not to fund 8,881 places on a school bus for mainstream children, 779 places on transport for children with special educational needs, 220 SNAs or 120 special education teachers.

All the while, the Government introduced therapists in schools on a pilot basis. There is now an allocation of taxpayers' money to this scheme with no clear plan as to how it will operate aside from it being centrally controlled. Are we to expect teachers and secretaries to swipe these pouches across checkout-style mechanisms to open them while queues of students form around the corner? To say it is tone deaf is to barely scratch the surface. The Government’s budget allocation for education this year pales into insignificance compared with what the measures outlined in Sinn Féin’s budget could achieve: a 20% increase in capitation for primary and post-primary schools; more than 1,500 SETs; more than 1,850 SNAs; and something that is not even mentioned in the Government’s budget or speeches, namely, significantly increased funding for Irish-medium education.

There was a significant opportunity in this budget, particularly in light of the Apple money, to make a sizeable difference in people’s lives, especially in County Kerry. The lack of ideas or of working for the common good is not surprising, given that the Government spent €10 million trying to prevent the money from coming to the State in the first place. This budget will not help children with autism in Kerry who are effectively being denied an education, nor will it help them obtain a GP or give hope to parents whose children are on OT waiting lists, where there are 1.5 whole-time equivalents between Dingle and Tralee to deal with a waiting list of approximately 280 people. Will it address staff shortages in physiotherapy in Kerry? There are no community physiotherapists in Kenmare and the waiting list in Killarney has increased to two years. It will not include a plan for wastewater infrastructure in places like Castlegregory, Ballyduff and Abbeydorney. Core funding for the family resource centres, which do great work around the county, has not been increased. They are devastated by this news. It will still be difficult to get a house to rent or buy and the social housing waiting lists will continue to grow, yet there is no plan to deliver affordable housing in Kerry. More and more over-60s are renting and more and more under-40s cannot own their own homes.

Regarding Garda numbers, something innovative has to be done to recruit more gardaí. I spoke to a senior garda yesterday. Of the 120 who went into Templemore recently, seven left within a week. A second Garda training college has to be considered, as must keeping gardaí on part time.

Regarding prisons, an emphasis must be placed on trying to pass a restorative justice Bill so as to reduce the number of people entering prison in the first place, particularly on short-term sentences.

The record justice allocation for 2025 of €3.92 billion will help to keep our communities stronger and safer. This budget is a step change in investment across the entire criminal justice system, including the courts and prisons, and will build on a robust programme of new laws, policy delivery and significant capital investment in technology, equipment and buildings.

I am pleased to provide €70 million, which is a trebling of funding since I took office, to leave no place in our society for any form of domestic, sexual or gender-based violence.

The total gross allocation for the Garda Vote is a record €2.48 billion, an increase of more than €500 million since 2020. This will maintain and enhance our police service through recruiting between 800 and 1,000 more gardaí and 150 new civilian staff. Increasing and strengthening our Garda Reserve towards 1,000 members is key to stronger, safer communities and has been provided for in this budget. We have continued to take significant measures to boost recruitment by increasing the training allowance in this budget to €354, thereby almost doubling it in a year, increasing the entry age to 50 and increasing the mandatory retirement age to 62. There will be €150 million for Garda overtime in 2025, representing a boost of 13%. This will provide resources for high-visibility policing efforts and serious crime investigation.

A priority for me is to look beyond the measures that have been taken, which is why a group that I established this year will report to me soon. It has been looking outside the box to determine what more we can do to support Templemore with new recruits.

Another priority for me is to support the individual members of the Garda Síochána who serve and protect our communities with dedication and skill in what are often very difficult circumstances. There is an additional budget provision of €1.5 million for training, employee well-being, medical services and equipment to support a modern police service. A further €5 million is being allocated for public order equipment, including specialist personal public order equipment, crowd barrier controls, an expansion of the dog unit, water cannons and thousands of units of body armour.

I can confirm that €9 million in additional funding is being provided for enhanced road safety measures, in particular the deployment of additional speed cameras, which will provide for improved enforcement of traffic laws, reduce speeding and, ultimately, save lives on our roads.

The gross allocation for our Justice Vote is €661 million, an increase of €63 million on last year. This significant increase is to support victims and vulnerable people and to provide vital services to those who need them. Tackling domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is a priority for me as Minister for Justice in terms of providing victim-centred supports and services while ensuring that perpetrators are punished. Budget 2025 provides €70 million for this, a trebling of funding since I took office in 2020. I have increased funding specifically for Cuan, our new domestic violence agency, to €67 million, including additional resources to support the implementation of our zero-tolerance strategy. There will be funding for 80 additional refuge spaces with a view to doubling their number so that ever person, family or child who needs a space can access one. The domestic violence services will also benefit from the additional funding being provided for victims of crime.

My Department has continued to improve the processing of international protection applicants. On top of €50 million, €25 million will go towards end-to-end investment across our system. This will provide for a reduction in application processing times by significantly increasing staff numbers and through the greater use of technology. In 2025 alone, we will hire a further 400 staff to be deployed at every stage of the process. This builds on my work of recent years in more than doubling the number of staff, with a corresponding tripling of decisions. The quicker people get a “Yes”, the quicker they can move on with their lives. If it is a “No”, the quicker they can be removed.

I will shortly announce another set of successful applicants to the community safety fund. This is funding that has been taken directly from criminals by CAB and reinvested in our communities. I am pleased that the fund will reach €4 million this year and €9.5 million next year. This funding will provide for 36 community safety partnerships nationwide and see the establishment of a national office for community safety to ensure that all of the partnerships are supported in their plans at national level.

I acknowledge the work of the Minister of State, Deputy James Browne, in the areas of youth justice and tackling gambling as a public health problem. Regarding the latter, he is taking a Bill in the Seanad at the moment. He has delivered a more than 160% increase in youth diversion scheme funding since we started working together. The youth justice funding of €33 million will have a significant impact on individual young people, their families and wider communities. We have also secured additional funding for the gambling regulator, with funding to more than double next year to €9 million.

Regarding family justice, which is another area that has needed a lot of focus over the years, ensuring that the voices of children continue to be heard in family law proceedings is an important aspect of my family justice reforms. Some €3 million has been allocated through this budget to enable the piloting of a scheme to fund voice of child reports in family law proceedings. It will also allow for the development, implementation and evaluation of a pilot project to establish a children’s court advocate. The role of the advocate will be to support children in their journey through private family law proceedings, to ensure that their voices are heard and, above all, to ensure oversight of reports provided by any person to the court.

The budget for criminal legal aid will be increased by €9 million and include an 8% increase in fees from 1 January, building on the 10% increase I secured last year. There is a commitment to ensure that we can close the gap and find an additional 8% in the year ahead.

The gross allocation to the prisons Vote is €525 million. Additional funding and capacity are crucial if we are to ensure that the prison system is safe and humane and has sufficient spaces to house the most serious offenders while also focusing on rehabilitation. Funding this year will support the recruitment of up to 350 new prison officers, allowing for another 130,000 extra staff hours and the building of 155 new prison spaces by the end of this year. It will also allow us to roll out the total allocation of 1,100 spaces that I have planned for by the end of the decade.

Beyond that, a separate group that I established is bringing recommendations to me this week to look at what further resources are required in the prison population. It is absolutely essential that we increase overall capacity within the Irish Prison Service to continue to boost the number of staff. The allocation of €53 million will help us to deliver just this - the 1,100 new prison spaces that I have mentioned.

Finally, on the Courts Vote, the gross allocation of €195.6 million is increasing by €11 million from last year. This will allow for 50 additional staff to support the work of the expanding Judiciary. I have appointed 30 additional judges in the past two years. This supporting staff will assist them in their work while laying the ground for 20 additional judges that will be allocated across the district, circuit and high courts.

The courts will also receive €2 million more to provide for the progression of the courts modernisation programme. This includes the outsourcing of jury-minders to free up tens of thousands, to be exact, 24,000, garda hours for important front-line policing work. I will continue to see what areas in which we can free up gardaí to do front-line duties.

Finally, I thank again my colleagues, the Ministers, Deputies Chambers and Donohoe, for supporting these proposals and, indeed, for prioritising our overall objective, that is, to have stronger safer communities.

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to speak on this important, historic budget. I acknowledge the excellent contribution we have just heard from the Minister, Deputy McEntee.

The first issue I want to deal with is one that missed everybody in their alleged objective commentary on this budget where they gave the impression that we were just spending money all over the place. The first thing about this budget that people must remember is that this Government has established the Future Ireland Fund and that is where we put extra funds for the projection of future investments. We have also created the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund. Combined, those two funds alone will provide substantial funding put away, not to be touched for current expenditure, to deliver major capital projects that are needed, be it for housing, for industry, for infrastructure.

In addition, the €14 billion from Apple has been clarified. Rather than making a big splash announcement yesterday - some people wanted to spend that money yesterday - we have said, "No." We will look at it carefully and hold it until we know the objectives can be achieved. The Government is determined, over the coming months and early in the new year, to come back to this House with an outline and a framework for investing the capital that we are receiving as a result of the Apple decision. It is not for day-to-day spending; it is for investing in our future. We will look at projects that can be delivered in a reasonable time. We will make sure we get value for money. We want to make sure it adds to existing plans and that projects will have an economic impact. When we put all those funds together, we will be looking at measures that help housing. That means we have to start with water infrastructure. There is not a county that is unaware that housing projects are being held up because of lack of water infrastructure, ESB connections to the grid and other key essential items. That is what this fund is for. It is so we can have resources in place that if there is a downturn at some stage in the future, we have this fund put aside. The first thing the Government did, which everybody seems to have missed, was make provision to put aside a lot of money that we have now but are not spending now because we need it for investment into the future.

Other than those basic items, this was about prudent management of the economy to make sure there is money for the years to come and not to spend it all yesterday.

What we announced yesterday touches every sector of society. We introduced a rent tax credit, and that will increase to €1,000. We are providing two €125 energy credits. Some people complain about that. We are cutting the USC, which will help workers in the country and people in employment. We have €12 weekly increases in social protection. We have now free schoolbooks to be introduced for everybody up to leaving certificate. Childcare fees are being reduced as well. We have substantial investment in education and we are building safer communities. There is substantial investment in health, increased access for IVF and free HRT. Supports for higher education are a top priority, as is childcare. We have extra funding for carers, who do a lot of work behind the scenes.

Finally, people are well aware of all the record increases we have announced in the €2.2 billion package for social welfare. That affects every house in terms of child benefit, State pensions and everybody else. It is not only for people who are at home, not working. That affects all the older generation and the younger generation.

Many people in County Kerry are very disappointed by the Government's failure to reduce the VAT rate from 13.5% to 9%. Many businesses have closed already, and many more will close before Christmas, I am sorry to say, because they were hoping, and hanging on, to see would this happen, but the Government failed them.

Everyone is being hurt by the increase in carbon tax. Everyone who has a set of wheels under them is being driven down through the ground further.

Carers should not have to be means-tested. Whatever cap the Government will raise for the means test, that will not happen until next July. Live horse until you get grass.

On health, several nursing and carers posts remain unfilled in our general and district hospitals resulting in several beds remaining empty. Sick patients are continuously waiting for beds. Elderly patients are waiting for GPs. The massive increase of thousands of immigrants is putting severe pressure on the medical service. GPs are hard to get to go to.

On housing, I am again calling for fair play. I ask that the Government extend the €800 tax free that it affords to Ukrainians and landlords who house them to our own people - the thousands who are on the housing list in Kerry.

The budget for roads in Kerry has been continuously reduced over the past eight or nine years. I am glad to have made strong representations on behalf of the roads that were taken off the programme in July - the Bunane road, the road from the Creamery Cross to Kenneigh, and then the road from Killarney to Lackabane, Lackabane to the Gap Cross and the Gap Cross to Killalee. I fought so hard for those road projects, in the first place, going back a number of years, and then they were suspended last July. I am glad that continuous representations by me and others have secured that. A total of 660 roads still remain on the local improvement scheme list in Kerry. Many people will be dead, with 25 roads being done a year, if the Government does not do something to increase the funding.

When the Minister of State, Deputy Fleming, used the words "this Government" and "prudent" when it comes to money management, I have to think, out the road here, of the children's hospital. Nobody could use the phrases "financial prudence" and "this Government" in the same breath. When we hear of bicycle sheds and security huts costing €1.25 million and when we think that our highly esteemed and respectable Ceann Comhairle had to start off the first meeting of this Dáil term by explaining about a bike shed and how he was outraged, the word "prudence" and this Government do not match. I nearly choked when I heard the Minister of State say that.

The haulage sector in County Kerry, taxi men in Killarney town and throughout the county and many others have been contacting me throughout the day asking what did the Government have against them.

With regard to hospital beds, I am anxious to keep all our beds in Kenmare, Dingle, Cahersiveen, Killarney town and other places open. On Aperee nursing home, I am very disappointed with the move by the HSE, contacting family directly and saying this home will not stay open and they should take their people out. The line Minister directly responsible, Deputy Butler, is very concerned in her efforts at trying to keep that home open and I thank her for that. I would ask the HSE to lighten off a small bit, give us a chance and give another operator a chance to take over.

With regard to the other issues, such as the roads, the Government has been anti-roads in County Kerry. It did a massive U-turn last week, which I raised here in the Dáil. When I stood up and spoke up for the people in Bunane, I am still fighting for the people in Tahilla and all those roads around the rest of the Ring of Kerry where the road is crumbling and the infrastructure is crumbling. I ask that the Government not forget about the roads in Kerry.

They might be embarrassed when they hear me say this. I address the Ministers and I am glad there are some females in here as well because there is something I would like to know. With the funding that is being spent at the moment in the education network, we have seen a whistleblower come out over the SPHE, which is actually porn being taught to children between the ages of 12 and 15 in school. I want to know from the Ministers sitting here if they agree with it. Do they agree with children between the ages of 12 and 15 being taught porn in school? The books are kept in school and the parents are not being made aware of what they are being taught, and now we have a whistleblower-----

I am delighted to hear that because then we want to have an investigation to know if there are teachers being taught this and then having to teach this to children under the age of consent. This is what I want to make sure. Something like this should not happen under the age of consent and I would support this. The Government is spending upward of €900,000 on telephone boxes to hide telephones in schools. It then comes along and gives out free books, which I welcome, but it took away the SNA teachers. It took away the funding from people who help people who need help but have given it to another section. Again, the way the budget has been handed out, it has not been given to all education sectors. It took from one and gave to another. Again, when you look across the board at schools across this country, there are schools pupils can cycle to and schools they cannot cycle to. They all got a bike shed grant even if pupils are not able to cycle to school in the back of beyond. They still got a grant for it and were only allowed use it for that purpose, even if there was other stuff in those schools that fund could have been used for.

Double child benefit payments should not just be for Christmas as the Minister referred to in her Christmas babies speech. They should be for childhood. That is why the Government should have implemented the second tier of child benefit recommended by the ESRI and many other organisations fighting for children's rights. That is why, in order to make real progress and reduce child poverty, we needed to see the increase for a qualified child go up by €6 per week for children under 12 and €15 per week for children aged 12 and over. That is why the core welfare rates increases of €12 per week fall significantly short of the €20 increase needed to restore their real value to 2020 levels. This was a shameless election budget. This was a giveaway budget by a Government that has given up trying to address the real fundamental issues facing this country. I always welcome any supports to help people make ends meet, but these once-off payments will be quickly eaten up by rising costs of living, rent, heating or health costs. The Government may as well have given the money straight to landlords and the energy companies. When the money is gone, this budget will not have moved us an inch in fixing the serious housing crisis, the crisis in our health service or across our public services. Young people will still leave in their droves as housing prices go up and people's standard of living goes down. This budget does zero to address the structural problems in this country. In its response to the budget, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions said:

Budget 2025 does nothing to solve the range of structural flaws in our economic model. There is no obvious long-term vision to fix the long-standing crises in areas such as housing, childcare, or infrastructure delivery.

There you go, the Government has given up.

We are a wealthy country, but working-class people see none of it. There is more than enough money to address the problems we are facing if the wealth were more fairly distributed. The top 1% in Ireland owns €230 billion in wealth, whereas the bottom 50% only owns €9 billion. There is a deep need for change so ordinary people get their fair share. This budget has once again shown that Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party are the biggest block to that change. There is a huge concentration of political and economic power in the hands of very few at the top of society. The result of this is that the political system over successive Governments has placed profit at the heart of State policy at the expense of everyone else. This is why people cannot find homes, but big developers, speculators and landlords make billions off the housing crisis. It is reflected by a policy of increasing the stamp duty on investors buying ten or more houses from 10% to 15% - a miserly increase. That is why hundreds of thousands of people are living in poverty and millions more are struggling to make ends meet while the 1% has gained 70 times more wealth than the bottom 50% in the past ten years. This is a budget that will make that inequality worse. I again quote ICTU, which states:

Throwing money from tax cuts into an economy at full capacity will simply raise prices and ultimately erode the gains from the tax cuts. The biggest winners from the tax changes will be the very wealthiest families benefiting from inheritance tax cuts as well as those on higher incomes that stand to benefit from all of the changes to personal taxes. The relative losers are those without wealth and workers on lower incomes.

In this budget, someone earning €100,000 per year will receive more than four times back in tax as someone earning €25,000. The Minister for Finance said in the lead-up to this budget that the average worker would receive €1,000 back in tax and cost-of-living once offs. Someone in the top bracket will get a permanent tax cut far in excess of that.

While the 80 cent increase in the hourly rate for the minimum wage is welcome, €13.50 is significantly less than the €14.75 per hour recommended by the living wage technical group. What workers need is collective bargaining as proposed by the EU adequate minimum wage directive, a Bill on which I introduced earlier this year supported by the trade unions. That along with expanded public health services is what will really help workers in the long run.

This budget has cut inheritance tax to the tune of nearly €90 million. The most significant tax cuts will only be for the wealthiest 3% of people. This will further entrench wealth inequality, as it is passed down unearned from generation to generation. In contrast, the Government has delayed changes to sick leave and pensions for workers until mid-2025, which leaves workers worse off. It is a contrast for a Government that after five years has refused to increase social welfare or pensions in line with inflation. Once the once-off payoffs are gone, ordinary people will be left behind. We needed change in this budget. We needed to change the fact that for ordinary people this is a high-tax country with broken public services, but if people are rich, it is a low-tax country and they can afford to go private. SIPTU explained that our low-tax status is almost exclusively due to extremely low employers' social insurance contributions, PRSI, and to a lesser extent low capital taxes. Those are the extremely low employers' PRSI contributions, which the Government has left untouched in this budget, and the capital taxes it has cut. Research by the Nevin institute found that the implicit tax rate on workers in Ireland is 15% above the EU average, while employers' PRSI is 56% below. Regressive taxes on consumption are above the EU average while our taxes on capital are less than half those in Germany, Denmark, Belgium, the UK and Italy, and less than a third of those in France. That is what a tax policy looks like when we have a country run for those with wealth at the expense of ordinary people. Unless we make structural changes to how we fund and run our State and unless we take profit out of Government policies, we will never make real progress on addressing the crisis in housing, the cost of living or health. There is a need for change in Ireland. This budget does not offer it. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will not offer it. We need a left government willing to make that change and run this country for the benefit of workers and communities, not the superrich.

I welcome the opportunity to highlight key aspects of budget 2025 for the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, introduced by myself along with the Ministers of State, Senator Hackett and Deputy Heydon. My goal for budget 2025 was to support farm incomes as well as the continued development of the agrifood industry, by building on the significant supports put in place over the lifetime of this Government.

With those objectives in mind, a total of €2.112 billion has been allocated to my Department for the coming year, which includes €85 million for new measures. This is an increase of €158 million year on year, or 8.1% above the 2024 provision. This is in addition to the €1.2 billion of EU funding in direct payments to farmers, funded outside of my Department's Vote. The provision supports incomes in the vulnerable sectors, but also provides investment support at farm level across the sectors and for our agrifood and fisheries processing sectors as well. In making this provision, the Government has recognised the critical importance of the agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors as engines of employment creation and economic growth, especially in rural areas.

The growth and development of the tillage sector is a strategic objective of this Government. In budget 2025, I am fully delivering on my commitment of a €100 per hectare payment for farmers who planted tillage and field-grown food crops for harvest 2024. This is in addition to the €10 million straw incorporation commitment in this budget, as well as the €10 million protein aid scheme commitment funded under Pillar 1 of the Common Agricultural Policy. Just three years ago, targeted payments to support the tillage sector overall amounted to just €3 million in total, and that was for the protein aid scheme. This year they will be €50 million.

Earlier this year, I published a ten-point plan to develop and support our growing dairy beef sector. To further encourage this development, I am doubling the current payment per eligible calf from €20 to €40. As my aim is to encourage greater integration of the dairy and beef sectors, the allocation of this funding will be agreed in consultation with the farm organisations in due course. I have increased targeted supports to the beef sector in successive years now through the suckler carbon efficiency programme and the national beef welfare programme. Yesterday, I increased the payment per cow and calf from €200 in 2024 to €225 next year. I will also continue to fund the national genotyping programme which is making a significant contribution to the development of both the beef and dairy sectors. These measures support farm incomes but also deliver on efficiency, environmental and animal welfare goals at farm level.

With regard to the sheep sector, I am also increasing the current rate of €8 per ewe under the national sheep welfare scheme by €5 bringing it to €13, which now delivers a combined €25 payment per ewe. This is a 150% increase in funding - from €10 to €25 - since I became Minister and is by far the largest payment ever made to sheep farmers.

Regarding the farmer group known as the forgotten farmers, I have always affirmed my commitment to resolving this issue. I am pleased that in budget 2025 I will be able to open the scheme for this group with an initial funding contribution of €5 million provided. I am very glad to be in a position to now progress a scheme that has long been spoken about and that will also be followed with additional budgetary provision in budget 2026. This is certainly a significant step in this budget.

Just two weeks ago, my colleague the Minister, Deputy O'Donovan, and I were delighted to announce the provision of funding for two new veterinary schools on the island of Ireland. The objective is to ensure fewer young Irish people have to travel abroad to complete their veterinary studies. The selection of the South East Technological University and the Atlantic Technological University will help to achieve this objective. It will also make a significant contribution to balanced regional development. Of the €50 million committed, my Department will be providing €25 million, with €5 million of that provided from the Department's Vote for 2025.

Over €700 million will be spent in support of farm families in their efforts to tackle the challenges of climate, biodiversity and water quality in 2025. I have provided an increased provision of €60 million for ACRES. This will bring funding for the scheme in 2025 to €260 million. This follows my decision to accept all 55,000 participants into the scheme. I have also committed €40 million in capital funding for the development of a biomethane industry. This commitment for early delivery in 2025 is matched with €5 million in funding, with the remainder to be paid in 2026.

My recently published plan to secure the nitrates derogation is fully funded under this budget. Farmers have made significant commitments to improving water quality, as shown during the recent visit by the European Commission's nitrates team to Ireland. I am supporting these efforts through capital and programme funding, with at least €61 million being provided for the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS, in 2025. In this context, further to my introduction of a dedicated 70% nutrient importation storage scheme, subject to European Commission approval, I will open a 60% grant-aided nutrient storage scheme with a separate investment ceiling of €90,000. This will allow farmers to invest in nutrient storage under a dedicated investment ceiling, while also allowing them to invest in other measures on their holdings up to an additional €90,000 investment ceiling.

Over the lifetime of this Government, €800 million has been spent on the seafood sector. The allocation for the fisheries and seafood sector in 2025 is €177 million. This will support continued investment in our piers and harbours, as well as provide investment for the seafood sector under a range of schemes, including: the inshore fleet economic assessment scheme, with payments of between €3,500 and €5,000 to inshore fishing vessels; the inshore fisheries scheme for small-scale coastal fishing vessels, with enhanced grant intensity rates of between 80% and 100% to support both on-board and on-shore investments; a lobster V-notching scheme to support fishing incomes and improve the sustainability of this fishery; a sustainable fisheries scheme providing support for on-board investment in sustainable fishing gear; a seafood processing capital investment scheme that will provide important support for capital investment in the seafood processing sector; and an aquaculture capital investment scheme that will provide support to aquaculture operators in the context of capital investment. The seafood training scheme supporting the development of skills and knowledge across the fisheries, aquaculture and seafood processing sectors will operate next year, as will the opening of a new young fishers scheme which provides support to young fishers under the age of 40 in purchasing their first fishing vessel, with grant rates of up to 40% of the cost of the vessel up to a maximum amount of €250,000. Additional schemes in 2025 will support producer organisations as well as community-led development within 10 km of the coast via the fisheries local action groups, as well as a seafood innovation scheme.

The agri-taxation measures announced by my colleague the Minister for Finance, Deputy Chambers, demonstrate the Government’s commitment to retain key taxation measures that will support us in developing the sector in 2025. These measures are significant. For example, stock reliefs have been extended for a further three years, to the end of 2027. This is incredibly important for young farmers and those entering farm partnership, including for farm succession purposes. The capital acquisition tax agricultural relief, which is worth approximately €250 million per annum to farmers, has been retained. Following consultation with stakeholders and in order to ensure that this relief benefits genuine farmers rather than speculators, a new provision requiring the disponer to retain land for at least six years before benefiting from the capital acquisition tax relief, is being introduced. This is entirely consistent with the intention behind the relief, and my and this Government's objective to make sure we are looking to support young farmers and family farm transfers through this important support.

The list of farm safety investments eligible for accelerated capital allowances has been extended, very much driven by my colleague the Minister of State, Deputy Heydon, who will cover this, and flat-rate compensation for farmers will also increase from the current 4.8% to 5.1% from 1 January next year.

I welcome the fact that an opportunity to avail of an exemption from the residential zoned land tax in 2025 is being provided for farmers who carry out genuine economic activity on their land if they seek to have it rezoned. It is critically important that we take measures to progress our housing policies, but this new provision addresses the legitimate concerns of genuine farmers.

Considerable work has already been undertaken in recent months in relation to the introduction of an income volatility measure. There are lots of complexities to it, however, and it will require detailed legislation. I look forward to working with the Department of Finance to build on this with a view to having the necessary legislative parameters addressed in advance of budget 2026. I recognise the very strong commitment and recognition given for the need for an income volatility measure in our taxation system given by the Minister for Finance, Deputy Chambers, in his budget speech yesterday.

Stripping out the exceptional Brexit adjustment reserve and Covid funding, this is the biggest funding package ever delivered for this sector. It succeeds in maintaining a strategic focus on the long-term drivers of success for the sector, while also addressing the more immediate challenges. I am satisfied that following intensive engagement we have succeeded in obtaining a balanced package that will support the sustainable development of our agriculture, forestry and fisheries sectors in 2025 and beyond. This is a strong message to our farmers and fishers that this Government values them and will continue to support them. I commend this budget to the House.

Budget 2025 will provide much needed support and certainty to farmers. Across the country, farmers are housing animals, sowing crops and making plans for the winter ahead.

They have been through a year marked by difficult weather. The start of the grazing season was delayed, with dairy, beef and sheep farmers left to play catch-up. Back-to-back wet sowing seasons made planting crops extremely difficult. On a positive note, input costs for feed and fertiliser eased slightly from record highs.

Through this period, our aim has been to support farmers and maintain a focus on sustainable farm incomes as the building blocks for progress in the sector. The budget provides for a series of targeted additional supports for sectors that need it most, and suckler, beef, tillage and sheep farmers will all benefit. We know the importance of the livestock sector, particularly sheep and suckler farms, as the bedrocks of economic activity in rural communities. An additional €25 per calf for suckler farmers and €5 extra per ewe for sheep farmers marks further progress in the income supports that have been made available by the Government. Increased funds will be available for tillage farmers following an exceptionally challenging 12 months. Funding for ACRES has been increased to €260 million as we seek to match the ambition of the 55,000 farmers who signed up to the scheme. A series of important agri-taxation measures have been renewed to assist young farmers and encourage generational renewal. Increased inheritance tax thresholds reflect the rise in land prices. In contrast, Sinn Féin proposed to increase capital acquisitions tax rates while cosying up to the Social Democrats, which wants to cut agri-taxation reliefs despite the damage that would do to succession on farms in rural communities. Indeed, agriculture failed to warrant a single mention in Deputy Mary Lou McDonald's budget address to this House.

I have been meeting with farmers the length and breadth of the country in recent weeks, from the National Ploughing Championships to a number of public meetings on farms. Concerns about succession, incomes and the need for policy certainty have dominated these discussions. Budget 2025 could not resolve all of these issues - no one budget can - but it again underlines our commitment to work with farmers to address them. In the past four and half years, the sector has navigated a series of difficult and often unpredictable shocks. It has proven the resilience of the sector and I am confident there is a bright future for agriculture in Ireland. We are facing into the next quarter of a century knowing that we will have to produce 70% more food to feed a world population predicted to grow to 10 billion by 2050. Food that is produced safely, sustainably and to the highest standards will be required and Ireland is well placed to continue to produce that food.

In my time as Minister of State at the Department of agriculture, I have seen farmers’ commitment to doing just that while at the same time doing their bit for the environment. It is not a journey that begins tomorrow or that started yesterday; it is one that is already well under way. In the same way that we have turned the trend on our emissions, we will turn the trend on water quality, of that I have no doubt. This is a sector with a very strong story to tell. The €21.6 million that I am making available for research and development will ensure Irish agriculture continues to operate at the cutting edge of innovation.

I want to draw particular attention to the expansion of accelerated capital allowances, ACAs, for farm safety items. Unfortunately, ten people have lost their lives on Irish firms so far in 2024. Every death is one too many. I am determined to continue to work to make Irish farms safer places to live and work and we can do that by supporting farmers to invest in their farms. The list of eligible items under the ACAs for farm safety will include sheep handling units, cattle crushes and races, calving gates, livestock monitors and sliding or roller doors. These investments not only make farms safer but more efficient places to work. This accelerated tax write-off will be available in addition to the 60% TAMS grant available for these farm safety items. Some 30% of all applications under TAMS 3 have been for farm safety items, reflecting the appetite among farmers to improve the safety of their farms.

I am confident that this and other measures outlined in the budget for farmers will ensure we take another significant step on the journey to improving the economic, social and environmental sustainability of Irish agriculture to the benefit of farmers and the rural communities in which they live. I commend the budget to the House.

Two thirds of the landmass of Ireland is agricultural land, so the measures we take on-farm to improve water quality, biodiversity and soil health and to store more carbon have a massive impact on our wider environment. For the fifth year in a row, we are putting funding in place to pay farmers to take the right measures to improve our environment and secure the long-term future of the family farm, be it through ACRES, the EIPs, the soil sampling programme, the red clover and multispecies sward measures or the organic farming scheme.

Since this Government took office in 2020, we have made huge progress in organic farming. We have trebled the number of organic farmers to over 5,000 today and I am pleased to say that this number will continue to grow, thanks to the €67 million in funding for organic farming that l have secured for budget 2025. We have gone from 1.6% of all agricultural land being farmed organically in 2020 to 5% now, and we are on track to meet our target of 10% of organically farmed land by 2030. The funding I have secured for 2025 will allow us to continue on this positive trajectory by opening the organic farming scheme to new applicants in the coming weeks. We will see further increases in organic production in Ireland in the coming years as a result of this increased participation, and marketing the additional product is a Government priority. Indeed, earlier this week, I was in Germany for the launch of Bord Bia’s EU organic beef and lamb campaign, which will showcase the very best of Irish organic beef and lamb in a number of key markets in continental Europe. The potential to grow our organic exports is enormous. In addition to growing participation in organic farming and increasing our marketing footprint, we need to continue to invest in processing capacity. I am particularly pleased, therefore, that we are committing €3.5 million to the organic processing investment grant scheme for 2025.

Forestry has massive potential. Creating 8,000 ha per year of new forests of many varieties will allow us to deliver for climate, nature, wood and people. We have backed the forestry programme 2023-27 with a €1.3 billion budget and, since the programme opened last September, we have issued licences for new afforestation for a total of over 6,000 ha. Thanks to sustained investment in increased operational efficiencies since the Government took office, the Department has the capacity to issue sufficient licences to meet the climate action plan target of 8,000 ha per year. The funding of €91 million secured for forestry in budget 2025 will underpin the diverse range of tree planting options under the forestry programme, among other schemes run through the forestry division, including the climate action performance payment for ash plantation owners. I want to put on record the Government’s commitment to the target of 8,000 ha of new forests per annum. I encourage farmers and landowners to consider tree planting as an additional income stream. I look forward to my Department supporting all valid licence holders who plant trees under the forestry programme in 2025 at the highly attractive grant and premium rates on offer through the programme.

We have secured a budget of €8.5 million for horticulture in 2025, which will support growers and the sector to reach the ambition set out in the national strategy for horticulture 2023-27. In addition, I am delighted to confirm to the House that horticultural growers who planted and declared field-grown food crops in 2024 on their BISS applications are eligible and will receive the €100 per hectare tillage payment announced as part of budget 2025, which means an extra €1.34 million going to our horticulture sector.

Before I conclude, there are some critical schemes whose continued funding into 2025 I want to welcome. The €2.75 million for the red clover silage and multispecies sward measures will help farmers to reduce their reliance on expensive nitrogen fertilisers, delivering for farmers’ pockets but also for biodiversity, water quality and emissions reduction. The funding of €6 million for phase 3 of the soil sampling and analysis programme will give farmers the data they need to better understand the health of their soil, which is critical to all life on this planet. There will be a doubling of funding for social farming under the rural innovation development fund. I cannot speak highly enough of the social farming movement and the wonderful people I have met throughout the country who participate in it. It is one of the great positive news stories of Irish agriculture and I am delighted to have secured this additional funding.

This has been a progressive and green agriculture budget and I am proud to commend it to the House.

I am glad to have the opportunity to respond to the budget and the efforts that have been made with regard to agriculture. The broader point is that the Government had huge financial resources to bring to the table for this budget. Many people out there, particularly those in rural areas and across the western seaboard, recognise that it is a part of the world that has had the least investment in the past and, therefore, has the most potential if it gets the correct investment and the chance to try to move forward.

Some of that has happened in this budget but not enough. That is where we stand on it. We recognise where there has been progress made. That progress needs to be acknowledged, but there is so much more to do and so much more distance to be travelled. The Minister mentioned how many people, when he speaks to farmers, are talking about certainty for the future and they ask how are they going to have a future where they can see that their children or their children's children will still be on the land, farming and having a prosperous future. Many of them do not see that because there are other options there which pay much better and which do not have the same volatility and sense of uncertainty around it. We need to bring that certainty to agriculture and that sense that there is a future there for people to go back on to the family farm. Some of the measures that are talked of here will do something about that but will certainly not go far enough.

I was amused to see the issue about putting additional money into ACRES. I am getting calls every day from farmers complaining that ACRES is simply not working for them, that they cannot get their payments, do not know what their scores are, do not know what is happening and the Department tells them that its IT system is not working. It is just a mess. There needs to be recognition that a complete hames has been made of ACRES up to now. To put more money into it at a time when the Department does not have it straightened out raises the point that the Department had better get it right for farmers who want to play the game, get into that sector, enhance and maintain the biodiversity they have on their farm, do things properly, and get paid properly for the public good they provide for that.

On the forgotten farmers, who were mentioned, the Minister put some money into that. I do not believe he put enough. I believe more could be done for them in that respect because they are a sector who have been left behind for far too long. We need to catch up in that respect.

On the residential zoned land tax, the Minister has recognises there needs to be, and will be, some movement made in respect of farmers who are actively farming. We need the detail on that. Farmers have been promised before that they can be zoned out of it. I spoke to the Minister for housing two years ago about this and he told me there was no problem, to just get the land rezoned and that there was no issue. There is an issue and we are now being told it is going to be done. We need the detail as to how that is going to happen because we simply have not had that in the past.

The reality for the majority of people on small holdings who are trying to manage and who want to see a future for their children to farm the piece of land they have is that they do not know what the certainty is. The schemes are too short. They are for a year or two, then they are gone, and people do not know where the next scheme is going to come from or what is going to happen. That is the stuff the Government controls. The other side of that, which the Minister mentioned, is income volatility which is a huge problem. No sector knows where it will be or what income it will have for the produce brought to the mart, sent to the factory or wherever. The processors still have the ball at their toe and still control that sector. The Minister mentioned the organic sector. It is the very same people who control how that is processed and where they will get the money from that. Farmers are very uncertain because they see the big players dominating all the time and there needs to be a firm hand of Government to ensure there will be fair play, that the people who take all of the risks and put in all of the work get a fair return for that work. That is the issue farmers have and that is why more young people are choosing not to go in to farming.

I mention the general things in the budget that have been really let down. In a time when we have massive resources, the issues of investment and infrastructural investment in particular are a real problem. This is the case with the western seaboard and the roads in the west. The N17 is a road we have been crying out for years for something to be done with it. There have been a huge number of accidents and problems on it and there is no money for the like of that. We have no money for the western rail corridor and so many other big projects that could make a big difference in the country.

I recognise that some work has been done but it does not go nearly far enough for the kind of ambition we need to have to get balanced development throughout the country. We have to relieve Dublin and revive the rest and that means we have to invest in the rest. We have to ensure we can create opportunity and that opportunity will create more activity, which will create more opportunity. That is how we can get the economies in places like where I come from in the west, like Leitrim, Sligo, Mayo or Galway, where we have opportunity, to come back up again. There will only come up if we invest in them and that is where I think this Government has fallen down.

On fisheries, the Minister knows that the major producer organisations united in Europe yesterday under a new umbrella called Seafood Ireland. They are very clear about their serious concern about the decline of the industry. We will have a chance next Wednesday in the Oireachtas committee to engage on that and the people will have their say the next election.

I will focus my comments today on the defective block scheme. Whenever there were 20,000 people from Donegal, Mayo, Clare, Limerick and the west, but predominantly from Donegal, here, the Tánaiste, Micheál Martin, said the scheme would be the biggest redress scheme in the history of the State. He said it would be €3.5 billion. It is estimated the defective apartment scheme will be around €2.5 billion. There is a total of €6 billion for those two schemes and, of course, pyrite is still ongoing. What was the allocation in the budget yesterday for all of these schemes? It was €70 million. By my estimation, it would take 85 years for everybody who is entitled to redress to get it.

It is time to be honest here. Micheál Martin needs to be honest. He was never serious about a redress scheme that everybody could access. The scheme we have now is designed to exclude most families. The Minister knows there are people in their 60s and 70s in our home county of Donegal who cannot access the finance. They were not given a 100% redress scheme which more than 3,000 families were given in Dublin and north Leinster. They got 100% redress; our families in the west have not got it. That is why most families cannot access the scheme and why the allocation in this budget is €70 million. The Government knows the scheme is not designed to facilitate proper redress. We will go to the people soon and the people will have their say. It is time for honesty. When we were feeling all the sympathy and support from all around Ireland for people who did no wrong, with their lives falling apart, and Micheál Martin said we will have the biggest redress scheme in the history of the State of €3.5 billion, he never meant it, he was never serious and the people will have their say on that very soon.

I want to follow up on comments from the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste earlier and ask them how they have made this budget work for children with additional needs who do not have a suitable place, like Josh in Clonmel, whom we spoke about in the House last week. How have they made this economy benefit the 11,000 children waiting for an assessment of needs or scoliosis surgery? Why are there more than 4,000 children homeless and 230,000 children experiencing material deprivation? How is the flagrant waste of money that has taken place on projects under the Government's watch, coupled with a visionless budget, a prudent approach to our finances?

The whole purpose of this budget is to mask the lack of ambition with the veneer of short-termism and the misrepresentation of figures. The Government announced the €3 billion increase for health. However, all but €120 million of that is pre-committed in capital funding. Please stop trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes at this stage.

Sinn Féin offered real solutions: increasing hospital capacity, investing in new beds, providing 150,000 medical cards and slashing the cost of medication. Sinn Féin would recruit more than 1,500 additional SETs and almost 1,900 additional SNAs. The Government is nowhere near those figures. It speaks of a commitment to disability services, but where is the plan to make it work? CHO 5 is the third worst affected area for CDNT contacts. On housing, we called for the delivery of 21,500 social and affordable homes for 2025. The Government, however, did not announce any new housing at all, despite having a surplus of €24 billion. There is no plan or intention to make childcare affordable. Sinn Féin brought out a good paper on that. Average workers have also been left behind in this budget. We would have taken the first €45,000 of every worker's income out of the USC, but the Government opted instead to give an income tax package that benefits a person earning €150,000 to the tune of €959. This Government has done very little for agriculture, the woodland owners affected by ash dieback, the horticultural sector and the fishing communities, and if it has done, as one of the previous speakers said, there is no detail on any of these groups.

It is clear the needs of the public have taken a back seat to the Government's use of its finances for electioneering. It is not to be trusted with the public finances on anything at this stage. The Government wastes and it spins.

It is quite incredible to believe that, after this budget, we again add to the growing list of wasting when it comes to taxpayers' money. It is quite incredible to believe the Government has suggested, is putting forward and has budgeted €9 million for mobile phone pouches for national schools.

Many schools, particularly in rural areas across Roscommon and Galway, are struggling to fund road safety measures and safety outside their school gates, especially in relation to parking. Parents are again contacting me about the annual circus every single year when their children cannot get seats on the school bus, in some cases where the school bus is passing their door. I have had school principals on to me who want to open special classes where there is demand but there is no money and no funding to do that. I have a number of schools, again particularly in rural areas around Roscommon and Galway, that have minor works and had hoped the summer works scheme would be open this year but it did not open. These are minor repairs and works for which they have to go with their hands out to parents, who cannot afford it either, to try to get these works done. Again there is no money for that but we have €9 million to put mobile phones into pouches in primary schools. They could use a ziplock bag or bring a sock to school if they want a pouch. It is just incredible.

With regard to childcare, I want to raise the issue of the amount of money that has supposedly been ring-fenced for early years educators and for the increase they need. Again the Government is relying on the JLC to give early years educators an increase. The last increase that early years educators got was 65 cent through the JLC and it took 14 months to negotiate. We are back to that again. The year before that, it was nothing. It was zero of an increase. Now we are not guaranteeing an increase in pay for early years educators at a time when rooms are being closed by providers because they cannot staff them. They cannot find staff and early years educators are leaving the sector. The 65 cent increase that came in this year was a slap in the face to those professionals and it is deeply disappointing that there is nothing guaranteed for them in this budget.

I welcome the opportunity to respond to the budget. I will focus on the budget for the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. There is funding for energy credits but because of the Government's failure to respond to the need to reform the public service obligation, the network charge and the standing charge, those energy credits are wiped out immediately. Between the public service obligation regressive measure and the network and standing charges, it is essentially a subsidy for large energy users such as data centres and others. The Government stands in the face of proposals from Sinn Féin to reform that.

On the grid fund of €750 million, we heard from the Minister at his press conference yesterday that there is not a euro for that in 2025. It is money that was to be spent anyway to invest in the grid for the phase 1 projects. That was always intended so this is another degree of spin from the Government. It was money that was to be invested in the future but we are also increasing the network charges to pay for the same thing. In fact what we have is a double taxation on people.

There is not a euro for the climate, nature and infrastructure fund in 2025. Sinn Féin, on the other hand, proposed investing €50 million this year, to bring the total up to €750 million. Importantly, as is so often the case in this budget, with huge funding available the Government is intent on pursuing failed policies. This is the case in relation to climate action and the response to climate change. There were criticisms from Friends of the Earth, the Climate Change Advisory Council and Social Justice Ireland. It is writ large in relation to the use of the carbon tax. I put it to the Minister, Deputy McConalogue, with regard to the carbon tax increases that came in last night, that we are told time and again by the Government that these funds are to be ring-fenced for retrofitting, social protection and agriculture but the Comptroller and Auditor General has told us that 40% of that funding is unaccounted for and has not gone to where it was targeted. The spin from the Government on carbon taxes is absolutely writ large by the Comptroller and Auditor General. Sinn Féin, on the other hand, has showed a progressive and fairer alternative. The Minister should take that on board.

I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for the opportunity to speak on budget 2025. This budget reflects the Government's commitment to support the success of all learners, to drive improvements in the overall performance of the tertiary education system, and to provide continuous support for world-class research and innovation in Ireland. It includes €4.545 billion for my Department, providing a major capital and funding package for tertiary education along with measures to reduce the cost of education and tackle the cost of living.

Investing in skills is essential to maintaining the productivity and competitiveness of the Irish economy and to the priority goal of supplying apprenticeship and training provision that meets the skills needs of industry now and into the future. I have secured a significant investment of €77.4 million for the apprenticeship system. This represents the single largest investment in core apprenticeship funding since the formation of my Department and will support the continued growth of craft apprentices with 6,800 registrations in 2025, strengthening the construction workforce.

I will also invest €5.9 million to grow our diverse apprenticeship offering, which currently ranges from hairdressing to cybersecurity. A further €4 million will support essential projects that enable a transition to a single national apprenticeship system that is adaptable to the changing world of work. I have secured €20 million in the skills package as part of a wider package to sustainably use the national training fund surplus. The measures will future-proof work skills in SMEs and further enterprises to ensure workers can readily access lifelong learning opportunities. I am announcing today that I am restoring the €30 million temporarily allocated to the apprenticeship budget in 2024 to the further education and training budget in 2025. This restoration will address pressures in the further education and training budget of this year.

The budget addresses the core funding gap in higher education, raised as part of Funding the Future. I have secured the Government's agreement for a multiannual investment that will increase core funding to higher education by a further €150 million per annum by 2029. This funding will come from the National Training Fund, NTF. Over the 2025 to 2030 period we will provide an additional €650 million in core funding for the higher education sector from the NTF. In 2025 we will increase core funding for higher education by €58.7 million through Funding the Future initiative. This funding will allow the sector to increase staffing levels and strengthen capacity. It will provide for greater alignment of provision with priority skills needs and will support the further development of the tertiary degree programmes, increasing pathways to education. NTF funding will also support capital projects in a range of areas: €150 million will be invested in innovative equipment in the further education and training sector to drive workforce transformation in key areas for our economy; €150 million will be used to develop research skills, including supporting research infrastructure; €130 million will provide key training facilities for specialist skills identified as being in short supply; €20 million will be provided for universal design for learning to enhance accessibility across our campuses; and €150 million will be provided for fit-for-purpose decarbonised training facilities at tertiary level and contribute to the sector meeting our ambitious climate action targets.

As a country we have seen significant income growth over the past few years but this has been coupled with increased costs. It is vitally important that we continue to support students who need financial assistance. This is why I am increasing all student grants and student part-time fee grant thresholds. The special rate of maintenance threshold will increase from €26,200 to €27,400 and there will be at least a 15% increase to all other thresholds. I am pleased to also announce that PhD stipends will increase from €22,000 to €25,000 per annum. As well as this, the following once-off cost measures will be implemented straight away to assist students with the challenges of the cost of living: a 33% reduction in student fees for 14,000 apprentices attending higher education institutes; a €1,000 reduction in the student contribution fee that will benefit an estimated 103,000 higher education students who are eligible for the free fees initiative; an increase to the postgraduate fee contribution grant from €4,000 to €5,000 for eligible students; and an additional €10 million to the student assistance fund. Alongside these measures I am pleased to announce that for the first time €5,000 of any scholarship received by a student will not be counted as income in SUSI means tests. The eligibility criteria for the schemes will be expanded to allow students who have certain immigration permissions to apply for grants.

This Government recognises the significant challenges facing students in securing appropriate and affordable accommodation to enable their participation in higher education. I am pleased to announce an investment of €7.5 million in recurrent funding for student accommodation initiatives, in addition to the €100 million already committed through the NDP, and €6 million of this is activation of approximately 1,200 student accommodation beds for long-term leasing as part of the technological university student accommodation programme. At least 30% of all of the beds activated under this programme will be provided at below market rates for target groups.

With regard to disabilities, I am determined that our college communities and campuses become more reflective of our society. Students with disabilities, including intellectual disabilities, have been under-represented in higher education. This is why I am proud to announce a package of measures that will support students with disabilities through their tertiary education.

I have extended the provision of courses for students with intellectual disabilities. Eleven institutions across Ireland will provide courses this academic year and this will give students more choices and afford them the opportunity to study alongside their friends and be nearer their families. There are other initiatives in the budget but unfortunately, I do not have the time to outline them. The allocation that the Minister for Public Expenditure, NDP Delivery and Reform and the Government have allowed me to utilise will enhance the offering for students and those who work in our universities, colleges and educational training boards, ETBs, and I commend the budget to the House.

I am delighted to have the opportunity to provide details of the €3.2 billion 2025 allocation in the area of disability services. This is an increase of 12% on 2024 levels of funding and is reflective of incremental changes in funding for disability services, surpassing €3 billion for the first time.

Since 2020, investment in this area has increased by €1.2 billion. In securing this funding, my continued overarching focus for 2025 is to maintain and enhance the provision of person-centred services, by addressing cost increases in delivery of service, providing for demographic change and ensuring services are aligned with the UNCRPD.

For 2025, I have secured an overall increase of €336 million. This additional funding will allow for the following developments across a range of services: €106 million to address the full year costs of this year’s expected delivery on priority residential places as well as support for approximately 70 new residential placements; in the order of 50 Tusla-related responses; and enhancements to existing residential places and support for the upgrade of some existing placement opportunities for new residents. It will provide for additional HSE housing co-ordinators, and it will also support the transition of approximately 20 people from congregated settings and nursing homes to more appropriate living arrangements in the community; and €30.8 million is being allocated for respite and supports to assist people to continue living in their own homes. This allocation will support full-year costs of respite expected to be delivered in 2024, as well as development of services in 2025. The assignment of funding to overnight, day, and alternative respite such as weekend clubs, equine therapy respite, after-school clubs and tea-time respite will be confirmed in the coming period. This will also include the full year cost of around 180 intensive home support and supported living packages delivered in 2024, as well as an additional 150 packages in 2025.

In the area of home support and personal assistance hours, there will be an uplift of 40,000 and 20,000 respectively. Importantly though, I have also set aside additional funding for 2025 to begin the progressive alignment of the personal assistance rate and the home support rate with older persons' services. This in turn should hopefully support the capacity to delivery current hours and further expansion of services, as we continue to develop this important area under the action plan for disability services.

On children’s services, with funding already provided in recent years for additional posts to enhance the capacity of the children’s disability network teams, CDNTs, there will be further funding available in 2025 to continue recruitment. For 2025, there is funding for an additional 20 senior therapist posts, 20 staff grade posts, 20 health and social care assistant posts and 15 clinical trainee posts.

The ongoing assessments of need waitlist initiative launched in May has been proving very successful, with 1,100 assessments of needs cleared across June, July and August through the private sector. I am earmarking a further €10 million for this work, which in turn frees up resources to provide therapeutic supports to children with complex needs. A total of €40.3 million is allocated for day services, adult multidisciplinary therapy and neuro-rehabilitation supports. This includes the full-year cost of 2024 school leaver placements as well as the new cohort of school leavers in 2025.

While there is often focus on therapy provision for children, I am also starting the development of a process to provide multidisciplinary therapy services for adults, which have been long sought. The initial funding will complete a mapping exercise to assess existing provision of services and allow for further development of models of provision. Having also invested heavily in the roll-out of community neuro-rehabilitation teams in the last couple of years, there is funding set aside to ensure the levels of staffing required can be achieved to deliver these crucial supports in the community.

Pay cost pressures also arise across the sector and funding to support the agreement struck with sector 39 service providers is separately accounted for. A combined additional allocation of €4 million will be made available to support disability equality measures. This increase in funding will enable the decision support service to continue to implement the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 and will facilitate the National Disability Authority, NDA, to provide enhanced policy advice to Government on disability issues. The funding will also support the implementation of the recently launched autism innovation strategy, building on existing supports and services by providing a dedicated funding stream for an autism innovation fund of €2 million. In addition, the 2025 allocation includes €18 million in non-core expenditure.

Earlier this year I announced the development of the first ever multi-annual capital investment strategy for disability services. In 2025, €27 million will be provided in capital funding to build and develop infrastructure across respite, residential and day services.

A headline figure of €336 million in the budget sounds fantastic but I, along with disability organisations and disabled people find that the lack of clarity around this figure is really frustrating. We do not know if this is for an existing level of service, for capital spend or for current spend, for this year or for that year. I would really appreciate some more clarity on this. The Minister of State mentioned a figure of €40.3 million for day services, adult multidisciplinary services and neuro-rehabilitation services. However, that is for this year and next year. We would love to know exactly what is new in this budget for next year. I have just come from a meeting of the Joint Committee on Disability Matters where we had witnesses looking for neuro-rehabilitation services and talking about how important they are. We have a strategy but it has not been implemented. Some very welcome work has been done on it but there areas of the country that need those services to help people with neurological conditions.

There is an allocation of €25 million to increase personal assistance and home support hours but also to fund the pay parity section 39 wage agreement. Does the Minister of State have a figure for that?

Is that going to be addressed this year or next year? Are we going to see section 39 workers on precisely the same pay as the section 38 workers and the ones who work for the HSE and do precisely the same work as them? The figure of €30.8 million for respite services includes this year and next year. I question what is actually new in this budget for new measures that are going to be taken to increase services for disabled people. We had a disability capacity review which was very detailed. It said there was a huge amount of unmet need and that to address it and demographic change up to 2032 would take an additional €80 million to €90 million of funding per year. I do not see where that is allocated in the budget and I would love to get some clarity on it. Disabled people deserve better. I do not have time to go into the cost-of-disability payment. I know it is a social welfare payment but it also relates to the residential and respite services. Those issues need to be addressed.

It is unfortunate that the Minister has left. When it comes to apprentices, we hear a lot of waffle in this Chamber, every time the topic is brought up. I am shocked that the Minister has left and is not here to discuss the real need for support for apprentices. Yesterday, we heard about a 33% reduction in apprenticeship fees. It is the exact same thing that was there last year. It does not actually make a difference for apprentices. This is despite the fact that we know apprentices are really struggling. Just today, an apprentice told me that he is earning €211 per week after more than a year of training. That is simply not good enough. Apprentices have spoken with their feet, with thousands of them leaving their apprenticeships and heading on a plane to Australia, instead of staying here and building the homes that we need and that they want to build. They are not being listened to.

The fact that the Minister left before I could mention any of the things apprentices have raised with me in the last 24 hours shows that again.

On students, I am absolutely shocked that the Government did not provide for a permanent reduction in student fees. For each of the last three years, we have had Ministers standing up to tell us that there will be a reduction in fees for students but that it is a once-off payment. There is no clarity as to what the Government will do in the long term as regards student fees. It is really and truthfully simply not good enough.

We are in crisis when it comes to student accommodation and what do we have? We have €100 million over three years. That does not show that the Government understands the crisis in student accommodation. We need affordable student accommodation and we need it now. We needed it yesterday and we needed a plan last year but, last year, there was nothing in the budget with regard to student accommodation. I am glad to hear it mentioned this year and that €100 million in capital is going into it but, over three years, that is simply not good enough. The Government needs to wake up to the reality of the situation for students. Students are dropping out because they have nowhere to live. Students are commuting long distances. What we have is a situation where students who can afford to pay for student accommodation have a bit of a college life but they also have a lot more time to study. This means that those students who are commuting because they cannot afford or get student accommodation cannot do the courses they want to do and are dropping out and are also not able to study and get the grades others can.

Níl aon duine eile anseo ag ofráil. Is é seo buiséad deireanach ó Rialtas nach raibh in ainm is a bheith ann ar an gcéad dul síos. Is cuimhin liom an Teachta Micheál Martin ag rá nach mbeadh sé go maith don tír dá mbeadh Fianna Fáil agus Fine Gael le chéile. Tháinig siad le chéile agus tá an tír tar éis dul in olcas ó tharla sé sin. Chonaic muid an reaction don bhuiséad ó Chonradh na Gaeilge i Tuairisc.ie ar maidin. Dúradh go raibh uaillmhian ar lár agus gur buiséad suarach é seo. Tá cur chuige an Rialtais ó thaobh na Gaeilge de tubaisteach.

Chuala mé an tAire Stáit, an Teachta Byrne, ag maíomh go raibh réabhlóid déanta ag an Rialtas seo maidir lenár dteanga dhúchais. Níl a fhios agam cén pláinéad ar a bhfuil sé ina chónaí má cheapann sé gur réabhlóid é seo ó thaobh an chur chuige maidir leis an nGaeilge agus leis an nGaeltacht sa cháinaisnéis mar tá céatadán níos lú den Státchiste á chaitheamh ar an nGaeilge ná mar a bhí ó 2021 i leith. Is ón Aire Airgeadais nua, an iarAire Stáit le freagracht as an nGaeltacht, an Teachta Chambers, atá sé seo ag teacht. Shíl muid ar fad gurbh fhéidir go mbeadh spéis éigin aige in airgead breise a chur i dtreo na Gaeilge ach tá an tAire ag bronnadh na suime céanna in ardú ar bhuiséad iomlán don Ghaeltacht, pleanáil teanga, Údarás na Gaeltachta, Foras na Gaeilge agus na seirbhísí teanga ar fad eile agus atá sé ag bronnadh ar an Aire, an Teachta Foley, chun íoc as púitsí do ghutháin phóca, is é sin €9 milliún. Is é sin an suim iomlán don Ghaeltacht agus TG4 san áireamh. Tá an tAire ag tabhairt an mhéid cheannann chéanna don Aire Oideachais i leith na bpúitsí.

Is léir an meas atá ag an Aire, an Teachta Chambers, ar an nGaeilge muna bhfuil sé sásta níos mó a chaitheamh ar an nGaeilge i gcomhthéacs na géarchéime atá ann agus ísliú ag teacht ar an líon daoine atá ag caint na Gaeilge ó dhúchas sa Ghaeltacht agus ar an líon leanaí atá ag freastal ar scoileanna Gaeilge den chéad uair le tamall maith de bhlianta. Ní réabhlóid é sin. Is sa mhalairt de threo atáimid ag dul. Gheall an tAire, an Teachta Foley, agus an Rialtas seo go mbeadh dúbailt ar líon na bpáistí sa Ghaeloideachas ach, mar a dúirt mé, is titim atá ann. Phléasc líon na ndíolúintí chomh maith céanna. Níl pingin ar bith curtha ar leataobh don Ghaeloideachas ná d'aon rud eile sa bhuiséad seo.

Maidir leis na healaíona, I do not know what the budget says about the arts. A lot more could have been done. There could have been a lot more directed investment, particularly for the Arts Council. In Sinn Féin's alternative budget, we set out an extra €20 million for the Arts Council. It is only getting an extra €6 million, which is €14 million less than what we had budgeted for and outlined. That was an abysmal absence of ambition as regards the arts. On top of that €20 million, we also sought to ensure that there would be an activity card for every child to ensure that young people would be involved in arts and sports. We also set out how we would save Moore Street for the future to give us that cultural quarter in Dublin. We would have embarked on an ambitious 50-point plan to start properly addressing the arts, the failure to make proper investment in the arts and the need to substantially increase the money provided for the arts and our vision for them to ensure the creativity of our society is enhanced.

This is very much a budget for families and for parents. There is the new payment of €420 for newborn babies and the two double child benefit payments to be paid before Christmas. Childcare fees have been brought down twice and are now half what they were thanks to the Minister, Deputy O'Gorman. Hot school meals for all children in primary education are being provided for. There is free public transport for children up to the age of eight, free GP care for children up to the age of seven and free schoolbooks not just for children in primary school, but also those in secondary school. There is also €1,000 off the cost of the student contribution for students in third level education and half-price transport for young people up to the age of 25.

One in four children in school in Ireland has a special need. That has not been addressed properly in past decades. This year, we have allocated 1,600 extra special needs assistants and more than 760 special education teachers. The integration of children with special needs into mainstream schools is well under way with most children with special needs now attending such schools.

The national broadband plan is a project to bring fibre broadband to every home in Ireland. It has been immensely successful. There has been a lot of attention and focus recently on the Government's competence and ability to deliver capital projects. This project, which happens to be the largest and worth more than €2.5 billion, is on time and on budget. By the end of 2026, every home, farm and business in rural Ireland will have access to fibre direct to the premises. I want to make sure that happens in urban Ireland as well because a number of black spots where fibre is not available are emerging. People in these areas use some kind of hybrid fibre with speeds of less than 100 Mbps but they need the same 1 Gbps level of connection that will be available in rural Ireland. I have asked my Department to focus on urban black spots. I have worked with the communications regulator, ComReg, which will shortly be producing a map showing where those areas are. It is a much smaller project than was required to connect up rural Ireland. If we can deliver fibre broadband to every home in the Black Valley in Kerry, we can certainly do it in Glenageary and Dundrum. That will be a focus for next year.

Beside me is the Minister for arts and sports, Deputy Catherine Martin. She has provided record funding for sports clubs. She will shortly be delivering funding for large-scale infrastructure. Within my own county, it is hoped to deliver a national watersports campus at Dún Laoghaire Harbour. This would allow for all types of marine activity and recreation to take place, based on models that are recognised around the world. The very successful GAA club Cuala is also looking for new sports facilities. I wish it luck in its applications.

The deposit return scheme has been immensely successful at reducing waste around the country.

Tidy Towns groups are reporting a reduction of up to 70% in bottle and can litter as a result. What needs to happen now is it needs to go beyond having machines in supermarkets. I need to see those machines in civic amenity sites run by county councils. I am looking forward to seeing the first of those in the coming months.

Overall, this is a budget that deals not just with problems in the short term or helps people with the cost of living through this winter, but one that provides large quantities of money that have been put aside for vital infrastructure we need in this country for investment in water, electricity, transport and, most of all, in housing. A total of €16 billion is being put aside between this year and next year into long-term funds for investment in infrastructure so we can have a countercyclical economy that can avoid the ups and downs of the past.

Go raibh maith agat. When I opened the budget book yesterday, I could not believe my eyes. I checked and rechecked it, and nowhere in the budget book was the word "addiction" mentioned. In a year when the report of the Citizens' Assembly on Drugs had recommendation after recommendation for increased funding and a priority for addiction services, this Government either forgot or could not be bothered to include any such reference in the budget book. This is the first time this has happened since I was elected, but it is not the first time this Government has forgotten about those working in and those benefiting from addiction services. Time after time, from section 39 pay increases to the failure to restore task force funding, those in addiction and those who love them know that they are being forgotten about by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. This is not just about individuals but about communities, families and people's futures. It is all about investing in recovery from and tackling addiction and supporting communities. Sinn Féin would have invested more than €35 million aimed at properly transforming our resource and community addiction sector and actually beginning to recover our communities, our families and our people.

Right now, in Cork, people are standing at bus stops waiting for buses that will not show up or they will arrive home late or get to work late because of a lack of buses. Cork city and its people have sent a clear message through a series of meetings and protests I organised that we will not accept an unreliable bus service. The solution that Bus Éireann and the NTA have come up with is to cut more than 800 scheduled services every week, starting on 20 October, and running through the winter months. Now, instead of people standing for buses that turn up, they will be standing for buses that will be full and will drive past them. This is an absolute disgrace. Would any second city in any state in Europe put up with a bus service that does not deliver, does not turn up and that is in crisis? There was no money in this budget to support Bus Éireann in Cork. The NTA has an awful lot to answer for and it is about time this Government, if it is really serious about climate change and the environment, delivered the buses we need in Cork.

On initial inspection, budget 2025 would appear to be great value for the taxpayers' money. However, I ask any of the Ministers or Ministers of State here if any of the extra beds mentioned in the budget are part of the recently agreed public-private partnership to develop more than 530 public nursing home beds at the developer's stated cost of a whopping €471,698 per bed. Not content with building the most expensive children's hospital the world has ever seen, this Government is now building the most expensive nursing home beds in the world. The deal, which the Minister, Deputy Donnelly, signed off on in 2022, means the HSE will be paying the venture capitalist developer €24 million annually for 25 years. This amounts to an eye-watering total of €600 million, or €1,132,000 per bed of taxpayers' money. Does the Government think this is value for money? Where is the value for the taxpayers? Where is the oversight? Was this even put out to tender? There are multiple specialist builders who could deliver the same high-quality facilities for just under €200,000.

Nursing home sector costs are so out of control here. Why is the Government allowing this insanity? Sure why not spend almost €1.2 million on a bed because it is only taxpayers' money? Like the national children's hospital, these nursing home beds promised for 2024 are not finished either. This is yet another fiasco to sit alongside the bicycle shed and the security hut and yet more proof that Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil cannot be trusted with the public's money. Our population is ageing and we need more affordable nursing home beds at a normal value-for-money cost that would be delivering for our older people and not this Government paying public money through the nose for the same beds. It is time to call a stop to the reckless and feckless spendthrift ways of this Government. It is time to call an election.

I do not know if any of the Ministers or Ministers of State here have had a chance to read Ciara Reilly's article in the Irish Examiner. It is very powerful and concerns the way this budget, in reality, fails families with children who have additional needs. She really puts her finger on it. This applies to all the tens of thousands of children with additional needs, but even more generally, it speaks to the nature of the budget the Government has introduced. She writes:

So even after the "biggest giveaway budget ever", the State is effectively telling us: We can’t (or won’t?) provide adequate services to meet your child’s needs; here’s money to pay for it yourself. It’s privatisation by stealth: A quiet acknowledgement that families are being left to shoulder the burden alone.

That is the attitude of this Government and this budget. It is extremely neoliberal. We have a €25 billion surplus. We have the Apple tax money included in that. The Minister for Finance told us yesterday this money has the potential to be transformational. What is there then? There are an extra 85 therapists in a system where 110,000 children are on waiting lists and the Government is only giving people a little bit of extra money. Ciara Reilly also states in her article that:

Families like mine cannot afford to wait years for the system to catch up when we’re already dealing with long waiting lists and limited-to-no access to state-funded services. The only option for families like ours is to pursue staggeringly expensive private therapies. Occupational therapy alone for my daughter costs €95 a week — that’s €5,000 a year, after tax, from our own pockets, on just one therapy that the public system simply can’t offer. Then add the costs of speech and language therapy, dietician care, and the separate courses I’ve pursued to try to learn to assist her at home.

She makes the point that all of it is necessary.

This Government, with an unprecedented surplus and the opportunity to actually deal with these issues, is not doing so. I will give another example of the case of Cyra Cahill, who will be turning five years old next week. She has epilepsy, an eating disorder and is autistic with a PDA profile. Cyra has been failed in so many different ways. I will go through some of them. This case encapsulates all the different ways children, vulnerable children, children with additional needs and children with disabilities are failed by this State every day. Ultimately, this comes down to a political choice - to choose to fight for the rights of Apple and the rights of big multinational corporations as opposed to fighting for the rights of these children.

Cyra's mother, Charlotte, makes the point that from the very start of Cyra's life, she has been failed by our State and our leaders.

Cyra was born at 37 weeks and had some complications arising from birth. Six months on, her mother was contacting the public health nurse looking for assistance relating to her child not sleeping, being extremely sensitive, never stopping crying and so on. The only help that her mother was given at that time was an online parenting course. Fast forward to when Cyra was 18 months old. Her mother was very worried that she had regressed and that there was something serious happening. She was told by the State not to get her hopes up, that this can take years and was advised, exactly like Ciara Reilly says, that if she could afford it, to go private. Charlotte went private but was failed there. Cyra ended up being assessed by a psychologist who was a fraud and who recommended medication that almost killed her. Then Cyra finally had her assessment of need. Her mother was ecstatic because she thought this was then Cyra would start to get what she needs but Charlotte says "Little did I know, this was only the start of the rodeo." She found out that the assessment of need was done incorrectly and was told that Cyra was on a waiting list to be reassessed. She was brought in again but, again, she got nothing. Another assessment was carried out but this was also completed incorrectly because it was only done by a psychologist.

That brings us up to April of this year. Charlotte went down the legal route and finally Cyra got an assessment of need. Then she was awaiting the report. Six weeks passed but there was nothing from the CDNT, no assessment of need. Charlotte knew that school applications were opening and she did not have a report to support her applications. She could not wait any longer so she pushed and got a service statement. The service statement says that Cyra will get services in October 2026. That means her file may be opened and she may be offered a so-called early bird course. Charlotte has been looking for assistance, in effect, since her daughter was born but by that stage, in October 2026, Cyra will be eight. There are 52 mistakes in the report. There is no cognitive assessment, which means that the vast majority of schools will simply not look at her application. She has applied to 32 schools this year with no success. Now, with her updated report, she meets the criteria for only four of those schools. She has had two CAMHS refusals, two home care package application refusals and her mother says that now she is effectively locked out from the private sector too as the therapists keep moving.

I will stop because my time is up but I could go on in terms of the way that Cyra is being failed by this State. Ultimately, that is a political choice. We are obviously weeks away from a general election being called. This Government promised again and again that it would ratify the optional protocol to the UNCRPD. It had better do it or it will be letting families like Cyra's down extremely badly.

Is cúis áthais dom an deis a fháil an Teach a chur ar an eolas faoin maoiniú iomlán de luach €1.27 billiún atá curtha ar fáil do mo Roinn i mbuiséad 2025. Tabharfaidh mé achoimre freisin ar chuid de na bearta lena ndéanfar cothú, feabhsú agus forbairt ar na hearnálacha a bhfuil freagracht agam astu.

The sectors supported by my Department form a vital part of the mortar which binds society on this island together. They give us a sense of our identity, both individually and as a nation, set against the backdrop of increasing global challenges. These sectors also provide significant levels of employment in all areas of the country. They lift the lives and spirits of those living here and visitors through sporting participation and fandom, through cultural preservation and presentation and they foster an ecology for new, exciting and vibrant cultural expression.

The Irish language forms a unique cornerstone of who we are and the richness of the history behind us. In an age of increasing falsehood, the security of an independent media in all its forms and on all its platforms is crucial to maintaining a sense of truth locally, nationally and internationally. The global challenges are momentous, with increased global conflict and increasingly damaging weather events as a result of climate change. Against this setting, the contribution of the creative energies and community participation fostered by the sectors in my Department is more important than ever.

My departmental colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Thomas Byrne, will address the House on specific measures around sport and Gaeltacht elements. I will focus on the sectors of tourism, culture, and media. Budget 2025 maintains and increases funding across a wide range of key initiatives. Additional current funding of €54 million has been provided as well as retention into the baseline expenditure of my Department of the €57 million in non-core funding provided in 2024. A further €16 million in capital uplift has been allocated, including provision for funding across culture, Gaeltacht and tourism sectors under the shared island initiative.

The 2025 allocation of €226.3 million for tourism will allow Tourism Ireland to continue its major marketing campaigns overseas and facilitate Fáilte Ireland in continuing its work in areas such as destination development, tourism careers and home holiday promotion. It will also support both agencies in enhancing the tourist experience and supporting tourism businesses in Ireland in areas such as festivals, digital transformation and sustainability. To this end, the allocation to the tourism marketing fund has increased to €61.4 million. This support will be crucial to ensure Ireland’s presence is maintained for longer-term success in an increasingly complex and competitive marketplace. I have put in place a specific fund of €3.2 million to extend the tourism season and ensure all regions of the country benefit, thus supporting tourism businesses. This includes funding for the delivery of a new business events strategy; additional funding under the regional co-operative access scheme to support new and existing access to regional air and sea ports and funding to support both tourism agencies to continue to develop and promote Ireland as the home of Hallowe'en. Budget 2025 also sees a continuation of Government capital support for the development and enhancement of the tourism product, with €36.5 million in capital funding allocated for new attractions and projects.

As regards arts and culture, Irish artists are reaching new heights in terms of international recognition and I am pleased, therefore, that funding totalling €379.7 million has been secured for this sector for 2025. In political life, I have made no secret of my personal background in the arts and my affinity for all forms of art and music in particular. The almost doubling of arts funding compared with budget 2020, the last budget before I took office, has been achieved through record increases in funding for the Arts Council, Screen Ireland, Culture Ireland and Creative Ireland and through a major programme of investment in our national cultural institutions. The basic income for the arts is the signature legacy achievement of this Government in arts funding, and the achievement of which I am most proud. I acknowledge the role of the National Campaign for the Arts, which has been an effective voice for the sector and a tireless advocate for a basic income.

I am pleased to announce that the budget provides for a record €140 million funding for the Arts Council in recognition of the transformational impact of this funding and to support the sector. It also provides record funding of €8 million for the Culture Ireland programme to showcase Ireland’s talent on international stages. Additional funding of €3.8 million, including pay, has been provided to the national cultural institutions to support the sustained protection and presentation of our national collections. Screen Ireland has been allocated a budget of €40.9 million which will assist in talent development and retention and build on the success of the audiovisual sector in recent years. The basic income for the arts scheme, which I launched in 2022, has maintained its funding of €35 million in 2025. It was essential that this funding was maintained to allow flexibility for a successor support beyond the August expiry of the pilot.

Furthermore, as announced by the Minister for Finance, the section 481 film tax credit will receive a further 8% uplift for feature film productions, with a maximum qualifying expenditure of €20 million to help the sector remain competitive and build on recent international successes, subject to state aid approval. I also welcome the announcement by the Minister, Deputy Chambers, that his Department will monitor trends in the VFX sector internationally over the coming year with a view to introducing a specific measure in budget 2026. The new tax credit for unscripted production, subject to European Commission approval, will also be a boost for the sector.

Funding for the media and broadcasting sector in 2025 will total €328.3 million. A healthy, vibrant and sustainable media sector is a key pillar of a modern, democratic society. This Government has committed itself to addressing the range of challenges which face the sector in light of changes in the ways we consume media and falling revenue for traditional media in an increasingly digitised market.

In budget 2025 we are providing a further €6 million that will be ring-fenced to support the provision of news and current affairs by independent broadcasters, including local and regional radio stations. This will require legislative changes, which I will bring to Government later this month. This will also include all of the local and regional radio stations, commercial national radio stations such as Newstalk and Today FM and Virgin Media Television.

At the same time, I am also increasing the allocation to be made available for the media fund schemes recommended by the Future of Media Commission. Over the summer, the first of these schemes were rolled out on a pilot basis with an allocation of €6 million. For 2025, I have secured an additional €4 million for two further schemes, including digital transformation, bringing the total allocation next year to €10 million.

TG4 funding is being increased to €60 million. In 2020, when this Government took office, the allocation was just €37 million, an increase of 62%. Building on these previous increased allocations, the funding provided for next year will enable TG4 to consolidate gains in the quantity and quality of Irish-language content.

I am aware that my colleague the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, needs to speak. I am confident that the ongoing commitments to my Department reflected in the 2025 allocation will lead to a sustainable and strengthened tourism industry, an invigorating arts and culture sector with increased opportunity for creatives, continued national and international sporting success and participation and greater development of the Irish language and its usage.

I thank the Minister for her excellent co-operation for more than a year and a half in the Department. There has not been a harsh word between us. It has been really positive and co-operative, leading to better governance and better outcomes. I am very pleased to announce some of those outcomes today.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire, leis an gCeann Comhairle agus leis na Teachtaí. Labhróidh mé inniu faoin infheistíocht a bheidh á déanamh againn in earnáil na Gaeilge agus na Gaeltachta agus i gcúrsaí spóirt ag eascairt as an gcáinaisnéis inné.

This year we were treated to an amazing summer of sport thanks to the incredible performance of Team Ireland at the Olympic Games and the Paralympic Games. The Government promised to respond to that success with financial support and we are sticking to that promise. Budget 2025 represents a landmark moment for sport in Ireland. Two years ahead of schedule, the Government has more than doubled our investment in sport compared with 2018 levels. This fulfils a key commitment under the national sports policy from 2018 to double investment in sport to more than €220 million by 2027. I am glad to confirm that the 2025 allocation for sport and recreation amounts to €231 million, which is an increase of 10% on last year.

As Deputies will be aware, the Minister and I announced the largest ever investment in sports facilities in the history of the State with an unprecedented €250 million allocated under the community sports facilities fund. This week we are announcing the largest ever budget for sport in the State's history. I can confirm that the overall allocation provided to Sport Ireland, which is tasked by the Government with responsibility for the development of sport in Ireland, amounts to €115.16 million. This substantial allocation will provide sustained funding for the national governing bodies for sport and our local sports partnerships.

In 2018, the total core funding for the national governing bodies of sport and local sports partnerships stood at €16.9 million. The figure now stands at €30 million. Additional funding to support the delivery of the national sports policy is also being provided. I am establishing a dedicated disability in sport funding stream for Sport Ireland to ensure that everybody, regardless of their ability, has the right to participate in sport and enjoy physical activity. High-performance funding is being increased by over €1 million. Regarding my role as the first ever Minister of State with responsibility for physical education, I am delighted to announce increased funding for the expansion of the active school flag programme again. This will allow more schools to get more active more often and allow for the full roll-out of the programme in post-primary schools.

Regarding funding for the Gaeltacht, tá ardú tagtha ar mhaoiniú do chlár na Gaeltachta go €106.9 milliún, ardú de 6% ar an maoiniú le haghaidh 2024. Leis sin, tacófar leis an nGaeilge agus déanfar a húsáid mar phríomhtheanga phobal na Gaeltachta a neartú tuilleadh. Tá níos mó airgid ag dul go hÚdarás na Gaeltachta. Tá infheistíocht sa straitéis ealaíona. Tá maoiniú don phlean digiteach. Tá maoiniú níos mó á thabhairt d'ionaid Ghaeilge agus chultúrtha ar fud na tíre.

The Government's commitment to sport, physical education and the Gaeltacht has been clearly demonstrated by these pretty significant allocations. The funding provided will improve our society's well-being, physically and mentally, and solidify the importance of Gaeilge and Gaeltachtaí across the island and beyond.

I start by congratulating the women's Irish Homeless World Cup football team on their recent success in Korea. They did fantastically well. It is a huge boost to all the individuals participating in that. In particular, I mention Seán Kavanagh, a long-time supporter of the street league and the Homeless World Cup concept. I also acknowledge the homeless men's team which reached the quarter finals. I noticed that no Minister was at the airport to welcome them home. I say that with a certain irony.

After a summer of sport that brought so much joy and happiness to communities across Ireland and after all the talk and hype from the Minister about supporting Irish sporting communities, yesterday's announcement showed us clearly that it is talk and hype. The lower levels of increased funding for sport and recreation will do nothing to bring about positive change to our sporting community. It certainly was not transformative. Once again, the Government's approach is simply to plaster over the cracks that are the result of decades of underfunding.

Sinn Féin would have given our sporting community the respect and support it deserves. We would have invested nearly triple what the Government announced yesterday. Last week in Brussels, Sinn Féin facilitated a meeting between UEFA, the FAI and EU officials about the Brexit adjustment reserve fund. At that meeting, we asked if the FAI's case over the negative impact that Brexit had on the development of Irish football would have made Irish football eligible for this Brexit adjustment reserve fund. The EU officials said that the FAI's case ticked all the boxes and more. However, the Commission said that the Irish Government failed to apply for any of this funding for football. Once again, the Government has forgotten about Irish football. Once again, it has failed to fund Irish football academies. Once again, it has failed to kick-start the Irish football industry and invest in young Irish footballers.

There is this notion that the budget will solve everything. We all know that a budget is not a silver bullet. However, there is a continual lack of investment in sport and €1 million in the high-performance unit is not enough. Given the communities that have been failed, there are some measures that I would have questions about particularly those that will enhance the ability of the well-off affluent clubs to access funding.

We have places like Kevin Street and Aungier Street. The Government is transferring the ownership of the Dublin Institute of Technology, DIT, in Aungier Street to a private developer. That could be developed as a sport and recreational facility for the local community, which has nothing and cannot avail of sports capital grant funding because it does not have the facilities in place at all. DIT in Aungier Street, which was previously located in Kevin Street, would have provided a perfect opportunity to develop sports and leisure facilities for an inner-city community that has been neglected for decades.

While I know it is not in the brief of the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, I must mention the €9 million for phone pouches. How can that possibly be a priority? It is absolutely insane. I know of many children coming to Leinster House.

There is Cara and there is the neurodiversity group in Ringsend and Pearse Street. They do not have the resources and kids are being left behind while schools are getting €9 million for phone pouches. It is absolutely insane and unfair on everybody. The notion of giving €9 million for phone pouches should be reversed and the money should be given to special education.

I welcome the unprecedented €3.9 billion investment in transport infrastructure in the budget. Since 2020, when the Government entered office, it has increased by €1 billion in the Department alone. It has gone from just under €3 billion to just under €4 billion. This is an increase of €1 billion since the Government came office. Looking at public transport infrastructure in the first instance, which is my primary interest or first love as we are discussing transport, because I use it myself regular basis, as do most of my constituents in Kildare, those in the greater Dublin area, those in commuter belts and those in all of our urban centres, we have invested unprecedented moneys in public transport infrastructure and in large projects and we continue to do so. Among the schemes being rolled out in budget 2025 are additional BusConnects routes in Dublin, the commencement of regional BusConnects, which will feature in Cork, Galway, Limerick and our regional cities, new town services, phase 4 of Connecting Ireland, including Cork, Donegal, Tipperary, Cavan, Clare, Kilkenny and Laois, and many more investments in public transport services. We will also continue the fare reduction of 20% introduced last year, and the new measure whereby kids under nine years of age go free. This means young persons can avail of public transport and their parents do not have to worry about the cost. If they ever did, they do not have to do so now with regard to young folk taking up the opportunity to travel on the services.

With regard to the big-ticket items, will continue to spend heavily on the rail network. The strategic rail review was recently completed. It looks at 2050 but money has been pledged towards it for 2025. We do not have to wait 25 years for it to take effect, thankfully. Among the many projects we could speak about that are being funded is MetroLink. I had the pleasure of meeting the new programme director, Dr. Sean Sweeney, this afternoon in Leinster House. He is a very fine gentleman from New Zealand with a Mayo connection. He has come to supervise the big dig as work starts on the metro connection to the airport. I am very confident it is in good hands. It is such a critical piece of infrastructure. As the programme director observed, it is a new canvas. It is not plugging into legacy equipment or legacy connections. They have the luxury of being able to start and finish it on a new track and new rail. It is a very important project.

We are continuing with the DART+ extensions, with DART+ Coastal North, DART+ Coastal South, DART+ West and DART+ South West. These are more usually known as Louth, Wicklow, Kildare and Meath. Effectively, these DART+ programmes will bring the highest quality, most regular, most frequent and most reliable commuter rail right around the commuter belt, effectively in an arc from Drogheda down and back around into Bray and Greystones.

The DART+ Coastal North has now progressed. Planning permission has been lodged for it and it is now in the system. Dart+ West came out of planning quite recently. We are awaiting a planning decision on DART+ South West. Since coming into the role I have asked the NTA to look at bringing the routes even further and, for example, extending DART+ South West to Sallins, which is envisaged in the greater Dublin area scheme, and ultimately onto Newbridge and beyond. I have asked about the DART+ West line going beyond Maynooth, where it terminates, to Kilcock and even to Enfield as we go further. If we are going to continue to develop our commuter belt, for all the good reasons of distributed housing and providing more opportunities for people to live outside Dublin yet access employment and educational services in the capital, we must support it. This must be a public transport driven development and not a private vehicle one. It is very important that we continue to do this. The Wicklow line is already well served by the DART to Greystones but it is envisaged in the greater Dublin area strategy to bring the DART to Wicklow town itself. This investment would be money well spent.

We also have 180 new carriages of the battery electric rail fleet being delivered. They will begin to make a difference. I know there are capacity issues, even today, on the commuter services in particular and that people are squeezed in. These 180 carriages have begun to arrive and some have already gone into service quite recently. More will be added to the fleet in the coming months. They will begin to help with capacity on the services. They are important aspects of the public transport picture.

Looking to active travel, €1 million for every day of the year is being invested in the budget for walking and cycling infrastructure. Since 2020, when the Government came into office, we have delivered 222 km of greenways in the country. We have also seen the Safe Routes to School programme, which enables schoolchildren to access school safely, with comfort and convenience and, most importantly, in a way that is demarcated and separated out from traffic. There has been an investment of €1.8 billion in active travel since the Government came into office, including plugging 275 schools into the Safe Routes to School programme. It is a very important programme and long may it continue. I have seen it in action in number of schools and it is working extremely well.

The roads network has an improvement this year of €1.365 billion committed to the national, regional and local roads networks. This includes €308 million for new national and local roads. The significant amount of €1.5 billion is another commitment to funding our roads and funding the infrastructure. This includes a maintenance budget, new roads, local roads, regional roads and supporting local authorities in their maintenance programmes and rolling out new initiatives. I will not get into the detail of individual projects now but I will say there are a number of specific roads about which concerns were raised over the summer, whereby particular projects in particular areas were perhaps at risk or at threat. People at Transport Infrastructure Ireland raised a flag and said certain projects may be unable to proceed because of the cost of labour, inflation and the cost of materials. We all know that building projects cost more tomorrow than they did yesterday, and this price escalation was a feature of construction. I have engaged with the Department and TII. The vast majority of these projects have been given the green light or I expect they will very soon. Certainly the councils will be instructed to tender in the coming days and weeks any project that is not yet tendered. This is a good result and a good win, and it is very important for our infrastructure. Colleagues may wish to engage with me on the detail of these and they are welcome to do so.

An additional €40 million has been set aside to support councils in rolling out the speed limit programme coming into effect later this year. It will start with our local roads having a default speed limit of 60 km/h. As I have mentioned many times in conversation since I took on this role, this is not a target and it is not mandatory, it is a default. Councils and councillors reserve the local government exclusive function to vary it up, down or sideways, whatever they wish to do. It remains the preserve of local authorities where local road engineers and local elected members know their own terrain best. They can vary it. The default, unless specified otherwise, for all the boreens with the grass tufts in the middle of the road will be 60 km/h rather than 80 km/h. This makes a lot of sense. We will support the councils in doing this.

Staying with motor vehicles, I am introducing a digital dashboard project in the Department. It is funded through the budget. It includes the replacement of our paper tax discs, insurance discs and NCT discs that we all tear out and, if you are like me, rip most of the time before slipping them into the dashboard every few months or every year when we get our renewal. This will become a thing of the past because it will be automated into a digital footprint that will travel with the vehicle and the driver as part of the national vehicle driver file. This is a project with our colleagues in the motor tax office in Shannon. They are doing a very fine job on the automation and digitalisation of the service. It will save paper. I believe 5 million discs are mailed out annually. It will save us all the hassle of trying to fidget with them and get them onto the dashboard and remember to put them in. It will enable our gardaí to have a view of a vehicle when it is travelling, using automatic number plate recognition on their handheld devices and in their squad cars for enforcement. It is a safety measure and an enforcement measure but it is also a convenience measure for all of us. It is something that is very welcome.

Significant money is being placed in the maritime arena. The Port of Cork has been granted a €99 million investment. I was there on Friday and I visited the team. They are ready to go with renewable energy. If we are going to power this nation through having offshore wind and rigs and connecting them to the grid, we need to have the infrastructure to get the kit out to sea, plug it into the cables and get it back onshore so that we can power this country. The almost €100 million investment will go a long way towards doing this. I congratulate the team at the Port of Cork. There is also great potential in Rosslare, Shannon Foynes and other ports.

I look forward to working with those in due course.

The Coast Guard has an allocation of €70 million for a new project that is due that is primarily for the provision of a new helicopter fleet, which will be of vital importance to the safety and security of our coastal communities and islands. It will be multifunctional. It will be primarily for rescue and search and recovery operations but will also assist with other types of missions. The helicopters can go where normal vehicles cannot access, and where the helicopters cannot go, the drones can go. There are a number of drones in the fleet as well, some of which I have seen in action. I thank the very talented and committed team, both professional and volunteer, of the Coast Guard for the good work they are doing.

On aviation, the budget includes a commitment to the regional airports. We are trying to balance the regional airports around the country for many reasons, not least the fact that we are constrained with a legacy planning cap for the time being at least. We are trying to work towards supporting the regional airports. There is a new fund of €17 million going towards Ireland West Airport Knock, Farranfore, Donegal and the other regional airports. I hope that will be of some support in helping to balance growth so that we do not have a situation in years to come where 86% of our connectivity is in one north Dublin location. It makes sense for many reasons to spread that around the country and bring it where the people are. That makes a lot of sense. There is a lot more I can say, but I will not because I am out of time. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for the opportunity to address Members on the budget, which I commend to the House.

I welcome the opportunity to come back on more parts of the budget. Obviously, budgets for infrastructure are welcome. I have touched previously on the fact that Irish Water let 350 workers and subcontractors go because there was no work going on around the country. If we are talking about building houses, obviously, we have to make sure we have the infrastructure in place. Roads, sewers, water and electricity are ferociously important. The land management agency funding for affordable housing is welcome. However, we must make sure that is spent wisely because we cannot go down the road of houses that cost an arm and a leg. Basically, there is no record kept and no proper accountability. I do not know what is going on. There is not any accountability whatsoever in the line of pricing. When only one person is allowed to put in a figure for the modular homes, where are we going?

There are a few issues regarding agriculture, one of which is the €7 million budget for fishing. It is incredible that this is all the Government thinks fishing is worth on a day when we have billions of euro to go around the place. I have a question for the Minister of State. The dairy beef scheme has received an increase, but what is there for the person who buys the calf? There is money.

I welcome that, if it is going to happen, because a lot of farmers have raised it today. I urge the Minister of State to try to do that if he can.

One issue that has come out today, and the devil is always in the detail and things might be said that are right or wrong, is the €9 million for some sort of pouches for people to put their phones into in schools. I would like clarification on that. It is a while since I went to school, but we had a locker, and if people can throw the phone into the locker, they do not need these pouches people are talking about that cost €9 million. We need to tighten up on stuff like that. It makes a laugh out of a budget that might do good things for certain people, but there will be a few things that trip us up and cause a problem.

I welcome the money that is going into childcare because it is needed. The only thing is that there will always be people who ring us when we are driving home at night a couple of hours after having seen the budget. The owner of a nursing home with 50 people working for them rang me last night. The owner does not deprive the staff of more money, but these are the facts I was given. They are facing into a situation whereby they have 50 staff, and the raise in the minimum wage - I want to be clear that they do not want to deprive the staff - will cost them €80,000. Auto-enrolment is coming in and granted, it has been put off for a year, but they have put a figure of €25,000 to €30,000 on that. Nursing homes probably use either gas around Dublin or kerosene in some places in many parts of the country; the carbon tax raise will cost them approximately €2,000 or €2,500. Rates are going up. They tallied it all up for me. This is a small business. This is the part I really find difficult to understand. It will cost them approximately €130,000. That is €2,500 per week that is not there at the moment. Unless the Government comes in on the other side in a few months' time when it is renegotiating the bed price and they get that, this is all driving things in one direction, and where is it going? Up, up and up with everything. Unless they get it on that side, it will not balance on this side. It is something we need to watch. In fairness to those people, I want to be clear that they do not deprive anyone of the wage increase. They are not opposed to giving a wage increase, but the Government has to give more on the other side. That is it. The State will be paying more on that side. That needs to happen in the budgets in health. For it to balance on this side, it will have to go up on the other side. The health budget is basically doing the same thing only it is costing more. We need to watch that.

The other people who are affected are small businesses in the hospitality sector. I know that some of the Ministers were in favour of it and I am not talking about beds. I am talking about businesses that serve food and the VAT rate that would keep the hospitality sector going. We have seen many businesses closing. I cannot see a whole lot in the budget for businesses around the country, unfortunately, to keep them going. The Minister, Deputy Peter Burke, is in the Chamber tonight. That is one thing that needs to be looked at to make sure we keep this small number of businesses going. Mr. Draghi did a report on competitiveness in the last few weeks that talked about multinationals. We are fairly reliant on them, and we welcome them. However, it has been said that we need to protect small operations as well.

In the line of agriculture, we know there is a crisis in the suckler herd. There is no escape. There is a bit of an increase from what there was, but the number of farmers in it is going downwards. It was written very well, whoever the scribe was. One would nearly get the impression that there is €70 million more in ACRES, but there is not. It is a budget to cater for 55,000 more farmers. I am glad that a Minister of State with responsibility for agriculture is in the Chamber because I would like clarification on those people who buy that dairy calf. Will they get money as well? My understanding at the moment is that the person who breeds and rears the calf will get it. This works like a marriage; it works both ways. We need to make sure we incentivise people to do it.

I welcome the opportunity to speak on budget 2025 in respect of my Department. It is the first time the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment's budget has gone over the €1 billion mark, which is a significant increase on the previous year in terms of core expenditure.

We have a number of initiatives in the context of this budget to support families and businesses right across the country. We are very clear in terms of our support for the hospitality and retail sectors.

I am very much aware of their vulnerability and the context in which they have been operating, particularly in recent years with the increased regulatory environment and the associated costs. That is why we are responding this year with a €170 million power-up grant to assist them with costs, representing a €4,000 cash payment into each business’s bank account by year end. We are all aware of how tight margins are, so a business would have to earn a significant turnover to get a grant of that amount. We will do everything we can to ensure the grant is paid before Christmas.

It is important to consider how these costs for businesses have come about. A number of proposals are on my desk, for example, increasing sick pay to seven days, which is required by legislation enacted by the Houses. I have carried out research on this proposal and will make a decision by the year’s end, but I have not pressed ahead with it immediately. I will take it seriously. There is another proposal on sub-minimum rates in the minimum wage. We are aware that three quarters of all minimum wage workers are in the retail and hospitality sectors, which is why I want to be careful with any abolition of sub-minimum rates for those aged 18 years or younger. We are examining an impact assessment of the proposal, as the sector is vulnerable at this time. Auto-enrolment is being pushed out to October. The Government has control of this and can give businesses some leeway. Through Indecon, we are also reviewing increases in the work permit regime. Where the additional costs businesses have faced are concerned, all of the above are key measures we have not continued apace.

Halfway through this year, we introduced a package for family businesses in which we reduced PRSI and increased grant aid. We also tried to assist retail and hospitality businesses in changing their operating models. Such businesses are traditional and not at the cutting edge of tax schemes and they practice a straightforward model. We need to determine how we can change that, for example, through energy efficiency grants. I have examined a number of case studies. A small family deli can save €1,500 per month on utilities by upgrading to LED lights and changing refrigeration units. We have a significant grant to support such businesses on that journey. The best way to give businesses money is not to take it from them in the first place. We are working hard to ensure that as many businesses as possible can access the fund this year. We are also trying to support them in digitalising their operating models and adding to their revenue streams. We have a significant grant to assist them in that regard.

The reductions in PRSI are now stitched into the increase in the minimum wage and will ensure no worker on the minimum wage pays the top rate of employer’s PRSI.

The SME test is now at the heart of Government, ensuring every change in statutory instrument, regulation and primary legislation undergoes a strict test to determine how it impacts on the smallest of businesses in our economy, as it is important we protect them. We are looking to expand this test to the wider public service because I deem this a very important matter. Family businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. They employ 70% of workers and drive much of our communities’ economic activity. We are firmly backing them. We are keeping a close eye on their costs to support them however we can.

I welcome the changes to the capital gains tax in support of the intergenerational transfer of assets, for example, passing on the family business. This is important for businesses. We are asking them to invest in decarbonisation and digitalisation, so where a non-cash transaction like this is concerned, the Government should in no way take money from them. Rather, we should support family businesses in transferring to the next generation. This proposal does just that.

It is good to see the thresholds for VAT registration increase. This is an important measure in supporting our small business sector. I also welcome a number of other measures: the increase in the small benefit exemption from two tranches to five and from €1,000 to €1,500; the increase in the earned income tax credit, thereby supporting self-employment in the economy; and measures for start-up companies. It was interesting to hear some business owners welcoming the model we had in place for start-ups and for companies to scale. This will support many high-value jobs and the money we are spending will yield results.

Since the eve of the pandemic, 400,000 more people are working in the economy. That is 400,000 families with an extra income. Over the next year, we will put 100,000 extra jobs into our economy. The best way to resolve constraints and poverty issues and to give communities and families the best lift possible is to offer high-value and important jobs.

Competitiveness is our greatest challenge. We have moved beyond tax for attracting investment and encouraging our indigenous industry to grow. People now consider investments. What are utilities like and what are the prices of energy, water and wastewater? We have to improve in this regard. We brought a memorandum to the Government to ensure investment in this area. We have a large amount of money to put into our grid - potentially €30 billion to 2050 - to ensure we can get energy around the country, be the best country for attracting investment, continue employment growth with high-value jobs and continue to back business.

I welcome this year's budget provisions for enterprise and for our Department more widely. I commend the Minister, Deputy Burke, and the officials in our Department on the work they have engaged in with the Department of public expenditure in recent weeks to secure a package worth €1 billion plus for our Department next year.

The Minister has reflected on how far we have come over the course of this Government. It is useful to go back to the beginning. At the very start of Covid, we were paying people not to work and businesses to close down. That inflicted significant damage on our enterprise system and enterprise culture. Just as enterprises recovered and caught their breath, we had the consequences of the illegal invasion of Ukraine on fuel and energy prices and on many other issues. Businesses struggled throughout this period, but they had a Government that backed them. This budget will continue to back them.

Within my digital remit in the Department, we had some significant announcements yesterday. The investment to upgrade the grid will lead to a grid that is AI and quantum computer ready, which will be the new way of doing business, the new basis of enterprise and the new direction for jobs over the course of the next five to ten years. The grid will be powered by renewable energy, including offshore energy. Within our Department, offshore energy will be led through the powering prosperity strategy. There was important news yesterday about the developments at the Port of Cork. These will enable us to begin positioning infrastructure along the south coast and, ultimately, the west coast so that we can harness the value of our waves, in particular in the Atlantic Ocean. By putting the infrastructure in place now and making investments in our skills, we will be able to power our digital revolution through our offshore revolution. Our Department is at the forefront of that.

The Minister has referred to the cost challenge facing business. Every member of the Government is acutely conscious of it. It would have been easy yesterday not to introduce the €170 million package that will get €4,000 to nearly 39,000 businesses between now and Christmas, but the Minister fought hard to get it. It will assist many businesses with their energy bills between now and the end of the year. It will be in addition to the €251 million already paid out under the increased cost of business scheme. All in all, there is a €320 million investment in small business in particular, the majority of which has gone to the retail and hospitality sectors, to assist with the challenge of cost.

We are aware that many of the changes that have been made to support employment and workers, which make sense on their own, have had a cumulative effect on business. This is why the SME test will now apply much more rigorously than it has previously. It is also why an examination of all of the underlying costs within Irish business is under way.

Regarding the digital space, I was honoured to be able to establish the national council on artificial intelligence - the AI council - this year. A sum of €100,000 will go to support its work through next year. I thank all of the council's members for the work they have done already.

We will provide an additional €2.75 million for the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission's new responsibilities under the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act and the Data Governance Act. Due to the Digital Services (Levy) Act 2024, which was introduced with the co-operation of the House, the Department will be able to retain income that was previously spent on our responsibilities under the DSA. Those responsibilities will now be funded by a levy on the digital companies to which the DSA applies. The levy will take effect from 1 January, freeing us up to invest in other areas of our Department.

Tá sé tábhachtach freisin a rá go bhfuilimid ag obair le Ranna eile sa Rialtas seo, go háirithe Údarás na Gaeltachta agus Roinn na Gaeltachta, chun fiontar sa Ghaeltacht a chur i bhfeidhm agus chun cuidiú a thabhairt d'fhiontar sa Ghaeltacht agus i ngach cuid den tír. We are working across many Departments. As the Ceann Comhairle did earlier this evening at the Kildare event, I acknowledge the work of local enterprise offices. I join him in endorsing the work of Ms Jacqui McNabb, a former colleague of mine in the chambers of commerce movement. The local enterprise offices marked their tenth year this year and I commend them all on the extraordinary work they are doing in supporting small businesses in the country.

The Minister and I are fortunate to work in a Department with very committed and focused officials whose work across the island supports Irish enterprise and business.