Budget is a betrayal of the homeless, says Doherty

Sinn Féin's finance spokesman has described the Government's budget as a "poor joke", a betrayal of the homeless and those who cannot afford rental prices, as well as those who cannot afford to buy a home.Pearse Doherty claimed that the Government had chosen to side with the banks over people.

In a swingeing attack he claimed the Government and Fianna Fáil were not tackling the bank culture.

“You are the culture. You embody it and you bring it to every budget and it guides your vision for Irish society, and that is why we have the crises in health and housing.”

He said that Fine Gael was so grounded in the rights of the market that they had allowed vulture funds “to scrape the maximum possible profit from Irish citizens many in their greatest hour of need”.

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The banks had risen to the top of Irish society 10 years after the bailout, he claimed.

“Who else in Irish society is allowed to withhold their taxes for up to 20 years at a time or to see profits of over €1 billion?”

He said Sinn Féin would put a cap on losses on profitable banks that they could use to write off their profits at 25 per cent and that would bring in €175 million this year alone.

He said the Minister had €800 million available in discretionary spending. There would now be an additional €700million with the extra tax charges announced in the budget which gave the Government a total of €1.5 billion to spend.

But additional capital investment to the Department of Housing is a “paltry €80 million in the face of a social crisis the State has never seen before, and deputy Michael McGrath has the cheek to stand up and say that this is a housing budget”.

He described it as a “betrayal of the people in emergency accommodation and those who cannot afford the rental prices”, and those who have to live with their parents because they cannot afford a home.

Mr Doherty accused the Minister for Finance of failing to provide what was truly needed to provide decent healthcare, to help renters, to build enough houses, to lower the cost of childcare or to increase incomes for struggling citizens.

Rainy-day fund

He accused the Government of taking a “hand me down” policy with the rainy-day fund from Fianna Fáil and making it their own.

It was “policy on the hoof and it’s clear its final design was being made up as you went along”.

From the way it was set up, he said it was clear that the only possible thing it could be used for was to bail out the banks in the future. It could not be used to offset Brexit or for health or housing.

He said Fianna Fáil had proposed putting €3 billion into the fund in 2016.

But “for many families it isn’t just raining it is pouring – for those who can’t get access to housing, healthcare or affordable childcare”.

Whatever else comes from Brexit the outcome for Ireland “won’t be good”.

He said it meant investing in education and in the growth potential for small and medium enterprises.

Too many women must give up work because they were “beggared by the cost of childcare”.

The dividends of recent growth should have been delivered more fairly, he said.