Budget 2024 doesn't add up

Rose Conway-Walsh, Sinn Féin spokesperson on Public Expenditure and Reform takes us through the many failings of the Coalition government's Budget 2024

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TDs only get to see the Budget when the Ministers for Finance and Public Expenditure deliver their speeches in the Dáil chamber.

Members of the opposition quickly examine the 250-page document while listening to the speeches to figure out what is really contained in the Budget and what is just government regurgitation of existing expenditure.

In recent years, most of the Budget has been leaked to the media in advance. This year, the huge deficit in Health garnered significant media attention in the days leading up to the Budget. Everyone was expecting health would receive a significant level of funding in order to address the current demand within the system.

Every July ahead of the Budget, the government sets out what it will cost to just maintain public services across all Departments before any new measures or improvements are made. This year, that cost was estimated at €2.3 billion.

Upon opening the Budget document, the first surprise was seeing this figure had been cut from €2.3 billion to €1.8 billion euro. A cut of €500 million. Health alone needed between €1 – €1.5 billion just to cover the budget deficit - this just didn’t add up!

Skipping forward to the health section, we saw that they had allocated nowhere near enough to even meet current costs and were planning essentially no new measures. This was confirmed by our Health spokesperson, David Cullinane TD.

With 880,000 people on waiting lists, a record number of people on trolleys, and 9,000 people every month leaving our emergency department without being seen, how could this government take this approach to health?

There was genuine shock among TDs in the opposition benches to see the government completely throw in the towel in this manner. 

A couple of weeks after the Budget in the Health Committee, the Head of the HSE confirmed what we all knew that day; either the HSE would run another huge budget deficit next year or there would be cuts to the Health Service.

This is a reckless and irresponsible way for the government to manage the health budget. The full implications of the dramatic underfunding are still becoming clear. We know that this will have a catastrophic impact on our health service as it battles another difficult winter, on patient safety and patients on trolleys, on mental health, on disability, and the almost one million people on waiting lists.

Every day, and as I write, I am dealing with people who are gravely ill waiting for treatment.  More and more cancer patients are presenting with later-stage cancer because they have delayed diagnosis. It is not right.

• Sinn Féin Budget 2024 launch: Eoin Ó Broin, Pearse Doherty, Mary Lou McDonald and Rose Conway-Walsh

Unlike the Government, we are serious about tackling the crisis in health. Sinn Féin would have adequately accounted for the cost of existing services and set out an ambitious investment of €1.3 billion to improve our health service and make it more affordable for people.

The government had an opportunity in this Budget to make a lasting difference in people’s lives. Instead, they chose to completely ignore the two biggest crises we face in housing and health.

Amid a deepening housing crisis, the government chose to allocate no additional capital funding to build more houses beyond what has already been announced.

Every month, we see the number of homeless people rising. I can attest from my own constituency of Mayo that emergency accommodation is full. People are being turned away without anywhere to go. Last weekend, I was working with a young couple with two children, one of whom was autistic, with nowhere to go on Saturday night, no emergency accommodation, no hotel room, no B&B. When the government lifted the no fault eviction ban, our main question was, where do people go? They have yet to answer this.

Despite this, there was no new initiative to address the rising levels of homelessness in the recent Budget. This shows beyond any doubt that this Government cannot or will not solve the housing crisis that their policies created. People who experience homelessness are at the sharpest end of the housing crisis. 

Yet, the government brought forward nothing to tackle the affordability crisis, the social housing crisis or the homelessness crisis.

There was no funding for student accommodation despite thousands of beds with planning permission ready to go. Funding could deliver affordable student accommodation and take pressure off the rental market. Yet, the government again decided against investing in public student accommodation.

The housing crisis now touches almost every aspect of our society. Fixing the housing crisis is also the key to solving the recruitment crisis in vital public services such as hospitals, schools, public transport, and the Gardaí.

Government failure to recognise the additional cost of disability has left many individuals and families in despair. And the lack of transparency around the provision of funding to enable disability organisations to deliver vital services has given rise to deep concern to the many groups that Pauline Tully TD, our Disability Spokesperson, is in communication with.

• Homelessness: Where do people go? There is no emergency accommodation, no hotel room, no B&B and this Government has no answer to this

Another vital public sector neglected in this budget was our Defence Forces. The Commission on the Defence Forces set out a need for additional capital expenditure of €246.5 million each year over ten years. The government have not made any progress towards meeting this target in this budget. Members of the Defence Forces take on unique responsibilities and risks in service to the Irish people. It is essential that they are provided with the necessary resources to carry out their duties effectively.

The government is failing to meet their own targets across a number of Departments. Nowhere is this more evident than in climate change.

Across the board in climate spending, there are only the most meagre increases that fail to grasp the magnitude and urgency of the challenge we face. 

They provided only minor increases in funding for their badly designed and deeply regressive residential retrofits. Local authority homes saw a meagre increase of just €3 million euro.

In contrast, Sinn Féin’s radically overhauled retrofitting programme would invest an additional €152 million for residential and community retrofits, as well as an additional €43.5 million for local authority homes. We would also establish dedicated schemes for solid-fuel homes.

When it comes to delivering the energy transition, the Government decreased capital investment by a staggering €40 million. In contrast to this, Sinn Féin would increase investment in the energy transition by €293 million.

The longer this government is in power, the worse things get. It is time for change; it is time for a Sinn Féin government.