Speech by Marie Sherlock TD in response to Budget 2026

Ceann Comhairle, beidh daoine ag féachaint inniu agus ag cur ceist, cá bhfuil na gealltanas ó toghachán 2024?

Cá bhfuil an laghdú ar táillí cúram leanaí, nó an cuairt saor go GP? Cá bhfuil na leaba ospidéal breise agus na gealltanais eile?

Agus táid ag rá, conas is féidir buiséad a foilsiú agus chomh beag le fáil do na daoine ag obair sa tír.

Minister Donohoe & Minister Chambers, there will be people across this country looking in at this budget today wondering where are the promised from the 2024 general election.

Where are the childcare fee cuts?

Where is the expansion of free GP care?

Where are the thousands of extra hospital beds?

People will be looking in and asking how does a Government who has so much, manage to do little for working people.

They will be asking how is it that our country can boast among other EU member states, to have the healthiest set of public finances in the EU, the highest rate of economic growth, the highest rate of domestic demand and a general government budget that is in surplus.

And yet well over half a million children, some 630,000 children in this country are either in poverty, at risk of poverty or living in real deprivation. How is it that these families are living through an appalling paradox of plenty in a housing crisis and a cost of living crisis.

The Government announces today it target of child poverty by 2030. That is actually has a target. No child should every grow up in poverty. No Government should ever accept that any child will grow up in poverty and particularly in this wealthy country of ours.

And people will be wondering where are the bold tangible commitments to climate action- the existential crisis of our time. So that clean cheap energy can be for the many, not the few. So that everyone’s fuel bills can be permanently lowered.

And so Minister the question that hangs over this Budget today and the financial management by Government of our public finances, is not what is spent, but how it is being spent and on whom.

We have to go back a long long time in Irish politics to  see so much spent on so few people. That is the reality of the tax cuts today for developer and hospitality business owners. No matter that a serious cut to commercial rates or targeted support to small cafes and restaurants would have been a better bet to secure businesses and jobs.

Children

Ministers, Labour in Government would have made this, first and foremost a children and young person’s budget. Putting in place measures to support families who work, families who want to work and the families that cannot.

• Supporting family income and the introduction of a second tier child benefit payment.
• Supporting families’ ability to work through the provision of affordable childcare
• Supporting families’ ability to deal with their cost of living- by extending free GP care, expanding free public transport travel and a permanent cut to third level fees.

Instead what do we get today

• No extension to free GP- even though both FF and FG committed to it in PfG
• Nothing on reducing the DPS or eliminating prescription charges
• Nothing on expanding free public transport
• A mention of Deis plus- but how are we to believe Government is serious about this when they haven’t a penny allocated to it.
• And a €500 increase to third level fees.

It is an extraordinary indictment of the failings of this Government that it has abjectly failed to integrate social welfare system and revenue commissioner systems to bring about a second tier child benefit payment.  We have some of the biggest tech firms in the world and still Government cannot get its act together. Not only would a second tier child benefit payment lift thousands of children out of poverty. It also would ensure State supports can efficiently go to low income households without any wrinkles in the incentives to work.

Childcare

Ministers, a critical part in supporting families to have a decent standard of living is the availability of affordable, accessible childcare.

During the election last year, you couldn’t open the newspaper without seeing Government parties in a bidding war for the childcare vote-lower fees, more places-because we all know aware of parents out there telling us they have to delay going back to work because of the lack of available childcare.

12months on there is a barely a peep out of you now. You have reneged on your election promises to parents and to providers. And all the while the problems are getting worse not better.

Aside from the small increase in AIMS support, this Government has nothing new for parents and providers today.

And let’s be clear that the 2,300 additional childcare places announced today is a mirage.

No parent listening to this today should get their hopes up for more places any time.

Last year, parents across the country were told more places are coming- in fact we were told that €25m was being put in place under the Building Blocks scheme to grow the number of places from just short of 40,000 (36,660 Pobail figures for 2023/2024) to 60,000 by 2028.

And what has happened since then?

Not a single extra place has been delivered through the scheme.

Applications closed in January, feedback due in March and funding to be all spent by December. Instead the contracts only arrived last week and between all the paperwork to be processing plus tendering- not a sod will be turned this side of Christmas.

And to make matters worse, providers wont be able to access core funding for a whole 12months if the works are not completed by August next year, so childcare room could be empty for a whole year.

The reality is that the 38.6% increase in capital investment for childcare is a misrepresentation of what is actually happening. Spending next year will be back at 2024 levels.

It is an absolutely insult to those who are desperately searching for a childcare place and to those providers who want to expand.

Eldercare & Health

It is a mark of a country in how it treats its most vulnerable in its health system. And right now we have hundreds of people waiting on trolleys in our ED, three quarters of a million people on waiting lists and children with additional needs being failed terribly with a lack of service.

In that context Minister, it is in no way clear to me Ministers that Health budget of €1.5bn announced today is sufficient to cover existing services, growing demand, a rising population and higher prices.

The reality is that we have a health sector that is running to try and stand still.

We have been here before with works of fiction pertaining to the health budget, with supplementaries then required. That money needed in 2024 and 2025 to cover existing levels of service, has, by and large, been rolled up and put into the base last year to the tune of €2.5bn.

The presumption this year seems to be that less than two thirds of last year’s figure of €1.5bn will be enough. And to me the sums don’t add up.

You can say all you want about the record investment into sector and the need for more productivity, which we support- but we all know and we can see that funding to the health sector is not keeping up with population growth and the rising intensity of demand.

In presentations to the ED alone, we have seen a 12% increase per 1000 of population over the past six years. That 12% figure is a real indication that population increase is not the only issue to be grappled with, but also a rising need for healthcare. And that’s not accounting for the people in the Mid west who say they have delayed going to ED because of overcrowding.

In mental health, in demand for care in the community- we are seeing the same thing-a rising need and yet staffing per 1000 of population falling behind. The staff in Camhs at the end of last year was lower than a year earlier.  There are fewer PHN’s now than five years ago.

So we can talk all we want about preventing hospitalisation, about keeping people in their homes but if demand is rising and staff numbers in certain sectors are barely moving, then we have a serious capacity issue.

Government have put much focus on acute hospital productivity this year and we support6 that. But investment into IT systems and beds has to be part of the conversation. And I am shocked that we have no heard a peep today about the Electronoc health record project- this is supposed one of the biggest priorities for the Department and yet we are none the wiser on what funding is it being put in place for it.

On beds,  FF and FG were falling over themselves with promises about more hospital beds last year.

Even though, the Department of Health identified a need for 3378 extra beds by 2031, FG went out at election time and said they would deliver 5000, if they were re-elected. FF were uncharacteristically more timid and went for 4000. And then the PfG solemnly committed to 4000 to 4500 over the next five years.

But what’s been happening- of course less has being delivered than promised! We were told we would get 335 this year, but only 286 will be delivered. And this is far off the 453 bed per annum that the ESRI tell us are needed to meet demand by 2040. Today’s announcement of 220 beds is less than this year and less than half of what we are being told we need for the health service of the future.

The problem is even more acute in community nursing home care. There are fewer long and short stay beds available now in 2025 than there 5 years ago.  The NDP promised 4500 additional long term and short term community nursing homes beds by 2027. The promise for this year was 160 beds and yet we are told less than half – just 68 will come on stream. We all remember the commitments made earlier this year following the Emeis crisis- it’s all beginning to ring a bit hollow now.

So bring on the 280 beds committed to today, but we have very little confidence that this will be delivered on.

Ceann Comhairle,, Minister Chambers lauded the arts and artists in his speech earlier today. So why is it then that he cutting current spending for Arts and Culture? The expansion of the Basic income is very welcome but it’ll come at a cost to supporting other artists and arts companies. That’s some commitment to the Arts. I’m left wondering whether this is Minister O’ Donavan’s vengeance aimed at the Arts Council.

Mar focail scoil,  I want to conclude by saying that climate action appears to have fallen off the political agenda. Already we see capital underspending by over 21% in the department this year and today we have a miserly €89m allocated to additional retrofitting. The reality Ministers is that energy upgrades schemes are way behind target, the cost gap is simply too big for too many families and the schemes are not working as intended. If we want clean cheap energy for the many, not the few, then something different has to be done.

In the programme for Government agreed this year, efficiency and productivity were the buzzwords you committed to pursing during this Government.

Now in the Health sector, I very much welcome the focus on work patterns, on consultant rostering and weekend scheduling, on the commitment to replacing diagnostic equipment. But there are a number of elephants in the room, when it comes to looking at increased productivity in the health sector, and one of those is beds.