An emergency budget to deliver a €300 tax credit to all income earners under €50,000 must be brought forward to address the cost of living crisis, the co-leaders of the Social Democrats have said.
The leaders also said the Government must introduce a three-year ban on rent increases and improve security for renters.
In their keynote address to delegates at their annual conference in Dublin on Saturday, Catherine Murphy and Róisín Shortall said dramatic action is needed to help those most affected by the inflation spikes.
“We must therefore target measures at those who need them most. And we need to take action – with an emergency budget – now,” Ms Shortall said.
“The Social Democrats would put €300 into the pockets of workers, earning up to €50,000, using a refundable tax credit, create a hardship fund so those at risk of fuel or food poverty can access emergency payments quickly and, increase core social welfare rates, like pensions – which have only increased by €5 in the last three years - by €10,” she said.
They said in their alternative budget in October, they would ensure that childcare must be transformed so that it is publicly funded.
They said primary and secondary education must be made genuinely free – and university fees, which are the highest in the EU, must be cut.
Crucially, workers should not have to struggle just to get by. They need a living wage. Workers must also have security of employment, the right to collective bargaining and the right to flexible work options, the leaders said.
Housing was a dominant theme of their speech with Ms Murphy describing housing as the government’s “biggest failure”.
“Even couples, on what were once considered decent wages, are locked out of home ownership. Many are again considering emigration,” she said.
She asked: “What kind of society are we building – when affordability is now defined by the Government as being €450,000 in Dublin and €400,000 in Cork and Galway.
“Do they know a mortgage at those amounts requires incomes of at least €114,000? What planet are they on? At the heart of the housing crisis is an affordability crisis,” she added.
Ms Murphy said throwing money, and tax breaks, at private developers and vulture funds is not just wrong - it’s wasteful and it’s not working.
“Nearly a decade into this crisis, we need radical action,” she said.
She said the government must immediately introduce a tax to bring the 90,000 vacant homes across the country back into use.
“We must end the greed of land speculation – a major driver of housing costs – by finally controlling the cost of development land. And if it takes a referendum, let’s have it,” she said.
Ms Murphy said the government must end the favourable tax treatment of REITS and vulture funds and must regulate short-term letting platforms, like Airbnb, which are cannibalising the rental market.
Ms Shortall said the Social Democrats will never gift valuable public infrastructure – like a €1bn new national maternity hospital – to a private company, be it religious or otherwise.
“It will never happen. Not on our watch. You can count on that,” she said.
On disability services, Ms Murphy said children with disabilities and their families must battle from the day they are born.
It is shameful that their biggest battle is often with the State – to try to get basic services, like an assessment of need, essential therapies or a school place, she said.
“This abject neglect has disastrous consequences. Children’s development is limited and they are prevented from reaching their full potential. Once children turn 18, whatever meagre supports that do exist often disappear,” she added.
On the war in Ukraine, the leaders said the Social Democrats want to again make clear our revulsion at Russia’s illegal war.
"Putin’s dangerous despotism is a threat, not just to Ukraine, but to the world. We stand with Ukraine now – and into the future, they said.
"There have been some who have used the war in Ukraine as a pretext for abandoning or diluting our-long held position of neutrality. That would be a mistake, Ms Shortall added.
Ireland, as a neutral country, has never been an aggressor or an oppressor on the world stage. Our role has always been one of peacemaker and peacekeeper.
This is where our strength lies – and our neutrality is the foundation stone that anchors it,” she said.
On Northern Ireland, Ms Murphy said we cannot allow the Good Friday Agreement, which put an end to the violence, to be endangered by unilateral decisions taken by a minority of partisan politicians.
The DUP cannot continue to hold the region to ransom – the power-sharing institutions in Northern Ireland must be allowed to function, she added.
The British government cannot rip up international agreements and use the threat of political instability in the North as a bargaining chip in its negotiations with the EU, she added.
“Its approach is tawdry, short-sighted and dangerous,” she said.
Ms Murphy also called for the establishment of an independent Anti-Corruption Agency – with the remit, and the resources, to provide meaningful regulation and oversight of our institutions.
“We must have a State watchdog - with real teeth,” she said.
In much of Irish politics, and Irish public life, we see the corrosive politics of the golden circle. A fast-track for insiders whose connections confer unfair advantage, she said.
Civil and public service pay rates have been spectacularly breached in the hiring process for individual senior staff. High-profile jobs have been awarded to friends and colleagues of government ministers in the absence of an open recruitment process, she added.
Appointments to State boards and institutions are still made to party political allies while important State projects routinely go massively over budget, she added.
In scandal after scandal the same culprit is identified – "Systems Failure" - usually after a lengthy and expensive review or inquiry.
“Conveniently - systems can’t be sacked, demoted, jailed or otherwise censured. As long as there are no consequences for failure, there is no real incentive to reform. We need accountability in every facet of Irish public life – the government, public service and the corporate world,” she said.
“We will only get change if we properly protect whistle-blowers and make legal accountability a term and condition of employment in the public and civil service. We must go further,” she concluded.
