One hundred years on, it is great to hear these two parties talking about the Border.

What is seldom is wonderful.

Gerry is back.

Yesterday, Fine Gael, the Minister for Finance and Fianna Fáil launched another budget that is lacking in vision and is devoid of ambition. This lack of vision is most clearly seen in the failure to tackle the crisis in our health service. The Taoiseach has hailed the health budget as the largest in the history of the State. He will know that the health service needs at least €691 million just to stand still. The Minister for Finance announced €685 million for health yesterday. That represents a net loss - a cut in effect - in anyone's language. The Government and its Fianna Fáil partners have chosen to leave our health service short of the money it needs to survive, never mind to improve. Approximately 680,000 citizens are already on hospital waiting lists. Almost 66,000 people spent time on trolleys in the first eight months of this year. That includes 2,216 people last week.

I am particularly drawn to the hard reality that citizens with disabilities, or their carers, will get little comfort from yesterday's budget. Have they no place in the Taoiseach's republic of opportunity? There is no commitment to increase personal assistance hours or respite care services. There is no funding for neuro-rehabilitation teams or transitional services. There is no mention of any new employment supports for citizens with disabilities. The Government has announced some modest benefits, including a €5 increase in disability allowance, which will not come into effect until March 2018.

Prior to the budget, Sinn Féin proposed a range of progressive measures, including 500 extra hospital beds, 2.1 million extra home help hours, 248,000 extra home care packages, 600 additional front-line staff in disability services and 500,000 additional personal assistance hours. We sent all these proposals to the Minister for Finance and his Government colleagues. They could have made these choices, but they decided not to. This budget was a real opportunity to send a message that the Government is on the side of ordinary citizens. Yesterday, it failed in a very spectacular way to seize that opportunity. It failed the citizens who depend on public services, especially our health services. It failed the homeless and citizens with disabilities and their carers. Last Wednesday, the Taoiseach promised that funding for citizens with disabilities "will have to form part of the budget and the Estimates process". He said he was sure the Government would "find additional funding for disability services next year", but it has not done that. Will the Taoiseach explain why 643,000 people with disabilities and their families have been left behind by the Government and its Fianna Fáil partners?

The amount of additional funding for disability services next year, as announced in yesterday's budget, is €65 million. Approximately €50 million of this will be used to improve and expand existing services and cover additional pay costs etc. The other €15 million will be used for new developments. That is just in the Department of Health. Additional funding is being provided to the Department of Education and Skills to cater for an extra 1,000 special needs assistants next year. They will provide additional educational supports to people with disabilities. In the social protection area, another increase of €5 a week for people with disabilities will kick in from March, as it did this year. The same increase will be given to those who care for them. The exact breakdown of services like additional respite and personal assistance hours will be set out in the service plan in the normal way. Those are the facts of the additional funding for disability that was announced yesterday. Crucially, funding is to be made available for the decision-making service within the Department of Justice and Equality to allow us to proceed to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This is something the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, has fought very hard for.

Deputy Adams started by criticising our decision to increase health spending by €685 million next year. It is the biggest increase in health spending in at least ten years. It is the biggest health budget in the history of the State. If we are asking any questions about that among ourselves, we should be asking why additional resources are not providing better results. The National Treatment Purchase Fund is one of the areas that will see additional investment, which is very welcome. I acknowledge the participation of Fianna Fáil in calling for these additional funds. The increase from approximately €20 million this year to €55 million next year will allow us to do many more high-volume procedures on hips, knees and cataracts etc. I think we will see some real progress in those areas. The Deputy has a big problem in the question he asked. He said at the outset that everyone knows it costs €691 million a year for the health service "just to stand still".

I do not accept that. There is something profoundly wrong with the health service if it would cost that much every year just to stand still. We estimate the cost of maintaining the existing level of service at approximately €400 million, in the region of 3%, which would be the norm internationally. If Sinn Féin and Deputy Adams really believe that it costs €691 million a year for the health service just to stand still, they have a big question to answer. The Deputy may not have read his own documents on Sinn Féin's alternative budget for 2018.

We read them all.

I read Sinn Féin's documents. On page 7 of its document on health, Sinn Féin recommends an increase in health spending of €403.55 million a year.

On top of the-----

Quiet, please, Deputies.

Before that, Sinn Féin recommends a further €100 million in capital spending. In Sinn Féin's alternative-----

It provides an increase.

-----budget strategy, it recommends that we spend €503.55 million extra on health next year-----

Wrong.

-----which it believes is less than is needed to stand still and which is actually less than we are providing. Sinn Féin has been exposed. It wants health cuts.

I am glad to see that the Taoiseach reads our documents but it is a pity that he did not read and pay heed to them before he brought forward his fake budget yesterday.

Sinn Féin's numbers are wrong.

We propose that €400 million extra be spent above requirements for demographic issues, pay issues and so on. Results count. The Irish Medical Organisation, IMO, the Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation, the Irish Hospital Consultants Association, the Mental Health Reform alliance, the National Association of General Practitioners and all disability rights advocacy groups have criticised this budget severely. The IMO has said that to claim that this is the biggest health budget ever is nothing but spin and fake news. The budget will not even allow us to keep pace with rising health demands and our health crisis will worsen.

Here is the rub, and I do not blame the Taoiseach for this. He does not believe in equality and the budget reflects that position. Where is the fairness for the hundreds and thousands of citizens who are stressed out by worries about money, paying bills and getting and keeping a roof over their heads? Where is the fairness for those who depend on our health services and who live with disabilities, for the poor and for the vulnerable? Will the Taoiseach tell us what they got from his budget?

The Deputy has a big problem because that is just not what his document provides for.

It does. The Taoiseach has not bothered to read it.

If he is saying that €400 million extra on the current side, an additional €100 million on the capital side and another €691 million-----

No, it is plus €691 million.

-----should be spent just to stand still, he is saying that we should increase the total health budget next year by €1.1 billion. That is simply not provided for in the alternative plan-----

It is.

-----that Sinn Féin put forward.

The Taoiseach has shown that he cannot even read.

The Taoiseach does not want to hear it.

I am sure we will allow plenty of other people to assess-----

We are talking about the Taoiseach's position.

-----that fully.

Will the Taoiseach answer the question?

I call Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett.

So that I am clear, Ceann Comhairle, was that an answer?

That is the answer the Deputy has got. I call Deputy Boyd Barrett.