We have had an ongoing crisis for a long time in this country and it is one that has underpinned all other crises, that of inequality. Ireland is renowned for its wealth inequality and new data for 2022 show Ireland maintaining its status as the most unequal country in the EU by market income. The most recent EUROSTAT data show that Ireland's top 20% have about 15.5 times the income of the bottom 20%. High rates of income inequality and poverty have sadly become the norm in Irish society. This is an issue that affects the entire county. Recent Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures, for example, show earnings in my constituency of Donegal are still the lowest in the country.

It is time that we finally addressed this. However, addressing it is far from simple because all aspects of Irish life, from employment and healthcare to accommodation and education are rife with inequality. The capitalist system under which we live promotes greed, selfishness and the production of social harms such as income inequality, which then results in significant social divides. It is no wonder we are seeing an incredibly fragmented and divided society of late. The root cause of these social divides, the rise of the far right and the unrest we are seeing among communities, is most definitely inequality. Homelessness figures have reached over 12,000 for the first time in our State’s history, while over 166,000 houses in Ireland are vacant, 62,000 houses are second homes and over 15,000 entire homes or apartments in Ireland are listed on Airbnb. This is quite clearly an issue of inequality and it is time for the Government to acknowledge this.

People deserve to live a life with dignity. They deserve to have a roof over their head and food on the table. We have the resources and the wealth to provide that for every single person who lives here and every single person who comes to live here seeking a better life, but the Government chooses not to provide it. Why? Is it ideology? An estimated 13.1% of people in Ireland are living in poverty, of whom over 188,000 are children. If we do not tackle this now, these divisions will persist and most likely widen for future generations. Is this the legacy the Taoiseach wants to leave? I ask him to become more open minded in the way he addresses inequality. Just because we have had the same societal and economic systems in place for years does not make them better or right. We need to look beyond systems that have so obviously failed us and strive for a better way of living for everyone in our society. Tackling inequality properly requires a complete overhaul of these systems but there are also steps we can take in the meantime. Future Government policy must prioritise those at the bottom of the income distribution chain. I support Social Justice Ireland’s call for the Government to increase social welfare payments, ensure equity of social welfare rates and adequate payments for children and to provide a universal State pension, a cost-of-disability payment and decent rates of pay for low-paid workers. What will the Taoiseach do to address inequality in this country and stop the increasing social divide that ongoing failure of Government policy has caused?

As the Deputy is aware, there are many different ways of measuring inequality but the measure that is most commonly used is the Gini coefficient, which is a measure of income inequality. That shows that Ireland is one of the more equal countries in the European Union and the OECD. While it is not the case every year, it does show that over the period of the last five to seven years, inequality in Ireland has narrowed, whereas in other countries it has widened. On other measures you mention such as, for example, life expectancy, we now have one of the highest levels of life expectancy in the EU, if not the highest. That is down to the good patient outcomes that our health service delivers, notwithstanding the major issues that we face around access. If you look at educational outcomes, for example, Ireland performs very well in terms of literacy and numeracy, as well as progression to further and higher education.

If you look at the UN's human development index, Ireland is always in the top ten countries in the world. There are different ways to measure these things. Certainly, when it comes to those two measures, the UN's human development index and the Gini coefficient used by the CSO, we compare well with other countries. Most the time we are moving up, not down, the league tables.

I think the figure the Deputy used, which was 13%, includes people who are at risk of poverty as well as those who are in consistent poverty. What can we do about it? Employment. We know that one of the best ways to get people out of poverty is through employment. We now have record numbers of people at work in Ireland. That employment has to come with decent pay and conditions. That is why we increased the minimum wage this year by more than the rate of inflation, and we will see the move towards a living wage over the coming years, something I led in my previous job in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Finally, we know that Ireland's social welfare system and our tax system are among the most efficient in the world at redistributing wealth. That is set out in Social Justice Ireland reports and other reports. We had a significant welfare package in the last budget and, of course, there will be a welfare package in the budget in October as well.

Yes, except that the welfare package in the last budget did not meet people's needs. That is the reality of the situation. The Taoiseach can cherry-pick what he wants out of the various measures across the country or across the world, but if we are doing so well on all those measures, why are we doing so badly and why are there more than 12,000 people homeless in this country? The reality is that it could be a lot better, and that is what the Government is failing to achieve. According to Social Justice Ireland, without the social transfers the Taoiseach talks about, which, obviously, are easing the burden, 36.7% of our population would live in poverty. Surely the Taoiseach has to see that there is something wrong and not right with that. The reality is that if the State could step in properly, we could reduce those figures entirely. We do not need a homelessness crisis. We have billions of euro sitting there. It is money that has been raised and that the Government is refusing and has refused to spend - not only the windfall tax money but €10 billion in current expenditure as well - to ease the burden on people across the country. The reality is that the Government has made a decision to continue with this situation and with the housing crisis. That is why we need to see a change that will deal with people properly.

I accept that the country has a lot of problems and we have a lot of work still to do as a Government, and there will always be work to do, no matter who is in government, but I do not accept the Deputy's premise that we are doing so badly. This is a country that has full employment. It is a country that has among the highest life expectancies, if not the highest, in the European Union. It is a country that has among the best educational outcomes, with more people going on to further and higher education than ever was the case before. This is a country into which people want to migrate because of the opportunities we offer. It is a country which, thankfully, has low levels of crime relative to other developed countries.

The Deputy mentioned the social transfers as if somehow they just happen. Yes, it is the case that were it not for social transfers in Ireland, there would be many more people living in poverty. Who does the Deputy think does the social transfers? It is the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, in her Department. It is this Government. It is the budget Deputy Pringle votes against every year and the Appropriation Bill he votes against every year that enable those social transfers to happen. That is the point the Deputy seems to be missing. The social transfers are done by this Government in legislation he votes against and they are paid for by an economy this Government has built up.