Sorry, I am rusty after the summer recess. It is good to be back in the Chamber and we have serious work to do here over the course of this Dáil term. For the Government, its long to-do list has lengthened over the summer months. There is so much for the Government to do. It must build homes. It must address the suffering of all of those locked out of secure housing. It must provide basic and effective healthcare, in particular to end the agony of children waiting for vital spinal surgeries.

We have seen a shameful increase of nearly 10% since the start of the year, with 135 children now waiting. I want to join in expressing my deepest sympathies to the parents of young Harvey Morrison Sherratt. I spoke with Gillian, Harvey's mother, over recent weeks, and I want to note the dreadful trauma they went through.

I could go on naming Government failures, but today I want to focus on one such failure touching every household in the country, creating new inequalities and deepening the plight of families fighting every day to keep afloat. I am talking about the cost-of-living crisis. Ireland is a rich country, but for far too many people it feels poor. Despite high GDP, child poverty rates now match those experienced by families after Fianna Fáil crashed the economy in 2007. This crisis is really hurting children more than anyone. We are seeing prices rising faster than wages, price gouging, which has taken root, and greedflation, with soaring food prices in particular. Energy and housing bills are among the highest in Europe.

The impact on children is immense. One fifth of children now live in poverty. That is 225,000 children. There are long-term impacts on those children and on their parents, who are suffering heartbreak as they watch this. There has been no indication from the Government that it will use its €9.4 billion to bring struggling families any meaningful respite in October. If, indeed, the Government is going to prioritise ineffective tax cuts in this budget, then it must be honest with the public and admit it will be at the expense of families struggling to stay afloat and families worrying how to keep lights on, how to keep the house warm, how to pay for Christmas and how to afford housing.

That is the Government's choice in this budget. It is a political choice it will make. The media say the Government is not going to do a cost-of-living emergency package. The Taoiseach's task, however, is to create a sustainable future, so we need to see the reinstatement of targeted energy credits, the extension of the ban on disconnections for families, and, crucially, a second targeted rate of child benefit now and not some time in the future. We need to see permanent abolition of the means test for the carer’s allowance and a cost-of-disability payment that is meaningful. Will the Taoiseach make the necessary choices in this budget to prioritise ending child poverty and providing supports for struggling households?

I appreciate the sincerity of the issues the Deputy has raised in respect of the challenges facing the country. Fundamentally, I make the point to the Deputy that since 2019 employment has grown in this country by 506,000 people. That is 506,000 people over five years. We have a strong and resilient economy and the most effective intervention in terms of poverty or living standards is work and jobs. I argue that the policies we have advocated here are advantageous to the enterprise economy and its continuation as compared to the policies the Deputy and those on the far left now allied with her have advocated.

I make the point that there has been significant inflation since Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It peaked at close to 10% but since then the rates have considerably eased and living standards have improved significantly, with real wages and income increasing by between 3% and 3.5% this year alone. The nominal wage increase is about 5.5% and inflation is at 2%. I acknowledge, however, that prices are elevated. Food inflation is higher, at about 5%.

I appreciate the Deputy's focus on targeting because we do intend to target in the budget. We do intend to prioritise the issue of child poverty and those most in need and under considerable pressure but equally we have to sustainably work our way through this. We now have the third lowest rate of inflation among the 27 European Union countries. This is something that cannot be ignored as we drive forward in terms of wage increases and so on, and also in terms of targeting child support payments. There are mechanisms we can do, which we did in the past, to try to protect those who need protection most, on energy costs and on food pricing costs. The key is that we want to do this in a mainstream way. It is not economically sustainable as we come out of this high inflation period over the last two to three years after Covid that we would continue doing large stand-alone cost-of-living packages.

We have to mainstream provision in terms of the various mechanisms we have. For example, last year we eliminated the cost of school books in primary and second level schools. That is a permanent reduction in costs for families, parents and children. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul said that in the 2023-24 school year, it had a 20%-odd reduction in calls because of that measure alone. Hot school meals is another targeted mainstream provision that we have brought about. In other areas, we have done the same. That is the approach that I want to take. I welcome the Deputy's agreement that we need a targeted approach to these issues.

With respect, I do not need lectures on work and on jobs. We are the party of work. Labour is the party of workers' rights. We have a proud record on job creation. We absolutely agree with the Taoiseach that, of course, job creation and work are crucial, but I meet people all the time - the Taoiseach must meet them too - who tell me they are working hard, getting up early in the morning every day, to use an expression pioneered by one of his Government colleagues, and yet they cannot afford to meet basic household costs because of rising prices, rising costs, and the cost of childcare and the cost of housing, which are too high. Even though they are working, they simply cannot meet all of the costs they have to meet. This phenomenon of the working poor is something that the Government has failed to take effective measures to address and we are not seeing any indication, just a few weeks out from the budget, that there are going to be any measures adopted in this budget that will help families who are struggling in this way, who simply cannot find a way to meet their household costs.

People are looking for reassurance from the Taoiseach. We are looking for some indication that the Government will build that sustainable safety net for families and households that are struggling and that it will offer them some hope in this budget that they will be able to meet their rising costs.

I have indicated that we are going to do that. I said to the Deputy, prior to the summer recess, that we would target our resources as opposed to universal allocations.

How?

Through our social protection frameworks, we have mechanisms that will enable us to do that in terms of the various payments and so on that we can increase, but we will prioritise in respect of the child poverty question. We will prioritise in terms of disability and in terms of the additional costs that families with people who are disabled have to incur, and we will seek to alleviate that. We are conscious of the programme for Government commitments we have made in respect of the carer's allowance also.

The budget, fundamentally, is an investment in the future of the country. We are prioritising capital investment. We need to catch up on infrastructure. Last year alone, there was an increase of close to 100,000 in our population. There has been a very significant increase in the population in this country over the past two to three decades and that is creating pressure, undoubtedly, on services and on infrastructure.

We are investing in the future - in water, energy, grid, housing - and that will be a key part of the budget.