GE2024 FactCheckTHE DUST HAS settled on the final leaders’ debate of this year’s general election campaign, after Fine Gael’s Simon Harris, Fianna Fáil’s Micheál Martin and Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald faced off on RTÉ’s Prime Time programme last night.
There were 90 minutes of claims and counter-claims, which we monitored throughout proceedings. Let’s take a look at some of the ones that stood out.
Claim: Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin claimed that the Government’s “very first act in 2020″ was to restore pay parity for public service workers.
The facts: The Government of the 33rd Dáil took office on 27 June 2020, but pay restoration for public service workers did not happen until 1 October 2020.
The Government did a lot during those three months, but its first actions involved things like measures to deal with the Covid pandemic and attempts to re-open Ireland’s economy.
According to the Irish Statute Book website, the first piece of legislation passed by the Government was the Microenterprise Loan Fund (Amendment) Act 2020, which came into effect on 10 July.
Claim: Fine Gael’s Simon Harris claimed that you’d have to “go back to the 70s to find a harsher period of inflation” in Ireland before the level of inflation seen in 2022.
The facts: Although Harris’ broad point that Ireland’s inflation was at its highest in decades during the last Government is true, inflation was worse in the 1980s.
October 2022 marked the highest rise in the CSO’s Consumer Price Index in decades, when annual inflation hit 9.3%.
But that was the highest annual increase since April 1984, when annual inflation ran at 9.7%.
According to the CSO, Ireland’s highest rates of inflation (as per the Consumer Price Index) were observed at the start of the 1980s when inflation peaked at 23.2% in 1981.
It said the rate of inflation was more than 15% from October 1979 until October 1982 and remained above 9% until April 1984.
Claim: Micheál Martin claimed that the return of the economy post-Covid and the war in Ukraine “really drove the energy price increases” seen in 2022.
The facts: That is also true to an extent, with an energy crisis across Europe in 2022 pushing up the wholesale price of natural gas, upon which the continent is reliant for about 42% of its electricity supply.
But as we explained at the time, there wasn’t really a single, underlying issue to blame for the phenomenon – and the problem started in 2021.
The post-Covid return was a factor, but so were low wind speeds which forced European utility companies to fall back on coal, which depleted stockpiles of fossil fuels.
Russia also began sending less natural gas to Europe even before the war in Ukraine, with the ability to source alternatives proving tricky, after US exports curbed by a series of storms and extreme weather events in the Gulf Coast in 2021 as well.
The problems were also compounded by the temporary closure of the gas-fired electricity power station at Whitegate in Cork and Huntstown in Dublin.
On top of this, there was also a €15 increase in the price of fuels as a result of carbon tax hikes between 2021 and 2022.
Claim: Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald claimed that carbon taxes won’t have the effect of getting Ireland to its 2030 targets on emissions.
The facts: This is true, though it should be noted that the tax will play some role.
As we previously outlined, the carbon tax has contributed to a reduction in Ireland’s emissions, which are now at their lowest level since 1990.
However, Ireland is currently projected by the Environmental Protection Agency to achieve only a 29% reduction in emissions by 2030, compared to a target of 51%.
Claim: Simon Harris claimed that Sinn Féin’s manifesto is proposing to fund current expenditure from windfall taxes.
The facts: Sinn Féin’s manifesto doesn’t explicitly say that the party will use windfall corporation taxes to fund current expenditure, but it does say it will use the Apple tax windfall (which is a form of corporation windfall) to do so.
Current expenditure refers to day-to-day spending like public sector salaries, public services and social welfare, as opposed to capital expenditure on things like housing and other forms of infrastructure.
Sinn Féin’s manifesto only states that it would “invest a portion of windfall corporation tax receipts to deliver a catch-up infrastructure programme and build housing at scale”.
In other words, its section on windfall corporation tax only refers to capital expenditure.
However, in a section about the use of the Apple tax (which in itself is a windfall), the party also proposes to invest part of the money on 5,000 hospital beds, a form of current expenditure.
In a statement today, Sinn Féin insisted that the bed spend is capital because it would include things like building hospital wings.
The party’s manifesto says that this would be broken down into providing 4,000 new beds and replacing 1,000 existing unsafe beds (such as those in wards being moved to beds in single rooms).
It also references other things like transport which, although vague, could also encompass current expenditure if it involves paying for more bus or train drivers, for example.
Claim: Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said that Ireland is now building more social homes than it has since the 1970s.
The facts: The claim has been repeated by Martin and other ministers in recent years to defend the Government’s efforts to tackle the housing crisis.
Housing figures for 2024 have not yet been finalised (because houses are still being built), so we have to use figures for last year.
Official figures show that in 2023, the Government built 8,110 units of social housing, the highest number since 1975.
That year, local authorities built 8,794 social housing units, which is the highest number on record.
However, the Government’s success comes with two pieces of important context.
The State’s construction of social housing has been relatively low historically and gradually declined after that 1975 peak.
In the late 1970s, the State’s role in housing construction declined and voluntary and co-operative organisations began to make up for shortfalls instead.
The number of social housing units built by the Government was under 6,000 in each year between 1980 and 2000, and hovered between 6,000 and 6,500 units for most of the 2000s (with the exceptions of 2007 and 2008) before falling again after the financial crash.
At the same time, private developers began to build homes in increasing levels, a trend which continued through to the Celtic Tiger before the figure also fell off from 2007 onwards.
It should also be noted that while the Government built the second-highest number of social housing units on record in 2023, it has failed to meet its own social housing targets in each year since the Housing for All plan commenced in 2022.
In 2022, it built 7,433 social housing units in comparison to a target of 9,000 units; and in 2023, it built 8,110 units in comparison to a target of 9,100 units.
The Claim: Mary Lou McDonald claimed that the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland (BPFI) has never said it wouldn’t lend to those looking to avail of Sinn Féin’s affordable housing plan.
The facts: The verdict here is something of a mixture: McDonald is right to say the BPFI has never said it wouldn’t lend to people, but it has never said it would either.
To muddy things further, the BPFI has expressed some reservations about the idea (without saying what they are), but also said it would be open minded about any ideas to ramp up homeownership with a future Government.
For context, Sinn Féin’s plan proposes that the State would continue to own the land a house is built on, while there would be conditions on the sale and rent of the property.
Fianna Fáil in particular has repeatedly claimed that banks and the BPFI have expressed scepticism about the plan, though Sinn Féin has retorted that the BPFI have told the party there are no major issues with it.
The claim and counterclaim came up early in the campaign, when The Journal sought a statement from the BPFI.
The federation said that the BPFI met with Sinn Féin for a “preliminary discussion” about the plan and “identified a number of issues that would require further consultation in order to enable lenders to provide mortgage finance”.
It said this only related to “some elements of their plan” but they did not say which, adding that the BPFI was committed to working with “any future government to improve the supply of housing in Ireland”.
In other words, McDonald is right that banks have never said they wouldn’t lend – but they also haven’t said they would, noting they have identified issues (without saying what they are).
The Claim: Micheál Martin and Simon Harris went back-and-forth on the claim that Fine Gael’s manifesto doesn’t provide for the recruitment of a single person in the health service.
The facts: Although recruitment numbers aren’t specifically mentioned in the budgetary section of Fine Gael’s manifesto, the document references hiring healthcare workers repeatedly.
It discusses the hiring of more therapeutic and medical staff, including psychiatric nurses, additional resources to support the recruitment of midwifery and medical staff, and investments in the National Ambulance Service to hire more ambulance staff.
The budgetary section also mentions growing the GP scheme by 80% over the next five years, providing 277 more training places. The HSE GP training contract is for three years and provides placement in clinical or practice settings throughout as per the criteria document set out by the Irish College of General Practitioners.
The Claim: Simon Harris claimed that environmental group Friends of the Earth rated the climate proposals in his party’s manifesto better than Fianna Fáil’s or Sinn Féin’s.
The facts: Although Harris’ claim is technically true, the academic evaluation by Friends of the Earth rated all three parties’ proposals with an E grade: Fine Gael scored 38%, compared to Sinn Féin’s 33% and Fianna Fáil’s 30%.
Only Aontú scored worse than the three parties.
The Claim: Mary Lou McDonald claimed that 40% of the funds raised from the carbon tax, which were supposed to be ring-fenced for climate action measures, could not be accounted for.
The facts: A report by the Comptroller and Auditor General in September found this to be the case.
It said that only 61% of funds from carbon taxes have been put towards the “ring-fenced” schemes to improve the environment that they were intended for.
The remaining funds were either given to the Department of Social Protection or given back to the Department of Public Expenditure because other departments underspent their portion of the money.
The public account auditors said that a total of €1.36 billion was received by the exchequer from carbon tax receipts to date, but just €829.6 million of this was put towards schemes the funds are intended for.
It also said that although five departments had been allocated funds, they consistently underspent the funds between 2021 and 2023.
Furthermore, the C&AG noted that no central tracking system currently exists within the Department of Public Expenditure for carbon tax receipts – meaning there is no way to determine that all carbon tax receipts will be allocated to the targeted areas by 2030.
Update: This article was amended on 27 November to reflect Sinn Féin’s view that the 5,000 hospital beds it would provide with Apple tax money are a form of capital expenditure. On the same date, a correction was also made to a figure referring to the use of income from carbon tax; the original figure misplaced a decimal point and stated incorrectly that just €82.96 million was put towards environmental schemes.
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