Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

In recent months, the Minister and her colleagues have repeated the mantra that their priority is to protect the vulnerable. While their media advice may be that people will start to believe something if it is repeated sufficiently often, their mantra is a patent and blatant untruth. The Minister has not fulfilled her responsibility to protect the weakest. Even in difficult times, her predecessors fought their corner on behalf of the least well-off. Thousands of people look to the Minister to protect their incomes but she has clearly bought into the right-wing agenda of cutting the incomes of those at the margins. Rather than protecting the weakest, she has protected the richest, the millionaires, while allowing savage cuts to the incomes of the poorest.

People have been completely misled by the Government spin we heard before the budget. If the Minister had any shame, she would think again about the position she holds. Perhaps her title should change to "Minister for Corporate Welfare" because she has protected the corporate welfare system. People with large incomes and substantial wealth are being entirely spared. The Government continues to facilitate those who have stashed away large amounts of money in pension schemes or property based schemes to avoid tax. The Minister, in protecting the strongest and wealthiest and hitting those on the lowest incomes, is engaging in morally indefensible and unacceptable behaviour. Her job is to protect those on social welfare.

Economically, it is stupid to cut social welfare benefits because recipients cannot afford to save them and, by and large, spend every penny of their payment in local shops and on local services. This helps the economy. The Government is proposing to remove from the economy 4% of all social welfare payments while leaving untouched those who are best able to carry some of the burden, namely, people who can stash away or spend large sums abroad. This does little to help the economy. The Minister's approach does not make sense economically.

The Minister referred to the consumer price index, CPI. While we are all aware of the headline CPI figures, it is necessary to drill down into them. For example, the figure changes significantly if one removes housing from the equation. Although people with mortgages have benefited from interest rate reductions, many of those in receipt of welfare benefits do not have a mortgage. For such persons, the deflation rate is, therefore, much closer to 3% than 6%.

The Minister decided to cut social welfare payments by 4%. In addition, the value of the payments has declined by 2% as a result of the abolition of the Christmas bonus. A significant number of social welfare recipients will also be hit by the increase in the threshold for the drug payments scheme. In real terms, the increase in costs from this measure is close to 2.5% because those affected by it will have to spend an additional €5 per week on medicines. Those in receipt of rent supplement will suffer a 4% cut. For a large number of recipients of social welfare payments, therefore, the cumulative effect of the cuts in payments will be approximately 12.5%. There is no defence for imposing a cut of in excess of 12% in the income of many social welfare recipients.

The Vincentian Partnership for Justice and other groups have done detailed research which shows that in most cases welfare payments are not sufficient to enable recipients, especially families with children, to live life with any kind of basic dignity. The reason we have a national anti-poverty strategy is to ensure Government Ministers should not introduce new proposals without first assessing how the proposals will impact on the poor. Every budget since 1998 has been poverty-proofed, as required under the national anti-poverty strategy. The Cabinet handbook states that memoranda for the Government involving significant policy proposals must indicate clearly the impact of the proposals on groups in poverty or at risk of falling into poverty. For the third time I ask the Minister to inform the House if she has complied with the requirement poverty-proof and assess the impact of these major proposals on people who are in poverty or at risk of poverty. Has this document been done and will she provide it?

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