Timmy Dooley (Clare, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

All the Minister is doing is driving poor people into the clutches of moneylenders because she knows full well that there are a couple of key occasions in the life-cycle of families - births, marriages, weddings and deaths - when they forget about the cost at the time and try to deal with it afterwards. When it comes to death, that is most acute. This is one of the most outrageous cuts in this Bill. People cannot haggle with the undertaker and they will go to whoever is available. There is usually only one person in an area in rural Ireland, so it is not as if one can haggle or force down the price.

I am not a particular fan of Joe Duffy's radio show but I happened to be in the car today when it was on. An elderly lady, who was quite distraught, said that with this Government we cannot afford to live but now we cannot afford to die. It was quite heart-rending to hear an elderly person who is worried about her husband and how she will face the crisis of trying to deal with the personal loss and the financial burden associated with it. The Minister can wrap herself in the Sunday newspapers and believe she has somehow won the war and convinced some journalist that the issue should not fall at her feet. However, she will not convince that woman who was on Joe Duffy's radio show today that she has not been implicated in these swingeing cuts or that somehow a core payment has not been impacted.

The reduction in the jobseeker's allowance for those under 25 is an insult to young people. We are trying to give confidence to young people to create employment and to seek work but we are now saying to them that they are somehow lesser individuals and that they do not deserve as much as others. Many people are married with a family at 25 years of age but we are saying they are somehow a lesser entity. That is an outrageous way to instil confidence in the youth of this country - the people to whom we turn to drive this country forward. Youth unemployment is out of line in Ireland. Some 30.5% of the 15 to 24 age cohort are unemployed while the average in Europe is approximately 22.9%. Again, those are OECD figures. It is discriminatory and pro-emigration as young people who find themselves out of work will leave.

There is an indication that standardisation is a way to resolve the issue of maternity benefit. Some 3% will gain while 97% will lose.

When the cut in maternity benefit is taken together with what was inflicted last year, it has the effect of taking approximately €70 from the purses of young mothers. That is disgraceful and despicable.

I will conclude by referring again to a quotation I used during last night's Private Members' debate. In November 2005, when the Minister for Social Protection was in opposition, she described the then Government's proposals as being "as worthy of credibility as an Al Capone declaration of innocence". If she was to apply that statement to her continuous bleating to the effect that neither she nor her Government colleagues have reduced core social welfare pay, it would be an apt and fitting recognition of her ineptitude in this regard.

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