Eric Byrne (Dublin South Central, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I think I am the victim of Deputy Durkan's excesses. I thank Mr. Coffey for his rapid-fire and impressive presentation. For the life of me I do not know why the legal services segment has been dropped and we are reduced to four. I am very happy that we are quite capable of dealing with the four that are highlighted. In fact, why would one want to drop the legal services issue in favour of a solution for the restructuring of the majority of mortgages in arrears? We have been doing that consistently. However, what we have not been doing is reducing the bloody cost of legal services. Mr. Coffey is an expert in the field and he may be able to tell me what kind of juggling is going on that has resulted in the reduction in the list from the original seven items to these four.

I absolutely agree with the concept that nobody should be confined to welfare or have to live a life on welfare. It is repugnant to my feelings about citizenship and humanity. The State should encourage everybody. Work needs to be valuable and the rewards for going to work need to be greater than those of being on welfare. However, the issue of the lone parent allowance has been raised. I do not know whether Mr. Coffey advocated it, or where this thinking originated. It may have come from Europe. We want to remove people out of poverty. However, in so far as this policy of adjusting the lone parent allowance is concerned, of the 30,000 locked into that lone parent allowance system, the vast majority of them will be happy with the adjustments and will gain from them. However, there is a core of 4,000, mainly women, who will potentially lose and suffer from the adjustments. While we are all in favour of getting people back to work and facilitating them - the majority of lone parents on this allowance, with the adjustments, are likely to earn quite substantially more than their allowance - why do we need a system that is structured in such a way that 4,000 people who are lone parents will suffer? If Europe and the Irish Government agree and we all agree that we want to take people out of poverty traps - it is well documented that lone parents and their children are the most vulnerable to poverty - then why would the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and The Irish Timesbe arguing against the adjustments that are taking place?

In conclusion, I have two brief questions. Is Mr. Coffey arguing that our Government, which has done a phenomenal job in creating jobs and in turning the country around, would be overstepping the mark in the next budget? Is Mr. Coffey arguing that we should be putting the windfall of the success of economic growth into paying off our debts? We would argue that the economy is lively enough to be able to spread some of the benefits to a wider audience. I will conclude on that point. Mr. Coffey's presentation is very interesting. I apologise that we are under pressure of time, as this topic merits a more in-depth debate.