Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

——is the general principle common to social welfare systems throughout the world that a person is only entitled to one income or maintenance payment at any one time. That is how the issue arose.

Cases about the effects of this provision on widows have been made in this House and elsewhere and I do not need to restate them. The Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Coughlan, introduced €530 million worth of additional increases bringing her total budget to €11.26 billion. It is clear the Minister took account of general principles when considering this issue. She also considered, based on the data given to her at the time, the small fraction of the approximately 120,000 persons in receipt of non-contributory widower's pensions affected by this measure and tried to make provision for the €0.5 billion extra required from her budget.

Deputy Kenny is correct. The figures for the first quarter are better than those on which the Minister for Social and Family Affairs worked at that time. We should also take account, not that it is relevant only to this issue, of the 85% increase in the last few years in widow's contributory pensions for those aged over 65 and the increase of 55% for those under 66 years of age.

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