Séamus Brennan (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

On MABS, last year's budget gave a special allocation of €700,000, which was exactly the same amount that been removed earlier in one of the cuts referred to by the Deputy. I restored that funding but left it to the discretion of the MABS management as to where it fitted best. One must realise that since 1996, taxpayer spending on this area has doubled. It has moved from €5.7 billion up to €12.2 billion in just a few of years. Child benefit, for example, has increased by 65% over the same period. Therefore, there have been substantial increases with taxpayer funding going into it.

The Deputy has probably heard me say a thousand times that a third of all Government spending is accounted for by this area. That is not to say that I am complacent, however. I take the point made by the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and the Deputies opposite. There are real social issues in society still to be dealt with and people are still struggling.

I do not see that figure of 300,000 in the Society of St. Vincent de Paul submission unless somebody can point it out to me. It is a figure that I saw in the newspapers, but I do not see it in the report and it is not in the chairman's foreword. I would not like that figure to take hold before we can confirm the statistics in this area. Deputies have also heard me talk many times, and there is some degree of agreement in the House on this, about the frustration caused by different poverty measurements. We have made massive strides but we cannot afford to be complacent. That is why the increases will continue.

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