Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

We were only lads of 14 at the time but the work used to harden us up for the football.

The Minister could have doubled the payment to €18. This may sound like a churlish response, but we want those on social welfare to be compensated for the huge increases in fuel costs over the past year. The fuel allowance will still not buy a bag of coal or even the great Bord na Móna peat briquettes that we used to have.

I am inclined to laugh at the media and I do not pass too many remarks about them but I have read that thousands are better off staying on the dole after a giveaway budget. This reminds me of the case of widows. I identified the savage 16 cuts and it was only when someone spoke on the Joe Duffy programme in February that I realised I had identified that cut a long way back, in the preceding November. I had identified one of the Minister's problems in the budget. I am sure the Minister has people monitoring what the like of us say, but I will speak out inside the House or wherever else I can. They all say that thousands are worse off.

One of the objectives of any budget must be to eliminate poverty traps, but the Minister for Social and Family Affairs has created a monster. Both Richard Curran and David Quinn, correspondents on economic and social affairs recognise this. However, I do not know how Father Seán Healy missed it. He must have been so blinded by the light of Inchydoney that he can see nothing now and everything is sweetness and light.

I am just an ordinary Joe with no great experience in these matters, but I saw the poverty trap looming. I am deeply disappointed that nothing has been done to address the anomaly whereby people who take up work often lose their rent allowance. This means people must be able to command a wage significantly greater than the minimum wage to replace the loss of the rent allowance when they take up work. The Government failed to address this employment poverty trap. The budget was on 7 December, but the newspapers only ran this story five days later. I do not have a research team but rely on what I can dig up myself and I am proud to say that I was five days ahead of the newspapers. I know there is trouble on the way in this regard.

I have spoken to many people on this issue and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, is not an answer. The Minister must ensure that people who take up work are not disadvantaged to a point where they end up losing money, up to €7,000 a year. It is time to call the RAS a household subsidy. Housing benefit may have a bad name in Britain because of certain connotations, but we should provide a housing benefit or household subsidy payment to which we should attach two conditions. We should have the type of housing subsidy required for a two or three-bedroomed house, depending on the size of the family, and this subsidy should be determined by income, irrespective of whether the income comes through employment or the social welfare system. This is important. With such a system we would get over the anomaly that has been created.

Our social policy document sets this out and I am giving the Minister a preview. It is very important that we do not allow this provision to create poverty. The former Minister, Deputy Coughlan, missed out some areas in her budget when she made the savage 16 cuts, some of which were extremely savage. This provision could be the one to implode the Minister's budget. He may say that will not happen, but just watch this space. It is frightening for people to think they will lose all their benefits. This area has widespread ramifications and the Minister should pay it particular attention.

Another area of concern is that people in receipt of rent allowance who take up a return to education or FÁS community employment scheme lose their rent allowance if their income, up to now, is above the cap of €317.40 or the general cap for rent allowance, including the €60 disregard. A woman who came to me was in receipt of lone parent's allowance. She missed out on school when she was young and took up the community employment scheme which offered her a return to education to develop her literacy skills for the first time in her life. However, as a result of taking up that scheme, her rent allowance was cut off. She finds this disgraceful. Other people who have seen the results of this scheme agree with me. The rules applied mean that she must lose her home or lose the opportunity to become literate. This is not a nice choice. It is an issue we must address.

We have pointed out that schemes such as back to education and back to work allowances are not discarded. It is important that all these secondary benefits are not washed out in the flood, especially the rent allowance. That allowance has already been cut. The caps on supplementary welfare allowance make it practically impossible for homeless people to access quality accommodation in the private sector. The cap is between €70 and €98 for single people as set in June 2005 and applicable to December 2006. Local authority officials, community welfare officials and charities believe people cannot rent adequate housing within these caps. I want the Minister to address these issues.

Deputy Stanton referred to the issue of widows and widowers, an issue I have been addressing since I entered the House in 1992. The secondary benefit is very important to this sector at the emotional and traumatic time when they lose their partners. These benefits are critical at this time and we must seek some mechanism to ensure they retain them. Another area of concern is that of a working spouse who is entitled to a widow's or widower's pension and who should be entitled to two pensions when he or she reaches 66. Such a person wonders what happens to his or her own contributions or those of his or her deceased spouse and wonders whether they have just gone into the bin. Both widows and widowers are aggrieved about this. This is another time bomb as there are 112,000 such people. The Minister may say that he cannot breach principles and make two payments. However, if people pay into a scheme, they are surely entitled to a return. Otherwise, we are taking money under false pretences. We should hand it back. Something must be done in this regard as this is an important issue.

With regard to the provision of an additional four weeks' maternity leave, it would be better if the Minister brought the effective date back to 1 January instead of 31 March. Otherwise people will lose out. To be forewarned is to be forearmed. The Minister should try to deal with this before it becomes a major issue.

The issue of the disregard of income from the family income supplement when applying the spouse means test for the household benefit package is another area of concern. Let us take, for example, Jack and Jill — former Minister, Mr. McCreevy's friends who had been dumped — who are married with two children. Jack receives an invalidity pension while his wife works three days a week, more than 19 hours, to supplement the family income. On the other days she cares for her husband. On the basis of his invalidity pension, he qualifies for the household benefit package. However, once her earnings exceed a certain level, formerly €220 a week but this may have changed, an anomaly arises. While her earnings were below €220 a week she qualified for family income supplement, a payment designed to make work pay. However, her income from FIS is counted in the means test for the household benefit package.

In the case that came to my attention, the couple were denied the household benefit package because of the FIS payment. They had to make a choice between the two. Income from FIS denies their entitlement to the household benefit package. This is an oversight which undermines the purpose of FIS. This may be an unintended consequence of policy, but it should be reviewed. The obvious solution is to disregard the income from FIS in the means test for the household benefits package.

I have found another area of concern. Being a lawyer, one finds everything. Many parents never claim their child benefit in respect of the last month of their youngest child. This affects parents who are on book payments. The child benefit book covers from June to May. Children over 16 attending secondary school are normally certified by their school attendance, but many people forget to collect the payment for their youngest child for the month of June in the year the child leaves school. When the child leaves school they do not realise this payment is due. An information campaign would be useful in this regard or the Minister could align the child benefit year with the calendar year, as parents would notice the missing payment then.

It would be remiss of me not to raise the issue of carers. The greatest lacuna in this budget occurred with regard to carers. I know the Minister has said that anybody over 80 years gets €200 and that others get €180 plus. In terms of payment, this is only a few euro an hour. We would all end up in jail if there were enough inspectors to uncover how we are treating our carers. We all stand indicted in this regard.

The Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, should note the reaction of a carer from Offaly:

"I am just so mad, we're at the bottom of the list again," was the furious reaction of a carer from the home county of the Finance Minister last night.

Furious with the meagre scraps the Budget had to offer, . . . [the carer] from Tullamore, Co. Offaly, said the increase in her carer's allowance would make little difference to her life or that of her autistic and intellectually disabled 26-year-old daughter . . .

The Carers' Association was seeking a national carers' strategy. I take the Minister's point that there are about 50,000 full-time family carers but the only way forward is to abolish the means test. Tinkering around at the edges is insufficient. Abolishing the means test will cost €220 million or €250 million but one should bear in mind that we have lost some amount of money through various schemes that ensured people would become extremely wealthy. We do not even know how much some of these schemes cost or how much the beneficiaries were making because some beneficiaries never had to return a penny of their income in tax. Contrast their circumstances with those of carers, who are working for 24 hours per day, seven days per week, 52 weeks per year, apart from the time during which they benefit from some respite care. We are not prepared to take the final step.

If the Labour Party is ever in Government, a fundamental policy of mine will be to abolish the means test. We have caring on the cheap and this must not continue. People who are caring are becoming more ill and infirm than those they are caring for because they are working to their wits' end. I accept the Minister has made some improvements in respect of the disregards and increased the respite care grant by €200. Approximately 500 additional people will gain from his measures but we still have not reached 25,000, which is half the number of full-time carers. This is a major lacuna and it is very sad we have not addressed it. We must find the €250 million to do so. Given the Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, is from Tullamore, that the head office of the Carers' Association is in Tullamore and that the chief executive lives there, I would not be surprised if Deputy Cowen love-bombed the Minister for Social and Family Affairs with money for carers. He should keep the pressure on the Minister for Finance because everybody knows all politics is local, as Tipp O'Neill stated.

The Minister for Finance will have to provide the money and the means test will have to be abolished. It is costing more to administer than it is worth. Carers deserve its abolition. We need specific targets in the strategy to be implemented in a clearly defined period. Why not make this part of the new social partnership agreement, if it is ever agreed? Carers are part of the community and voluntary pillar but the social partners in the broader sense should be taking this on board.

Consider the area of disability. Deputy Stanton made a very elucidating presentation in respect of the disability payment. Much work needs to be done in this area, including in respect of the mobility allowance and disabled drivers' and passengers' tax concessions.

The Minister has included some very positive measures in the budget, which the Opposition sought. We are possibly on our way to unmasking the only socialist in Fianna Fáil. The Taoiseach certainly is not one but we may have found a socialist streak in the Minister for Social and Family Affairs. We in the Labour Party would have done some of the things he has done but there are areas in which we would have done much more. We would have made the rich pay more to ensure those who are more in need would benefit.

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