Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

There is no acceptable reason in this day and age for any person to be forced to live out his or her life in poverty. There is no reason our pensioners, who created the foundation for the economic success we now enjoy, whose sacrifices gave their children the opportunities they never had, should be forced to choose between paying the rent and heating their homes. While I welcome the increase in the State pension, the Government had the opportunity to ensure that senior citizens in this State would not be forced to live in poverty ever again, but it did not do that. In government, we in Sinn Féin would ensure that every senior citizen has a decent standard of living.

Just under 1 million people, almost one in four members of the population, are in receipt of a weekly social welfare payment of one kind or another. Many of these people are living in or at risk of poverty. The decision to increase social welfare payments is welcome, but much more should and could have been done. While people have a little more money in their pockets, €20 per week will soon be eaten up by ESB and gas bills and cost of living increases. That is the reality. Current increases across the board will gobble that up in next to no time whatsoever and there will be no appreciable change in people's circumstances.

Nearly 100,000 children live in consistent poverty in this State at a time when the Government has massive resources at its disposal. This is totally unacceptable. The vast majority of these children are in families reliant on social welfare or living on very low incomes. If the Government is serious about eliminating child poverty, it needs to substantially increase child income support, increase the minimum wage and address the spiralling costs in electricity, gas and food, all the essentials that families need and depend upon.

I particularly welcome the decision, however overdue, by the Government to increase the child dependant allowance. This has been a demand of children's poverty groups and a feature of Sinn Féin's pre-budget proposals for almost a decade. For ten years, the value of this allowance aimed at those children most in need has been allowed to decline. There was no increase and, with inflation, it steadily declined in value year after year. A succession of Ministers stood in this House and fatuously claimed that the allowance, €16 per week, needed to be kept low to prevent it becoming a disincentive to work. That was a shameless position to take for the ten years of this Government's term in office. It is very late in the day for the Minister to open his eyes to the need to increase that allowance.

In its pre-budget submission to the Minister, Deputy Cowen, Sinn Féin has called for a raft of areas to be addressed. It called for an increase in the minimum wage to €9.30 and for all those on this increased wage to be kept out of the tax net. I can identify nothing in the budget that meets this need. Sinn Féin also called for all those on the average industrial wage to be kept within the standard rate band of 20% for 2007. I accept the Minister has made this commitment but not at the required minimum wage level for which we have argued and which the Minister will find is argued for by many other social commentators. We wanted the child dependant allowance to be increased to €30 for all recipients, after a decade of non-address of that measure. Yet what did we get? It has been met in part, but still falls far short, at only €22, which was announced today. This is one area where the Minister could have made a difference for those children who are on the very lowest levels of income dependency. Those are the families most in need and those children deserved a better effort than €22, and they certainly deserved a better effort in each of the preceding nine budgets of this Government since 1997.

The increase of €10 in child benefit coincides with our argument and I am glad that the Minister, Deputy Cowen, is listening. What about reversing the announced cost hikes in electricity and other energy supplies? These matters have not been addressed. The energy regulator's intervention has resulted in reduced increases in 2007. It is akin to saying that instead of penalising people too much, we will only penalise them to a certain extent. These are not welcome increases, they are punitive increases that will affect the poorest families in our society most.

Having a job is not a guarantee that a family will be able to live free from poverty. Nearly 14% of households in poverty are headed by someone with a job, many of them, according to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, driven there by double taxes and stealth charges by a Government that claims to be a low tax administration while inflicting regressive taxes on working-class people. Yet there is little focus on addressing the plight of the working poor in this budget. The one significant measure to tackle low pay that was introduced in recent years is — I give credit where it is due — the minimum wage. When it was first introduced in 2000, it represented 54% of average industrial earnings. By June 2006, it represented just over 50%. We in Sinn Féin have called for the minimum wage to be increased to €9.30 from January 2007 so that it represents 60% of average industrial earnings and for everyone on and below the minimum wage to be kept out of the tax net. We also called for those on or below the average industrial wage to be kept in the standard rate tax band of 20%.

These measures would have had a major impact and would have helped those families cope with rising costs. Unfortunately, while the Minister kept those on the minimum wage out of the tax net, his failure to act boldly and decisively has ensured that more than 100,000 people will remain in poverty for yet another year. In examining the Minister's figures, I noted a striking feature, that those just below the average industrial wage, people on €30,000 per annum, gain least from this budget. Workers on €30,000 per annum will gain €8 per week, compared to gains of at least twice that per week for those on or above €35,000. This is another example of this warped thinking. We are not looking seriously at those most in need. The Minister is rewarding everyone across the board instead of focusing, as he should, on trying to eradicate poverty in our midst and giving young people, in particular, their right to reach their full potential in this life.

I believe there is widespread support across the island for putting the needs of those who are most vulnerable in our society first, our senior citizens, children and those on low incomes. Perhaps it is idealistic of me, but I have great faith in the Irish people. I believe the vast majority of people on this island who are doing well and have benefited from the economic boom also possess a strong social conscience. Certainly, the greater number of them have not lost that. Many people who have climbed the ladder of success have not sought to haul that ladder up after them. They may have been forced to take out private health insurance, but they feel ashamed when they see their fellow citizens on hospital trolleys and they may be able to ensure their children can attend university, but they feel sick at the sight of school children in need.

They may be sure of a safe and secure retirement but they were horrified by the revelations concerning Leas Cross. These are the realities and the Sinn Féin voices in Opposition want to see a different society, a society of equals. The Government has failed once again to grasp that point. Its members are but sticking-plaster operators responding to a raft of different demands. They are not people of vision and have failed once again to use a golden opportunity to make a critical difference in the lives of those who depend on them most. Shame on them for that.

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