Barry Andrews (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I would be amazed if any of the Opposition ever said anything nice about the Government or if any of them welcomed the great increases the Minister for Social and Family Affairs has achieved in his Department, on which I congratulate him. If the Opposition was honest, I am sure there are elements of the budget, if not whole sections of it, that it would love to have supervised. If it was honest it would concede that and that in the past ten years we have had unbelievable increases in the provisions under the Department of Social and Family Affairs, up to €12 billion, if I am not mistaken. In 1997 it was below €5 billion.

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