Martin Mansergh (Tipperary South, Fianna Fail)

I welcome the Bill and the overall size of the social welfare package which is just short of €1 billion. This would certainly be one of the larger packages of recent years and has allowed increases to be made substantially ahead of inflation, giving a certain margin of safety, even allowing for the fact, as has been pointed out in contributions opposite, that certain items are rising disproportionately.

The measure I welcome most of all is the increase for dependant spouses of pensioners. This means a couple will get €423.30 which is up from €382.30. In 2009, the dependant spouse will be on an equal level. This increase represents 11%, which is certainly far ahead of inflation.

We are on target to hit one of the most important of our election pledges, which is to increase the pension to €300 by 2012. As the Minister pointed out, this is having an impact, in that there has been a decline in the risk of poverty among the elderly from 30% five years ago to 13.6% in 2005 or 2006. The figure will probably be lower again next year.

An extra week of the free fuel allowance worth €18 per week has been announced. Given the rise in energy prices, I would like to see a focus on this in the future also.

I welcome the increased carer's allowance. Carers do an enormously important and valuable job which deserves recognition.

Child benefit, which used to be called children's allowance, is also up to €166 a week, which compares to just over £30 in 1997. I am also pleased to see the grant of €1,000 has been increased by 10% to €1,100. Since 1997, child care costs have risen considerably and nobody is pretending this covers all or most of the extra cost but, nonetheless, it is a valuable contribution in what was up to ten or 12 years ago a very neglected area.

Deputy Varadkar referred briefly to community employment schemes. He correctly stated that they are in some respects sheltered employment, but they are valuable, not alone for the participants but for a variety of community and non-commercial organisations. There are artificial rules applying to the older cohort, rather than the people in their 20s or 30s, where they are happy in employment doing an invaluable job. Their positions should be secured as they can be difficult to replace.

I would be interested in a debate on social welfare reform. To be fair to Ministers dating back over 20 years to the Commission on Social Welfare report, there has been a good deal of social welfare reform and the present project will bring qualified dependants to the levels of spouses.

This debate has been peppered with comparisons between pay rises for the Taoiseach and Ministers and welfare. Much of this has been driven, not just by the Opposition but by the media. Today's Irish Independent referred to lavish rises being foolish and so on. I got out from my horde of cuttings an article from 6 May 2002, "O'Reilly's salary more than doubled in a year", which states that Independent News & Media executive chairman Dr. Tony O'Reilly was paid a total of €876,000 last year, up from €390,000 in 2000. There was a row in The Irish Times two or three years ago about the basic salaries of the editor and the manager of approximately €323,000 — more than we are speaking of. I do not object to what those organisations pay themselves, but could they please spare us some of the hypocrisy and craw thumping of the editorials? I regard the editors of those newspapers as having no moral authority to speak on the subject.

See this speech in context