Martin Cullen (Waterford, Fianna Fail)

I will break it down for the Deputy. It is made up of child benefit, child dependant allowance, the back to school clothing and footwear allowance and the early child care supplement. The total for a family with four children, one of whom is under six years, two over six and under 12 years and one over 12 years, is €15,009, to be accurate.

I have listed the payments to refute the point being made by Deputy Shortall. I do not expect anybody to survive on a payment of only €22. I have increased the figure to €24 a week, which is well ahead of cost of living allowances. I think the figure is around 9%, one of the biggest increases for which I provided. I admit I would love to give substantially more and do not argue that point but I did the right thing within the resources available to me. The payment is also targeted. If one considers all the rates payable, depending on the number of children in a family, the lowest weekly income payment per child works out at about €66.62, when across the board payments are taken into account. All families do not receive these payments but the bulk of the payments are made to the families most in need of them. This fact should be recognised in some way. Since 1994, when the policy of non-indexation of qualified child increase, QCI, was introduced, the combined child benefit-child benefit payment was increased by more than three times the rate of inflation.

This is the first year I have been responsible for the social welfare package in the Department of Social and Family Affairs. In the next 12 months my personal philosophy will be to try to target the resources at the less well-off. This is not necessarily the most popular policy either, as there are those who believe they should receive payments, irrespective of their means. However, while I agree there must be some universal payments, one must try to maximise the available resources by targeting them. One of the best ways of targeting resources is by benefiting children because they are the ones who are most vulnerable and need the great support of adults during childhood. People like ourselves who decide policy in these areas must do this. I have explained the figures as they relate to different numbers of children.

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