Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

Funding has been reduced to primary and secondary schools that are already struggling just to pay electricity and cleaning bills. School transport costs are up. Registration fees are up by €600. On that front also I refer to the abolition of child benefit for 18 year old students because that will have a huge impact in terms of education. I do not know if Ministers understand that some teenagers struggle to stay on in school because their families are poor. The withdrawal of child benefit from 18 year old students who are in school would put enormous pressure on them at a time when they are already finding it difficult. It is criminal to abolish child benefit for people in those circumstances. We will reap the rewards of that downstream in terms of a higher level of school drop out.

The changes in the budget have all the hallmarks of a Minister for Social and Family Affairs who has little interest in her portfolio and who cares even less. Let us examine some of the things that are happening. The introduction of the new employment levy means a pensioner with an occupational pension will be taxed on the part of his or her income that does not come from social welfare. A pensioner with an income from an occupational pension of €10,000 will have to pay €100 in tax. That claws back €100 of the extra €7 per week from his or her State pension. The income of such pensioners will rise by a mere 1.2%. That will go nowhere in terms of keeping abreast of the increases in the cost of living.

A lone parent receiving a one-parent family payment and rent supplement who has a part-time job earning €70 per week will lose from the budget. While such a person will gain €6.50 per week on his or her welfare payment, €2 per week for one child and a possible €2 on fuel allowance, he or she will have to hand back immediately €5 in extra contributions to her rent supplement. Out of a welfare increase of €6.50 there is an immediate clawback leaving a net increase of €1.50. That is shameful. The overall increase for such a person is 1.5%, which is nowhere near what is needed to keep pace with the cost of living. Things get worse for lone parents with dependants aged over 18. The measures announced to compensate for the loss of child benefit will not go anywhere near compensating such a person. If one does the sums on that, one will see that those people, undoubtedly, will be worse off.

Much of the detail of the budget did not come out yesterday. One had to read the small print. Having gone through the Budget Statement, the Labour Party has identified 30 new charges, stealth taxes, cuts and reductions in services that were included in the budget, which were largely kept hidden away in the small print. We have called those the treacherous 30. Those 30 treacherous cuts, individually and cumulatively, will have an extraordinarily negative impact on ordinary working families, people on average incomes and those dependent on welfare. Those cuts are a shameful indictment of the kind of inequality pursued by the Government over many years and which continue in these hard times. All of the cuts were specifically chosen by the Government to balance the budget. They are cuts that specifically target ordinary people. They represent an extraordinary betrayal of trust and an abandonment of the weakest. Far from protecting the vulnerable they force the vulnerable and those on average incomes to carry the can and bear the brunt of the mistakes made by the Government to bail it out while the rich get away with paying little in terms of contributing to sorting out the current mess. By any standards this is a shameful budget and members of the Government should be ashamed of it.

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