Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

Is trua nach bhfuil níos mó ama agam mar tá muid ag déileáil le buiséad atá chomh dona sin gur chóir dúinn mionscrúdú a dhéanamh air. Is ar éigean a bhfuil aon rud maith sa bhuiséad, rud nó dhó anseo agus ansiúd, ach seachas sin is ceann de na buiséid is measa riamh é. Tuigimid ar fad go bhfuil cruachás ann faoi láthair, ach bhí seans ag an Aire athruithe bunúsacha a dhéanamh i dtaobh maoiniú na n-eagras deonacha timpeall na tíre. D'fhéadfadh sé difríocht mór a dhéanamh dóíbh siúd atá bocht nó i gcruachás. Sa tslí sin d'fhéadfadh sé athrú a dhéanamh ón mbun aníos agus cuidiú leis na daoine is leochailí sa tír. Ní dhearna sé sin. Uair amháin eile tá an Rialtas tar éis buiséid a thabhairt isteach a thugann buntáistí don lucht saibhir.

Over the last three days my colleagues have dealt in detail with various aspects of this bad budget. I will not repeat what they have said. As Sinn Féin spokesperson on justice, equality and human rights, I will focus on those areas. What does the budget mean for equality and human rights and the organisations that promote them? It is a roll back from where we had reached as a society. Progress had been made but it will be undermined and those groups who are most vulnerable to discrimination will become more vulnerable as a result.

What does the budget's rationalisation of State agencies mean for equality and human rights? The Combat Poverty Agency, a protector of the poor, has been axed. The Equality Authority and Human Rights Commission, and their facilities, back office, administrative services and access for citizens, are to be fully integrated. This is combined with a budget cut of over €3 million. The two organisations had an allocation between them of €8 million in 2008, so there is a 40% cut in funding. The Government claimed it had withdrawn its proposal during the summer to merge the two agencies, but the consequence of this budget is akin to an amalgamation which, with the budget cut, will dilute the ability of these important watchdogs to carry out their functions and will restrict their activities.

What did the Human Rights Commission do to deserve such an assault on its budget and independence? It put Government complicity with serious human rights abuses under the spotlight. Its recent report on extraordinary rendition and Shannon Airport springs to mind. What will the 43% cut in funding to the Equality Authority mean? The ESRI has demonstrated that just 6% of those who report discrimination make a formal complaint or take legal action. In 2007, the Equality Authority dealt with 737 case files, yet that represented only a fraction of those who contacted it for assistance. The 43% cut means that the gap between the high level of need in seeking redress against discrimination and the level of advocacy available will grow even further.

There is a 5% cut in funding for the free legal advice centres. Some might consider that small but given that the centres were already underfunded it means important legal rights to equality will simply not be realised. The budget means that important cases will not be brought before the courts to protect fundamental public interest issues. Public interest cases that highlight and force progressive changes to legislation and policy might never be taken. Cases that oppose discrimination on age grounds, such as the prohibition on persons over 70 serving on juries, cases that oppose physical barriers to persons with disabilities, such as the failure of pubs and hotels to provide accessible toilets, cases that force the provision of education to children with special needs and cases aimed at achieving legal recognition for transsexual people might never be taken if the Minister proceeds with this punitive budget cut. The budget jeopardises the future of public interest legal activism. It means that more people, who are by definition vulnerable because their fundamental rights have been compromised, will have to fight their battles alone, if at all.

The Children Acts Advisory Board is to be subsumed into the Office of the Minister for Children. This is regrettable as the independence of this important statutory body may be compromised. Hopefully, it will not. The Minister has the best interests of children at heart but it is often difficult for an organisation or body that is subsumed into the Department to have the same independence. I notice a theme to the Government's rationalisation agenda — it is to sideline or subsume oversight functions.

With regard to funding for disabilities under the Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform Vote, there are cuts across the board and in terms of service delivery. The Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Mary Harney, has also announced monumental cuts. In 2005, the Government detailed a multi-annual funding package which committed €50 million to disability and mental health services. This was a sop to make up for its refusal to give services as a right to the disabled. However, only €10 million is being allocated in budget 2009. This reduction is additional to the €83 million earmarked for these services but which were redirected elsewhere in the black hole of the HSE last year. As was highlighted by the Disability Federation of Ireland, the impact of the promised €10 million will be wiped out by the 1% cut in the funding allocation for voluntary service providers, which was announced by the HSE earlier this year. Deputy Finian McGrath, who is propping up this Government, should take note of my remarks.

Funding related to gender equality and women's issues is also to be cut. Grants to national women's organisations are down 5% and funding for equality proofing is down 30%. Interestingly, funding for the new COSC office to address domestic, sexual and gender based violence is down 18%, while funding for equality monitoring is down 8% and funding for gender mainstreaming and positive action for women is down 45%. This is happening at a time when the gender pay differential remains high, women still get sacked for being pregnant, the rate of attrition for sexual offences is unrivalled and domestic violence continues to be a common occurrence.

The right to privacy and to the protection of one's identity is also on the chopping block. Resources for the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner are being cut by 9% despite weekly revelations of departmental laptops going missing, failures by Departments, State agencies and private companies to encrypt sensitive personal data and Garda warnings of identity theft. Ever greater quantities of personal data are being retained by more agencies, from more people, for longer periods. Data is being transferred across borders at an unprecedented rate without adequate protection. To pare back resources for this office is to expose innocent people to serious risks with little hope of redress.

Another victim of the budget in the human rights area is the Garda Ombudsman Commission. The various reports published this year, including the Morris reports and Hartnett report, demonstrate the indispensability of an effective and independent mechanism to deal with complaints made against the Garda Síochána. The Garda Síochána Ombudsman Commission is vital to the recovery of public confidence in the Garda, to the prevention of Garda abuses and to redress where they occur. As a result of inadequate funding the commission is not capable of carrying out its mission. The 5% cut to its budget will compound the problem. It has been so under-resourced that it has been mooted that proposals have been made to lease back responsibility for investigation to the Garda itself. This must not happen. The commission was set up because the existing body, the Garda Complaints Board, was so ineffective as to warrant no expenditure. The Government should increase funding for the commission substantially for the good of communities and for the force itself.

I will turn now to the speech of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy Dermot Ahern. Yesterday in the Dáil he engaged, not for the first time, in the worst type of gutter politics and used parliamentary privilege to repeat lies published in a Sunday newspaper. I remind the Minister that Sinn Féin is the only party to publish its audited accounts on an annual basis. It is Sinn Féin that has been calling on the Government to publish legislation to compel political parties to publish their accounts. Fianna Fáil has rejected this.

Where are the Fianna Fáil accounts? Why is it afraid to publish them? Who are the people filling the coffers of the Fianna Fáil party? Should we just look to those who benefited most from the most recent budgets? Sinn Féin will not take any lectures from a Minister in a Government that has just condemned, in the budget, the most vulnerable people in our society to pay for its economic incompetence. It is not just a reaction to a global economic downturn because particular problems have arisen in Ireland as a result of economic incompetence on the part of successive Fianna Fáil-led Governments.

Aside from that nonsense, the Minister had precious little to say for himself and on behalf of his Government yesterday. He had nothing to say about the implications of the budget for equality and human rights, the implications of which I have just outlined. He could not defend the indefensible. He did say that his "greatest priority is the fight against crime" and that this was why he "put the money where it should be". I beg to differ.

Crime prevention measures are being cut by a whopping 32%. The Minister has made much in recent months of his so-called victims initiative. Rather than attacking long-established and fundamental due process rights, he would do better reducing the number of victims in the first instance through investing in the prevention of crime. Ultimately, investing in crime prevention would more than pay for itself.

The prisons budget is to remain unnecessarily high. Had the Government progressed the long-promised enforcement of fines Bill instead of kicking it to touch, as it did again by way of the legislative programme, spending on prisons could have been greatly reduced. That Bill could have provided alternatives to incarceration for the non-payment of fines. Community service orders cost a fraction of their custodial equivalents and have also been proven to more effectively prevent re-offending, thereby offering the potential of significant savings. Instead, the Government dumped that Bill from the legislative programme for this session and is now cutting the allocation for probation services for offenders by 7% and for the probation and welfare service as a whole by 3%. This is a foolish and expensive policy choice. The Government has consciously chosen to pursue this costly and ineffective approach to crime with taxpayers' money, which is criminal.

I would like to have had the time to address the scandalous cuts associated with medical cards. Drugs are at the root of so much crime that any effective approach is necessary. It is a testament to the failure of the Government that cuts in the order of 5% are to affect the drugs initiatives and young people's facilities and services fund at a time when drugs are becoming increasingly rampant. The funding should have been increased by 100% or 200%. Not doing so demonstrates how ineffective and stupid the Government is in its approach to the budget. I condemn it.

See this speech in context