Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael)

The Government has copped out from taking the hard decision to cap salaries or have a pay freeze and to deal with reform of the public service. Instead, almost 85% of the total budgets of the Departments of Health and Children and Education and Science go on salaries. Consequently, those who wish to make cuts without touching salaries will be obliged to fiddle around with 15% of the budget. This is the reason for all the stupid decisions that have become apparent since the budget last Tuesday. I wonder whether anyone foolproofed this budget before the Minister delivered it, as anyone who did so would have discerned the wrongdoing that was being perpetrated on two essential groups in society, namely, the elderly and our schoolchildren.

I am in my 60s and can remember my parents and many neighbours who were much older than me. They lived on scrapings in Ireland and fought to educate me and others when there was no free education. They paid high rates of tax, in excess of 70% or 80%, at times when things were bad. These are the people who were singled out in this budget to balance the books and to get the economy back on track. What a load of nonsense. The Minister for Health and Children has a budget of €15.8 billion and I will refer to the Minister for Finance's budget speech and the facts he presented therein. He stated: "Since the establishment of the HSE the number of whole-time equivalent staff has increased by 12%." The number of administrative staff alone has increased by approximately 1,900 since the executive's establishment. The Minister went on to state that the Government has decided that a targeted voluntary early retirement scheme will be introduced for the HSE and discussions are under way on the development of such a scheme. This will initially be targeted at surplus middle management and administrative staff, he added.

This is a Minister for Finance who admits the HSE, which has a budget of €15.8 billion, has surplus staff about which he has done nothing for a number of years. He has allowed the number of administrative staff to increase by 1,900. However, the single cut he sought in this area was to take medical cards from people who are over 70. What an extraordinary thing to do. Moreover, the Minister stated, with hand on heart, that we all must make sacrifices. This constitutes complete and utter mismanagement and cowardice of the worst order.

When this debate resumes tomorrow, I will deal with the subject of education in greater detail. However, I will refer to others who have been affected. I received an e-mail from a lady who spends her life looking after children with autism, particularly those who leave primary school and attend secondary school. Heretofore, at 16, such children were in receipt of a disability allowance of €197. It went to the family towards dealing with this terribly difficult problem. However, in this budget, the Minister has decided to take the allowance from 16 year olds and one now must be 18 before getting it. Although there are 1,900 surplus staff in the HSE, the elderly and the disabled have been hit. I refer to a disability allowance for a 16 year old whose parents must put up with tremendous hardship. They must travel for miles to get any sort of education for a child who is not capable of earning a living alone. This is the sort of cutback one gets when one funks the hard decisions and does not do one's job. In the past ten years, the Government has failed to do its job. I do not want to hear hypocritical comments that, having listened for the past week, the Government suddenly realised the hardship it was causing for old people by taking away their medical cards. What a load of nonsense.

One now hears that everyone, save the super rich, will retain them. To be super rich is to be someone on €700 a week, which is €36,400 per year. This is the exact figure to which the Minister for Finance, in his budget, has increased the standard 20% rate of tax. In other words, those who now are on the standard rate of tax are being called the super rich.

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