Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after "That" and substitute the following:

"in view of the series of measures announced in budget 2009 and proposed in the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2008 which target the unemployed, children, the poor and people with disabilities resulting in the fact that

unemployed people will lose over €2,500 due to changes to jobseekers benefit,

parents of 18 year olds will lose almost €2,000 due to changes to child benefit,

parents of 5 year olds will lose approximately €800 due to changes to early childcare supplement,

tenants dependent on rent supplement will effectively get no increase at all in 2009 due to increases in the minimum contributions they must now make to their rent,

fewer unemployed people will qualify for jobseeker's benefit because of new restrictions on entitlement,

fewer people with disabilities, injuries or illnesses will qualify for welfare support, and for those who do, the duration of payment has been capped,

part-time workers will receive less when they claim jobseekers benefit because of a new cap on their rate of payment,

Dáil Éireann declines to give a Second Reading to the Bill.".

The Labour Party is vehemently opposed to the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2008 on the basis that it contains several cuts which can only be described as savage. The most cynical aspect of the manner in which the Government has dealt with the budget and the Bill before the House has been the campaign it engaged in for a number of weeks in advance of the budget. It engaged in an active campaign of spinning, to the effect that whatever else would happen in the budget, it would protect the vulnerable. It is clear that such comments have been shown to be a complete lie. This budget and this legislation have been set out specifically to target the weakest and most vulnerable sections of society. I do not doubt that the result of this legislation will be the imposition of severe suffering on the unemployed, children, the poor and those with disabilities. It is a shameful Bill, just as it was a shameful budget.

One of the most serious aspects of the provisions of this legislation is the manner in which the Government is proposing to treat those who find themselves unemployed. Having emerged from a period when the Government over relied on receipts from the construction industry and the housing boom in spite of warnings on many occasions of the dangers involved and having concentrated foolhardily on the construction industry, an additional 100,000 people are on the live register compared to this time last year. In addition, those who need to turn to the State for assistance at one of the most difficult times of their lives when, through no fault of their own, they are unemployed will discover the State is not there to provide the safety net they thought it would. It is particularly cruel that the Minister has decided to target those claiming unemployment or jobseekers' benefit by introducing changes for new claimants, which she will impose on current claimants who had a legitimate expectation that they would be able to claim over a certain period.

She is kicking the unemployed when they are down. They expect to look to her for assistance to help them cope with the traumatic circumstances in which they find themselves as they try to provide for their families at a difficult stage in their lives, but she is kicking them when they are down, which is reprehensible on her part. One can contrast that treatment with the Government's treatment of the banks in recent weeks. The Government parties have been generous by stepping in to provide them with a safety net at huge expense to taxpayers, yet all they can do is show the cold shoulder to those who find themselves unemployed and target them with cutbacks. It did not have to be like this. It is cynical of the Minister to essentially state in her contribution that at a time when public expenditure must be tightly controlled, she had no choice but to target the vulnerable. That is a lie.

The Government parties had difficult choices about how they would balance the books. They had a number of options which she chose to ignore. My party leader, Deputy Gilmore, has identified a number of different areas in which they should have raised revenue or imposed cuts on people who did well and became multimillionaires over recent years. They left these people unscathed and chose to leave them with their money. Instead, they targeted the weakest and the most vulnerable and the Minister should take responsibility for them because they look to her for income support. She should protect them but she has utterly failed to do so.

The Government could have raised up to €2 billion a year if it had decided to target those who paid little or no tax in recent years. For example, landlords who receive tax breaks worth more than €500 million remain untouched. Property developers can avoid stamp duty and if the Government had closed off that tax dodge, it could have raised €250 million but they remain untouched. More than 8,000 people are in small self-administered pension schemes to which they have contributed more than €500 million, much of it tax free, but they were left alone.

The budget was shameful, as is this legislation, because the Government has gone out of its way to target the most vulnerable. As well as hitting the unemployed, I have many other difficulties with this legislation. For example, it provides for an increase of approximately 3% in most social welfare payments. Inflation is running at 4.3% and food and fuel costs have increased at more than the rate of inflation. An increase of 3% will not enable people to keep pace with inflation. All social welfare recipients will suffer a reduction in the value of their payments. They will receive a paltry increase in the fuel allowance. As Age Action Ireland pointed out, the miserable increase of €2 a week will not even buy a packet of firelighters. There has been no mention of the long promised strategy to tackle fuel poverty. This is a huge problem facing people on low incomes because of their inability to pay the increased cost of fuel and because many live in poorly insulated houses. No progress has been made on producing a strategy in this area.

The living alone allowance was not increased. Additional help has not been provided to this most vulnerable group since 1996. If the payment had kept pace with the consumer price index, it would now be worth €15 per week. Instead, the Minister has chosen, like her predecessors, to ignore the fact that it costs a single pensioner 70% of what it costs a pensioner couple to live. The Vincentian Partnership's research is valuable in this regard. The Minister has chosen to ignore that it is more expensive for a single pensioner to live than one member of a pensioner couple and that is not recognised in the welfare provisions in the legislation.

More than €1 billion in additional spending will be allocated to pay for new claimants rather than for improvements to schemes or rates. The Minister made a great deal of the increase in the allocation to her Department while conveniently ignoring the fact that the bulk of the additional spend will be devoted to new claimants and will not benefit those dependent on welfare. The welfare package is only half of what it was last year. Overall, it is extremely disappointing.

The proposals relating to the Money Advice and Budgeting Service appear rushed. For example, I could find no reference to financial mediation services run by MABS, which is one of its core services. I wonder whether the proposal has been properly thought through. Perhaps in her reply, the Minister might outline how much will be saved by this measure, where the savings will arise, the potential job losses and the consultations, if any, in which she engaged both with the Citizens Information Board and MABS.

I have serious reservations about the new definition of a "parent" vis-À-vis the one-parent family payment contained in section 13. Departmental officials explained at a briefing that the move is to deal with irregularities in how such a parent is defined, but I am concerned that in trying to include additional categories of parents, others will be excluded. I will come back to this later but I thank the officials for providing a briefing earlier, which was worthwhile.

The Bill, along with regulations, will result in ten principal cuts that will severely affect welfare recipients. I will go through them because it is important that all Members are fully aware of the nature and extent of these cuts. I am tempted to circulate details on them to members of the Government parties, and particularly to their backbenchers, so that they are aware of what their constituents will be complaining about at the start of January when the public realises the extent of the cuts being imposed by the Government and how their entitlements have been restricted. It is important that all Members of the House are fully aware of those cuts so that they can make up their own minds tomorrow night when it comes to voting for or against this Bill, and that everybody is clearly on the record as being aware of the extent of the cuts and either voting for or against them.

The first cut will mean that all future jobseeker payment recipients will receive three months less benefit and will each lose over €2,500 in entitlement. The second cut will mean that several existing jobseeker claimants will receive three months less benefit and will each lose over €2,500 in entitlement. Whatever about the Minister imposing such swingeing cuts on new claimants, I cannot recall a situation where cuts of this extent were imposed on existing claimants. Somebody coming up to his or her sixth month in receipt of jobseeker's benefit was legitimately expecting, having paid into the Social Insurance Fund and having qualified under the existing legislation, a further nine months' payments. However, as a result of what Minister is proposing here, such a person will find he or she is only entitled to an additional six months. I cannot remember that happening previously, where people who were already in receipt of a claim found their entitlement cut.

The third cut will mean new applicants, especially those with intermittent work records, will find it harder to qualify for jobseeker's benefit, health and safety benefit and illness benefit. The fourth cut will mean the entitlement of the sick or people with a disability to illness benefit will be restricted to two years.

The fifth cut will mean more restrictions on how the mortgage interest supplement operates, including the possibility that the duration of the supplement will be restricted by the HSE and a maximum amount set. The sixth cut will mean that welfare claimants who rely on mortgage interest supplement and rent supplement will only receive a net increase of approximately €1.50 per week because of increases in the minimum they must contribute to their housing costs. This is one of the most shameful aspects of the budget. The Minister, Deputy Hanafin, should be seriously embarrassed to be the person introducing a provision whereby a significant number of welfare recipients will only receive an increase of €1.50 per week in the coming year. It is shameful how the Minister could impose such a significant cut in real terms in the welfare payments of the most vulnerable, the poorest, in society.

The seventh cut will mean that fewer people will qualify for the one-parent family payment because of changes to how a single parent is defined. The eighth cut will mean that parents of an 18 year old will lose almost €1,000 in 2009 and almost €2,000 in 2010 and in future years. The ninth cut will mean the parents of a five year old will lose roughly €800 because of the series of changes to the early childhood supplement. The tenth cut will mean low-paid part-time workers, typically the school caretaker, home-help worker or office cleaner, will have their entitlement to the maximum rate of jobseeker's benefit restricted.

By any yardstick, they are ten savage cuts and ten good reasons to reject this legislation. In short, the cuts mean the Bill will result in increased emigration, in many people finding themselves destitute and in devastation for many dependent on welfare payments. I refer again to what the Minister proposes for those who find themselves unemployed. They will lose out significantly under this Bill and I really do not know what is the justification for that.

The Minister, Deputy Hanafin, is inclined to be flippant. She is relatively new in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, but she has shown no understanding whatsoever for the situation in which people find themselves when they lose their jobs. If she can stand here and tell me it is acceptable that people who find themselves in that difficult situation can afford to lose €2,500, then she is living on another planet. Do people not come to her clinic and explain the difficulties they encounter surviving on the meagre payments available to the unemployed? They certainly come to my clinic and I think they come to most people's clinics. It is exceptionally difficult for such people to survive. The Minister is saying that not only must they continue to so survive, but that she, through measures proposed in this legislation, will actually reduce their entitlement by €2,500. Similarly, the Bill is particularly vicious in how it treats other categories of people who find themselves unemployed.

Regarding the specific targeting of children in this legislation, a number of the measures are shameful. Earlier, during Question Time, I raised the issue of the proposed cuts to child benefit. The first point is that this year, for the first year in my memory, there is no increase in the amount of the child benefit payment. That is extraordinary. With increases in the cost of living and increasing numbers of families finding it difficult to survive, there is no increase whatsoever in child benefit and, in fact, a serious cut for 18 year olds. As I told the Minister earlier, she has experience of the Department of Education and Science and, of all people, she should know that this will have an extremely negative impact on the participation rates of 18 year olds from poor families.

The Minister will be aware that the financial pressures on 18 year olds, and on teenagers generally, in poor families are extraordinary. Although she knows that in many cases financial pressures drive young people out of education, the Minister has decided in this legislation, and in the budget, that those poor families can afford to be hit to the tune of €38 per week.

During that important year when a teenage child aged 18 from a poor family is struggling to stay in school to do the leaving certificate, the Minister is telling that family she will dock it almost €2,000. On what basis does she think those families can take that kind of hit? I do not know that there is any basis for that decision. That is why I asked her earlier if she had given any consideration to the likely impact of this vicious cut on the participation rates of poor children in second level education. I can only conclude that she has given no consideration whatsoever to it because there is no justification for this vicious cut.

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