Liz McManus (Wicklow, Labour)

A man who came into my clinic in a rural part of Wicklow the other night said he always voted Labour for which I was very grateful, but he proceeded to tell me why. He said it was because when he was unemployed social welfare provisions were changed — I think I am correct in saying that Deputy Burton was Minister of State in the Department at the time when Labour was in Government — to enable people continue on unemployment payments while they were creating a job for themselves. The most striking aspect of the budget is the fact that there is nothing in it that one could describe as an economic stimulus. There is nothing in the budget, or, indeed, in the legislation flowing from it such as this Bill, which indicates that the Government has any intention of ensuring people end up not dependent on social welfare but employed and paying taxes, as the rest of us fortunate enough to be working are able to do.

Unemployment is the single biggest issue. It drains economic power out of people. It drains families of hope. It has significant consequences in communities. We all have been there before. We know the extent of the toxic effect of high unemployment.

The importance of dealing with unemployment and ensuring that jobs are both protected and generated is recognised in Great Britain and in the US. Facing financial turbulence, there is still the core recognition difficult that we need an economic stimulus package to ensure that people are not dependent unnecessarily on social welfare but can work for a living. Indeed, it is interesting to note that the IMF makes the point that this should be a global approach. In little Ireland, what we see is a budget that seems to determine that thousands of people will end up on social welfare unnecessarily because of a political approach so myopic it is determined to simply cut back in the case of the most vulnerable and try to weather the storm in that way.

We know what is happening. Fine Gael is the party which pointed out that every three minutes a job is being lost. Predominantly, the job being lost is in the construction industry. We are speaking about people with skills, experience and training who would be well able, for example, as the Labour Party has proposed, to participate in and contribute to a school building programme and, with a certain amount of retraining, to a national insulation scheme. A national insulation scheme would provide a double benefit. It is not just about keeping people at work. It is also about ensuring that our total energy bill is reduced.

We face a major challenge in terms of the commitments up to which we must live to tackle climate change. I have just come from the Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security which heard a presentation from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. There is a strong argument, which I would endorse, that in no way should Irish agriculture be expected to live up to the 20% reduction. We are good at growing grass and rearing cattle and that is what we should be doing in terms of future food security. However, that means in other areas there must be even greater efforts to ensure we meet targets and, in my view, there is nowhere more beneficial than a national insulation programme.

It is pathetic the way fuel poverty is being dealt with. The provision of €2 extra and two extra weeks' allowance borders on insult to people trying to struggle with very steeply increasing fuel bills. Last week when I raised with the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Ryan, the extent of the problem of people living in fuel poverty, he did not even have information on how many are affected, either by permanent or intermittent fuel poverty. Despite the fact that a fuel energy research project was set up in 2006 and the findings of that group, which is supposedly working on fuel poverty, were promised and should have been already published, the Minister, Deputy Ryan, proudly states he is part of an interdepartmental group looking at why people cannot manage to keep themselves warm this and every other winter. The answer is fairly obvious, that fuel prices have gone up, people's incomes have not gone up, there are more people on social welfare and there is a grossly inadequate provision in terms of the fuel allowance.

Age Action Ireland clearly stated its beliefs. According to data from fairly reputable sources in the non-governmental area, it would represent many of the 60,000 people living in permanent fuel poverty and 160,000 living in intermittent fuel poverty. That is a significant cohort of our people. Age Action Ireland has argued that the fuel allowance should be increased to €30, that there should be an increased payment starting in October-November, and that there should be the obvious provision made for two simple payments, in October and January, to facilitate those with oil-fired central heating.

Often people do not recognise the difficulty. We all picture the old lady trying to keep warm in her house because it is poorly insulated and because she cannot afford to put coal on the fire. However, it is reckoned that 2,000 people in a winter die from cold-related conditions. We have a high level of mortality from that kind of illness compared to other countries.

Other countries very similar to ours have done something about this. In Britain, there is a fuel poverty strategy. It has been subject to a certain amount of criticism and the British Government has responded. Northern Ireland, as part of the UK, has a fuel poverty strategy with measures in place. These measures, which take time, are beginning to be applied in a way that can have a significant impact on those who need them most.

We, in the Republic of Ireland, do not have a fuel poverty strategy. There is a pittance coming from the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Hanafin, and I thank her for that. There is rhetoric from the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Ryan, which is something we really must challenge. It seems that when it comes to energy the focus is totally on the environment with no emphasis on the social needs of our people. That is a distorted view of the role of political leadership. We must ensure that changes occurring, whether increased fuel prices or measures we must introduce to meet our climate change targets, are sustainable in social, as well as environmental, terms.

There is a crazy situation, which I have raised on many occasions and which the Minister is examining, where back boilers are being taken out of local authority houses and oil-fired central heating installed instead. There is no effort to introduce the high-grade insulation scheme that could make a difference. There is no effort to introduce environmentally sustainable, alternative and renewable sources of fuel. In fact, if one asks the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government whether one is allowed to install a solar panel in a local authority house, one is told one can do it but is on one's own with nothing coming from Government. That is not good policy, certainly not for people living in fuel poverty.

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