Ulick Burke (Galway East, Fine Gael)

I wish to share time with Deputy Pat Breen.

Deputy Ahern mentioned that the Minister was following in the footsteps of her predecessors. What a terrible shock it must have been for the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, to take office in the Department of Social and Family Affairs at a time when these crude and vicious cuts were introduced in the budget. I am sorry the Minister is not present. This budget appears to target young people in particular. Deputy Ahern mentioned one of the U-turns by the Minister. We welcome that because it was a severe and devastating measure for the many people and households affected, particularly the poor.

The budget did not protect the vulnerable. On numerous occasions we have heard Ministers and backbenchers claim that the old, young and the vulnerable will be protected. That appears to have gone out the door in the 2009 budget. The working poor are a new phenomenon in Irish society. There was a time when people believed that when one had a job, one could be secure and have a reasonable standard of living. That is no longer the case. Even people on the basic minimum wage will get a wallop from the Minister for Social and Family Affairs by the inclusion of the 1% levy. To be fair, she changed her mind a little on that, when she realised the mood of people outside the House.

To return to the situation of the young, the Minister said that many of the measures in the budget were a bid to stamp out the dependency culture, especially among young people. That is when we realised she had targeted the young. There are many changes with regard to people who have been in employment for one year. She targeted them in particular. If somebody lost their job after one year, they were always entitled to get the jobseekers allowance for one year. The Minister said the budgetary measures are expected to generate €62.7 million in savings next year and €119 million in 2010 and after. She said that someone who had only been working for one year could get benefit for a year, and that she was not sure it was in the best interests of young workers, who should be encouraged to keep working: "We do not want them to develop a dependency on social welfare payments. My over-riding consideration would be to ensure we do not create a dependency culture on social welfare, particularly among young workers."

That is a terrible indictment of young people, especially today when many young people who only gained employment in the good times now find themselves the first to be told there is no more employment for them. The Minister is targeting those people. If that is not bad enough, she has provided a second blow by restricting their return into education. She will not let them back into education unless they have spent a full 12 months on unemployment benefit but she is also saying they should not be entitled to jobseeker's allowance after one year of work. How can she reconcile the two positions? The Minister of State should bring this double whammy to her attention. They are irreconcilable for young people. It is a sad indictment of a Minister who was previously responsible for the Department of Education and Science and who should have known better with regard to efforts to get young people to return to education.

There is a series of measures from the Minister. Small, simple things have happened. The consequence of her anti-youth attitude is a doubling to 104 of the number of contributions necessary to apply for jobseeker's and other allowances. There is a reduction in jobseeker's benefit from 15 months to 12 months for those with over 260 contributions and from 12 months to nine months otherwise. Everything is targeted at this group. I am not sure if she is like the many other Ministers in the Cabinet who are being presented with measures that they have not screened and who have not realised what their impact will be on the public. All Ministers have done this but very few have been so particularly focused on disadvantaging young people.

The budget has caused much agony to many people but I wish to focus on the issue of lone parents and child poverty. Lone parents constitute a quarter of all families in Ireland today, and 21% of children live in lone parent households. One parent families, particularly those relying on social welfare or low paid jobs, struggle to cope with the cost of living. Lone parent households experienced the highest levels of consistent poverty in 2006 at 32.5%. Children who grow up in poor households are at very high risk of living in poverty as adults. There is no need to emphasise further the reality of the consequences and difficulties for single parents and their children unless they are supported by the State.

Unfortunately, children from these families are the first to drop out of the education system. If they do drop out, a difficult life lies ahead of them. The tragedy is that many of them fall away from normal living, as we would call it, and get involved in crime and other social difficulties. That is rampant in many areas of the country. There has been a failure to recognise this. The Minister for Social and Family Affairs should recognise the overall cost and that there could be a dividend later on. Costs associated with rehabilitation, crime, policing and anti-social behaviour will arise later for many of these children, which is tragic. It is a mistake to claim there will be short-term savings of €62 million next year and €119 million from 2010 onwards. These are short-term gains to provide emergency funding, but we will pay a higher price later on. Lives are being destroyed also.

I refer to the cutbacks in the school books grant under the budget. It is all the more tragic that a former Minister for Education and Science will implement these cutbacks. There will be serious consequences arising from the withdrawal of this grant. Community education and other services delivered by vocational education committees and other educational bodies will suffer. The poor and the vulnerable have been targeted again. These allowances meant a great deal to many families and children. I cannot understand how a former Minister for Education and Science could target those aspects of education assistance designed to help keep so many people in the education system. It is unbelievable that the Minister could implement these severe cuts. I hope at this late stage that the Minister's conscience can alert her to these consequences and she will withdraw from making some of the drastic cuts.

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