Mary O'Rourke (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)

Clearly, huge activity is being whipped up and people's emotions are being deliberately preyed upon and played upon in difficult circumstances.

There is an extra package of €515 million in the social welfare budget but the total budget is €19.6 billion, which is an increase of €2.6 billion, or 15.5%, over the Estimates allocation for 2008. In good, bad or indifferent times, that is a bloody good social welfare budget.

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