Mary Upton (Dublin South Central, Labour)

One of the biggest difficulties with this budget is the sharpness with which these vicious cuts are being introduced. Perhaps the Minister's friends have war chests stashed away that they can draw on at the drop of a hat, but the vast majority of the people who come to my advice clinics and whom I represent are already on a very tight budget. There is no planning time for them. These cuts are being introduced almost immediately and they have no way of coping with that. I do not know whether anybody has given any consideration to the short-term impact it will have, never mind the impact it will have as we go through another year of these cuts. There are realities that have not been taken on board regarding low and middle income earners, the elderly and families with young children.

Initially, in yesterday's budget speech the Minister for Finance acknowledged to some extent the damage done by the Government and its friends to the economy with the scandalous overheating of the property market, but this was simply a token acknowledgement. Again, those who benefited least from the property boom and what is now the carcass of the Celtic tiger were targeted. We got a reduction in mortgage interest relief from ten years to seven when we should have had an extension of the mortgage interest supplement rules with the purpose of helping families where one income has been lost; Deputy Shortall referred to that matter.

We were told that the rent allowance would be cut, where instead we should have had a promise to act on the ever-increasing waiting lists for social housing. Yesterday, the Minister said rent allowance payments will be reduced to reflect the drop in the cost of rent. It is true that statistics suggest rents have reduced, but the people who come to my advice clinics are in a very weak position to negotiate a lower rent. They are very much at the mercy of landlords. How will we police the drop in rent? How will we say it is appropriate that rent supplement is reduced because there is a drop in rents? I do not think we can do that unless we hear there is some plan in place to identify exactly how that will be done. Otherwise, we will have the landlords we have always had exploiting the unfortunate and poorer people who are in no position to fight their corner and negotiate a drop in their rent.

Yesterday, we got a bail-out for the developers and bankers when we should have had protection for families who are unable to pay their mortgages because they have lost their jobs. There is a glut of unsold properties on the market. These have been hoarded by the developers and they are being rewarded by the Minister. They are quite comfortable in the knowledge that the properties will be taken off their hands and they will not have to worry about repayment or repossession. Nobody is standing over them breathing down their necks as they are over the people we all have at our advice clinics whose houses are at risk of being repossessed. People come in crying, they do not know where to go or where they can possibly get some mortgage support. This is an appalling situation and I do not know if anybody has taken account of the numbers likely to be involved if this situation continues.

There might be a glut of houses in Tullamore that will take rent allowance, but that is not true in areas such as Crumlin or Harold's Cross. How will we find out where the drop in rent has happened, who can avail of it and how they can do that and ensure that it is referred back to the tenant who is trying to rent from a landlord? The nightmare scenario arising from this is that these people, because they do not have the capacity to pay the rent, will end up in homeless accommodation with their children. We do not want to think about that, but the Minister must address it and take account of it. So much for the socialism of former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, and the fairness of the Taoiseach, Deputy Cowen. That is where we have reached.

There was an opportunity in the budget to tackle inequality. We all knew it would be tough, but it certainly was not fair. The Labour Party advocated ending various tax reliefs, for example, all tax reliefs for landlords, and ending tax exile status and the Cinderella clause whereby one turned the clock back for an hour or two. Some effort was put into that. We hoped for a moratorium on home repossessions, but there is no moratorium. We put forward the suggestion a number of times that there was an opportunity to allow people to pay what they could and to hold onto their houses over a reasonable period of time and not end up homeless. Unfortunately, that is what will happen. They will end up without a home to call their own.

Deputy Wall raised another point and I want to refer to it because I have had a number of telephone calls about it all day. It is about the basic security provisions for the elderly. This is one of the meanest and sneakiest cuts in the budget.

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