Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

The message has clearly been sent out that we clamp down on fraud and we make savings. We will continue to prioritise control savings within the Department so we do not have to make the type of difficult decisions we had to make in the last budget.

The dependence of people on social welfare payments was mentioned and I accept that. There are people who are losing their jobs, lone parents, carers, pensioners or any of the other 1.2 million who receive a social welfare payment. They have become dependent on those payments but it is opportune to note those payments have increased significantly over recent years. I am not saying any of us would like to be living on them - far from it - but they are more generous payments than those in Britain or the rest of the EU. In recent years child benefit has increased from €44 to €166 per month, the State contributory pension has grown from €113 a week to €230 a week and the weekly rate of jobseeker's allowance has risen from €93 to €204 per week. Our commitment has been that in times when there has been sufficient funding, we have put it into social welfare to support the most vulnerable.

Those are just the basic payments. The secondary payments, such as household benefit, rent supplement and mortgage interest supplement, free travel and other schemes which we never hear about, cost huge sums as well. People say the Christmas bonus withdrawal will put pressure on the elderly when they are paying their heating bills but that is why in the last budget we increased the fuel allowance and increased the number of weeks for which it is payable. Fortunately the price of fuel is falling substantially. It is interesting that a third of all those who receive household benefit do not use all the electricity units.

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