Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

I would much prefer to be a Minister for Social and Family Affairs who could give the sort of increases we saw over recent years. It was a lovely position to be in during the budget before Christmas to be able to give such increases, although they were less than in previous years. They were still substantial increases that people did not expect. We certainly did not want to reduce those for them now.

The choices before us were far more difficult. Many more people would have been affected had we cut rates. Savings had to be effected in the Department.

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