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

I am glad to have the opportunity of contributing to the Social Welfare Bill on Second Stage.

Deputy Creed quoted a sentence from the Minister, Deputy Hanafin's, speech but he never finished the sentence. He quoted what suited him, which is an old trick in parliamentary debate. I listened to the debate and the Minister stated that a couple of hundred euro did not seem much but it was enormous to the person who got it. She said that from the bench where the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Power, now sits. Of course somebody had told Deputy Creed to use a glib Marie Antoinette name tag and in his rush to get to use it, he quoted half her sentence deliberately and left half of it unsaid deliberately, in which case of course it appeared uncaring. It is an old mean trick and I thought Deputy Creed was up to more than that.

We are debating Second Stage of the Social Welfare Bill and a welfare bill which has increased by 20% from 2008 to 2009. One of the Sinn Féin Deputies stated the Bill was miserly and niggardly. How can one call a 20% increase in social welfare expenditure niggardly and miserly just like that? This also is completely erroneous and of course it does not stand up to scrutiny whatsoever.

Often on radio programmes such as Sam Smyth's "The Sunday Supplement" or "The Marian Finucane Show", a pundit or an Opposition politician says the money was squandered, and yet nobody can ever say where it should not have been spent. There were year on year increases in social welfare. Was that money squandered? I do not think so. I was at Cabinet between 1997 to 2002 and every year the emphasis was on us wanting to give more, and how much more could be given each year to OAPs and in child benefit, which used to be called children's allowance. Each year increases far beyond the rate of inflation were given to welfare recipients, who well deserved it. It was given, that is the point. When people shout squander mania and that the money was all lost and squandered, do they mean old age pensions should not have risen from €113 to over €230? Do they mean child benefit should not have risen from €44 to €166 per month? Do they consider that squander mania?

In the past two weeks, in particular, I have been in many households in which parents - lone parents in many cases - have said strongly that they were thankful child benefit was not touched.

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