Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

In concluding the debate, I thank all Members who contributed to the debate on this Labour Party motion. I thank especially Deputy Shortall for introducing the motion to the House.

In a way the Christmas bonus is a bit of a misnomer. It is not a bonus, it is a payment that pensioners, people on disability payments, and people who are on social welfare payments have now come to expect will be paid to them at Christmas time. It has been paid in one form or another since 1980. The Government treats the payment as if it were some kind of Christmas present from Fianna Fáil. It is treated in much the same way as some kind of national lottery grant. There is a grand announcement every year from the Minister for Social and Family Affairs - formerly the Minister for Social Welfare - that the Christmas payment will be made. It may well be that later in 2009, depending on the state of the finances, a Fianna Fáil Minister, acting as some kind of latter-day Santa Claus, will announce that the payment is to be partially reinstated, or reinstated for some of its former recipients, in some way that would cynically seek to make political gains on the issue.

Either the Government is absolutely determined that the bonus will not be paid in 2009 or it is announcing its abolition so its payment will be all the sweeter when a Fianna Fáil Minister announces its reinstatement in some shape or form. The reality is that the payment is one that pensioners, people on disability allowances and social welfare payments have come to expect. It is the payment grandparents use to buy presents for their grandchildren. It is the payment used by people on social welfare to ensure there is some degree of festive cheer at Christmas among families and in households that are not well off.

The consequence of the removal of the payment is that those on low incomes and social welfare payments who are living in poverty will turn to where they turned in the past in times of financial difficulty, that is, to moneylenders. The only two groups who had reason to cheer as a result of the budget announced by the Government two weeks ago were moneylenders and property developers. Property developers' vacant properties and unfinished housing estates and developments will now be taken off their hands by "an bord bail out", the new agency the Government intends to establish. Moneylenders must envisage considerable opportunities for themselves to rifle and exploit again those in poor circumstances. We have already seen the reports of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul on the consequences of moneylending and its resurgence in the climate in which we find ourselves.

The Minister seeks to justify the abolition of the payment on grounds of cost. Deputy Shortall addressed that issue very comprehensively last night by pointing out that the cost is not as great as is being protested by Ministers. The payment is always spent and is not pocketed by the people who receive it. When it is made, it is spent in the retail sector within a matter of days or weeks. It is used to buy the Christmas presents for children and other family members. Straight away, therefore, there is a return to the State in the form of VAT. This return will not accrue if the payment is abolished. Since the payment is spent in the retail sector, it will go into the pay packets of those who work in retail businesses, from which the State will recoup another portion of the payment in the form of income tax, PRSI and income levies. What is not recouped in the form of income tax and VAT will be used in turn by businesses to help them pay the rates they owe to local authorities. The reality is that the bulk of the Christmas payment will be returned to the State if it is made. This has not been considered in the calculation.

In our motion, as in our pre-budget statement, we set out a number of areas in which the Government could have raised revenue had it so wished and had it been minded to consider those individuals in our economy and society who are in a better position to pay. There are ways in which revenue can be raised, including by way of closing off tax reliefs and shelters. I do not propose to detail them now but it is interesting to note that the Government, instead of identifying them, looked to those who are poorest in society, as it did in the previous budget, to pay the cost of the profligacy of the past decade. The first people to be targeted were pensioners, followed by special needs children. Then pensioners were targeted again in addition to people on disability payments in receipt of the Christmas payment.

We will vote on this motion in a few moments. Let me address a number of Members of the House on how they will vote. I ask Deputies Healy-Rae and Lowry directly to vote with us on this motion. We all understand the way politics works and that the two Deputies signed up in June 2007 to support the Government in the course of the life of this Dáil. I know both would want to honour that agreement with the Government. We have never seen the content of the agreement but I am certain, from knowing both Deputies, that they never signed up to an agreement with the Government to support taking the Christmas payment from old age pensioners and those on disability allowances. It would not dishonour them in this House to vote against a measure to which they never signed up to support and do not, in honour, have to support now. They are not bound by whatever agreement they made with the Government to support the measure today. If they support it, they cannot go back to their constituencies and say they were voting in order to honour an agreement they made with the Government. There is no such agreement. I challenge both Deputies to show any Member of the House where they made an agreement stating they would vote with the Government to take the Christmas payment off old age pensioners and those on disability allowances.

Deputy Mary White, deputy leader of the Green Party, stood on the plinth on the night of the budget and said there were green fingerprints all over the budget. The only green fingerprints I can see all over it are those of the fingers that are picking the pockets of the poorest people in this country by depriving them of the Christmas payment. Are those the green fingerprints Deputy White told the people were all over the budget?

I studied the programme for Government and saw the agreement to which the Green Party signed up in June 2007. Nowhere in that agreement is there any statement that the Green Party would support the taking away of the Christmas payment from pensioners and others in need thereof. There is nothing in the programme for Government that commits the Green Party to supporting the measure. The only reason it would support the measure today is to stay in office. They only reason its members will end up going through the lobby or voting in favour of it today is if they feel it does not matter and that the people who are on pensions and disability payments can be sacrificed. These recipients can go away with green finger-marks on their backs because they have been let down by people who are more interested in saving their own seats at Cabinet and associated privileges.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, often gives us short pious homilies when he appears on "Six One News" to justify things he will not do in Cabinet but tells us all we must do them after he has made decisions on them. He should appear on "Six One News" again to tell the pensioners, those who are on disability payments and the poorest people in the country why the Green Party supports taking the Christmas payment from them.

This is the moment when Members must vote on this issue and there is no escaping. There is no justification for them going back to their constituencies or their parties to offer some kind of political explanation as to why they did it. There is no political or moral justification for voting in favour of taking the Christmas payment from the poorest people in the country.

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