Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The matter raised last week by Deputy Gilmore is being followed up. The community welfare officer is an important front line service which provides significant support to disadvantaged people. Notwithstanding the pressure it is under, it is critical that the service be maintained. As a result of a significant level of staff absence due to sick leave, as the Deputy pointed out last week, the Dún Laoghaire and Loughlinstown clinics were closed by the superintendent community welfare officer at short notice. The HSE has expressed its regret that the matter was not solved speedily without interruption of service. Emergency measures are now in place to resolve the difficulty. The clinics in question will be open tomorrow from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. to deal with immediate priority cases and will have full-time staff in place from Thursday. The ongoing industrial relations issues have been referred to the Labour Relations Commission and a date is awaited. I wished to clarify this for the House as the matter has been resolved in the past number of hours after representations by the Minister.

With regard to the question arising from Deputy Gilmore's statement, the commitment of this Government to social welfare provision is demonstrated by a record over which we are proud to stand, including the quadrupling of child benefit over the past ten years — from €44 to €166 per week — and doubling of jobseeker's allowance and old age pension. We made those important improvements in times when resources were available to the State, and rightly so. The Deputy referred to the fact that the Combat Poverty Agency is being moved within the remit of the Department of Social and Family Affairs. It is not going out of business. In regard to the national anti-poverty strategy, the implementation of many of the targets that arose under that strategy over the years has fed into the social partnership process and into much of the budgetary policy and decisions that have arisen in successive budgets over a long period of time. I contend that this commitment has been very significant.

The Minister for Finance will deliver a budget in early December. At this point in time, coming into the month of July, it is important to point out that public service pay and pensions together with social welfare make up some two thirds of total day-to-day expenditure. We are facing into a difficult situation this year whereby we are borrowing in the region of €70 million per day to meet the difference between revenue take and the cost of providing public services, including in all those important areas to which the Deputy referred. The Government is very cognisant of the need to ensure, in devising its budgetary strategy for 2010 and thereafter, that we protect to the greatest extent possible those on social welfare and those who require the assistance of the State. That will be fundamental to our approach.

It is also important to point out that the increase in social welfare rates, depending on the various payments, was between 3% and 3.8% in the 2009 budget. This was against a predicted inflation rate of 2.5%, but what we are seeing this year is a deflation rate of the order of 4%, with the consumer price index declining by that percentage in the course of this year. While nobody suggests that welfare payments, by their very nature, are sufficient in all circumstances, I stand over the record of this Government and successive Ministers for Social and Family Affairs who ensured in the good times that we had record social welfare budget packages. Included in this number are the current Minister, Deputy Mary Hanafin, and her predecessors, the Minister, Deputy Martin Cullen, the late Séamus Brennan and others. At this point in the process, as we face into a difficult budgetary situation, we must consider all options while being mindful of the need to protect the most vulnerable to the greatest extent we can possibly can.

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