Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I remind the Deputy that when we came into office the rate about which he spoke was equivalent to €93 per week. We increased it. I never suggest social welfare rates provide a great standard of living for people who are dependent on them and that is why we must be very careful about how we proceed and protect the most vulnerable in our society to the greatest extent we possibly can in the context of where we are.

We will borrow €22 billion to €23 billion this year. We need €72 million per week to maintain the current level of services. The Government is not in a position ad infinitum or over the short term, never mind over the medium term, to maintain that level of deficit budgeting because it will not be able to provide it. Look at what people in employment must face in terms of reduced pay, increased levies or taxes or the various policies we have had to implement to take cognisance of the new situation the country is in, which is not unique from other countries. However, we must deal with our issues in a responsible way.

People's standards of living are going back to 2004-05 levels. One should consider the standards of living people enjoyed ten or five years before that. I am trying to bring a sense of perspective to what we are being asked to do. Of course, no one wants to go back; everyone wants to forge forward. We have been doing that for ten or 12 years. During that time hundreds of thousands of working families were taken out of the tax net and hundreds of thousands of people paid less taxes. Some 800,000 more jobs were created during the course of the Administrations in which I served since 1997. We are now seeing some job losses because of the current situation.

Rather than paint an apocalyptic picture, we must try to maintain a sense of perspective because we must be able to communicate to the people the level of the challenge and what we are asking of them. The reason we must consider these options, difficult though they may be, is that it is not a sustainable position in the context of the current public finances to suggest, as Deputy Ó Caoláin has done, that there are areas of expenditure which are immune from consideration. If the total level of funds are coming in at €32 billion or €33 billion this year and the total spend is €55 billion, for how long or how often does the Deputy believe we can tell the people that can be maintained? It cannot be maintained and we must be honest and straightforward with the people.

We must then decide on the political choices within those realities with which we must contend. Deputy Ó Caoláin can argue his case if he wants to see protection of the €21.3 billion social welfare spend in all respects and in every circumstance. That is one third of spend, another third is public sector pay and pensions and the remaining third is the cost of providing public services.

Does Deputy Ó Caoláin want to take the amount of money, which we must take out, totally out of the delivery cost of providing public services to the exclusion of everything else? What impact will that have? The Deputy often speaks about the need to maintain service levels in the public service. He cannot have it every way. One cannot count twice or not count at all.

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