Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

That is a very mean reply from the Taoiseach. This payment has been made to pensioners every year for 30 years, even in some of the country's most difficult economic years. It is a measure of the mess Fianna Fáil has made of our economy and public finances that for the first time in 30 years pensioners will not get the small bonus which has been paid to them in years past. It adds insult to injury to tell them to live in the past. These people have worked all their lives and this is a relatively small payment.

The Taoiseach's reply contrasts sharply with his more sympathetic approach to the golden ten yesterday. For years into the future, those people will be able to write off the losses on their strange arrangements for buying bank shares by setting them against tax. They get all the comfort from the Government but pensioners, who worked hard to make the country what it was before Fianna Fáil made a hames of it, are told they will not receive the small payment which made Christmas worthwhile for many of them. This is mean and shameful.

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