Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

I welcome the opportunity to have even a few minutes to speak on this important Labour Party motion, which I support strongly and on which many Labour Deputies, given their experience with children and families, are likely to speak.

We have listened to a great deal of wind from those opposite. If people are in favour of children and their welfare, they will have an opportunity at 8.30 p.m. to vote with us on this motion. Let us take what I just heard. We were asked whether we ever believed that child benefit would rise in cost from €638 million to €2.5 billion. Is this not interesting? One does not find people on the Government side of the House discussing the €600 million that goes on rental income for landlords, the €400 million the Government gave in property reliefs or the hundreds of millions of euro that it allowed through pension contributions from people on the highest incomes. In fact, the windy statement is that tough decisions must be taken. One of the toughest decisions will be to put an end to the gross inequality in tax reliefs and benefits that managed to puff up the economy to the point of collapse.

I want to discuss children realistically. People mentioned the increase to €2.5 billion, but significant things have happened to the Irish family. Former European Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, presided over the cuts in question when he was the Minister for Finance, but I remember, when I entered the House, children used to live in a home. Then, it became a question of putting one's foot on the property ladder À la McCreevy and the rest of the property people on the other side of the House. They suggested that people should keep on speculating. Suddenly, it was not sufficient for one person to have an income and to get a mortgage amounting to three and a half times that income. Both people were conscripted into work in the property racket, in which people paid greater amounts for houses that had nothing to do with building costs or the houses' reasonable values. Now, the property people are telling us that we all lived it up. We were not all Seanie FitzPatrick's. We did not all borrow €106 million from our own banks. We were not shifting money from a bank to a building society. It is time for all of this "We" stuff to stop.

What will be decided at 8.30 p.m. is whether child benefit will be left intact from any measure. There are good reasons for leaving it alone, including the principle of universality. Let us say we are building a new kind of economy and society and that we accept all children as being equal. If one accepts the concept of universality of child benefit, one also assists citizenship. Whether we are here a day or 20 years, we all know that the earlier one intervenes in a child's welfare, the better the chance of achieving equality. We also know that, given our society, it is mothers who use the payment, sometimes to ensure the child's survival and sometimes for the most minimal benefit. We know that the way it is allocated does not create a poverty trap. The ESRI, the Commission on Taxation and others have examined child benefit, but have not suggested a mechanism to change it. Therefore, the Labour Party asks that children be left alone at least and that this benefit be left in the homes that need it the most.

We have heard a lot of what I would call "stuff" about how, when times were good, we did such and such. When times were good, the Fianna Fáil Party looked after property speculators. When times are bad, it cannot be trusted to look after the poor. To the person at the back who suggested that an election would be awful, I say the sooner the better. It is important to state that none of us on this side of the House has been invited or is willing to participate in some kind of consensus that would keep the rackets or property circulation going. We want to acknowledge that they are gone forever. As we begin putting something new in place, we want to know whether all children will be treated equally and whether this minimal benefit will go to those who need it desperately. For this reason, the test is not whether people claim they know this or that or that they met someone with triplets or twins. At 8.30 p.m., they will have their chance. They will either vote with us or against us.

See this speech in context