Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

Government Deputies will seek to justify voting against this motion on the grounds that they are obliged to support the Government position on it. The Government will not fall if the Labour Party motion is passed tonight. Our motion is simply calling on the Government not to touch child benefit in next week's budget. It is a call and an appeal. The verb in the Labour Party motion, "calls", is the same verb which is in the Government amendment. The Government amendment has a curious phrase which I have never seen before, that is, it "calls on the Government to consider the various options around Child Benefit and their implications for the needs of families with children".

It is the first time I have seen a member of the Cabinet submit an amendment to a Private Members' motion which calls on her own Government to do something. In this case, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Hanafin, is calling for some kind of consideration. She seems to think the Government is comparable to the ESRI and can spend some time considering the various options in terms of child benefit and the implications for the needs of families.

As an alternative, this House can call on the Government to not cut child benefit in the budget next week because family incomes have already taken a substantial hit in the last two budgets, Ireland is still a very expensive place to raise a child and child benefit is the only recognition by the State of this high cost, cutting child benefit will have a deflationary impact on the economy and any of the proposed reforms will create poverty traps, work disincentives, and will increase the numbers of children in poverty.

Let us not forget why we are here. We are debating the Government's stated intention to take money from mothers and children in order to plug the hole it has blown in the public finances. We are here because Fianna Fáil brought us here. The same Deputies on Government benches, who now throw up their hands and say that cutting child benefit is the only way, are the very ones whose greed allowed our good economy to be turned into a property bubble.

See this speech in context