Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)

There will be cuts in the number of places available on community employment schemes and the jobs initiative and that will have an effect on those who avail of family resource centres. The Minister should listen to the people who deliver programmes in family resource centres. They are ideal locations for many people who avail of the services and other organisations' help as well. The Minister is wrong and I will prove that over the next two days.

It is not as if Fianna Fáil does not know what it is doing. I recall the party's election slogans in 1987 - health cuts hurt the old, the sick and the handicapped. Ignorance of consequences cannot, therefore, excuse the scale of cuts being proposed. Hopefully, the Minister will reap her just desserts for her despicable attack on the poorest in society.

The Minister for Finance referred to how we need to regain our optimism but, as the impact of this budget sinks in for many families today, parents and young people will plunge into despair. They will see no future, no choices and no way out. The blight of emigration looms once more over many communities, particularly in the west and working class areas of Dublin. Unemployment is rampant in my own constituency. More than 3,300 people aged under 25 are unemployed in Dublin South Central while overall in Dublin the number is 20,363. One in four of our young people is out of work nationally. Yesterday's announcement did nothing to give them hope.

The Minister had the gall earlier to state that after the cuts "welfare recipients are, therefore, still better off in real terms". I can understand the Green Party being in cloud cuckoo land, but for a former teacher and a Minister to say people are better off after cuts in payments, new charges for medicines and increases in electricity costs is lunacy.

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