Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Labour)

In addition, there were outstanding and visionary Ministers like Brendan Corish and Frank Cluskey. Deputy Michael Woods turned out to be a real champion of the social welfare system during his time in the Department. Even in difficult times he always fought his corner on behalf of the poor at Cabinet to ensure the social welfare budget was protected. He saw his role as being the voice of the poor and being in Cabinet to protect the social welfare budget.

Regrettably, the present Minister has done the opposite. She has bought entirely into the right-wing agenda and has absolutely failed to protect the poor. In the lead-up to the budget, sickeningly, she repeatedly stated that the last thing she wanted to do was cut social welfare but at the same time she was engaged in negotiations to do just that. The social conscience of Fianna Fáil seems to be dead and gone; one could say it is with Ernest Blythe in the grave.

I have already read the wording of the amendment which I propose to the Second Stage reading. Given that it is already on the record I remind the Ceann Comhairle that I will press the amendment at the end of Second Stage.

The 2010 budget allows those who are largely unaffected by it to praise the Government for taking the right decisions and for making the tough choices, as they say. Tough decisions are only right if they are fair. This social welfare Bill is patently unfair because it makes those on the lowest incomes pay the price for the recklessness of Fianna Fáil over recent years.

In the annex to the budget, an example outlines the effect of the budget's provisions on a single person in the private sector earning in excess of €250,000, and it shows no change in such a person's net income as a result of the budget. How on earth can the Minister justify taking €8 per week from a carer or a person with a disability, for example, when an individual with an income of €250,000 or more is not asked to contribute a single extra cent?

It seems that as far as the Government is concerned, it is okay for over-generous and unnecessary tax reliefs to remain untouched. The Government could have yielded the same net savings of €760 million if they had scrapped property tax relief schemes and reformed the multi-million euro pension relief schemes. In the run-up to the budget the Minister repeated that she did not want to touch social welfare or that it would be the last section to be touched but there is no choice. That is absolute nonsense as the Minister had choices. She should at least be honest enough to admit that. Choices were set out, for example, in the pre-budget policy document produced by the Labour Party.

The Minister for Finance outlined in last April's budget the manner in which he intended to proceed to achieve the €4 billion in savings. He indicated a mix of tax measures, tax spending reductions, ordinary Government spending reductions, public sector pay savings and savings in the capital fund. The proposal put to the ECB last April indicated that a mix of measures was required to achieve the savings. He has since flipped his position and moved entirely from the notion of making any savings whatever on the tax front.

As the Labour Party has pointed out, the result is that we continue to have a position where multi-millionaires and the very wealthy in this country can avoid paying tax as a result of the many tax breaks which continue for them. For example, there are property-based tax reliefs and it was possible, without any serious difficulty, to save more than €400 million on those schemes. They are untouched. Some wealthy people can afford to put away pension pots of €5.5 million and the Minister cannot wash her hands of that pension policy.

People can stash pension pots of €5.4 million and when it comes to retirement, they can take tax-free lump sums of €1.3 million. How can the Government justify not touching those people in the budget? It allows rich people to take lump sums of €1.3 million and sees it as acceptable behaviour. Instead of touching those people, the Government has decided to hit people at the very lowest level of income who are dependent on the State for a fairly miserly social welfare payment of €200 or less per week.

Where is the justice and fairness in such action? I have given two examples of blatant unfairness in our system. People who are very well off and have done extremely well from the boom years can continue to avail of ridiculously generous tax reliefs to assist them in avoiding paying any tax. The Government is saying that is fine. It is all right for a wealthy person to be given a tax free lump sum of more than €1 million but it is not all right for people struggling on social welfare to retain their payment rate. The Minister should answer that question. She said on several occasions that cutting social welfare was the last thing the Government wanted to do. It turns out that was not true at all; in fact it was a blatant lie. It was one of the earliest decisions taken on cutbacks.

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