George Lee (Dublin South, Fine Gael)

I am terribly disappointed that we are introducing a social welfare Bill that for the first time in living memory cuts social welfare payments to the poor and the most vulnerable, and that those choices have had to be made, particularly those that are being made and pushed through here. The cuts in social welfare payments are between 3.5% and 4.2% but the reduction in the social welfare Christmas bonus is in effect another 2% reduction. As a result the net disposable income of the most vulnerable people in the system for 2010 is 6%. The Bill has cut payments for carers despite the enormous value that they produce for our society, payments for the blind, for widows and the disabled. One third of requests to the Society of Vincent de Paul are for food and fuel costs assistance. The welfare benefits were too low to begin with. To cut them now is absolutely cruel and unfair and it is a shame. A total of 25% of people with disabilities live below the poverty line. They must be terribly distressed tonight to know that the Government will make them even poorer. They already have very high living costs in terms of heating and transportation. What we have at present is a disgrace because we will make their situation so much worse.

It is young people I have a particular bee in my bonnet about in regard to the Bill. Young people aged 18 and 19 had already had their social welfare payments reduced to €100 last year. In this budget, young people aged 21 to 22 have had their dole reduced by more than 50% to €100 a week. If the person is aged between 22 and 24, the payment is reduced to €150 and it is only those who are aged over 25 who will get the full adult social welfare payment. This is age discrimination. The difficulty we have is that somebody who is 24 may well be married with children and many other commitments. When such people become unemployed, they are being told they are not a full individual or a full adult. They may have worked for years and paid social insurance contributions and full tax but they are not considered to be a full adult or full individual, and are not given the same rights as somebody else.

Article 40 of the Constitution makes the position very clear. It states: "All citizens shall, as human persons, be held equal before the law." It qualifies the position by also stating: "This shall not be held to mean that the State shall not in its enactments have due regard to differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function." However, it says nothing about age.

The whole point about age is that it is being used here as a discrimination and a differentiation. There are no "differences of capacity, physical and moral, and of social function" between a 24 and a 25 year old. There is no way one can differentiate between them yet, in the Bill, that is exactly what the Government is trying to do. There is no more difference between a 24 and a 25 year old than there is between a 34 and a 35 year old.

Take the case of a person who has worked from the age of 18 until the age of 24, paid a full six years of tax and social insurance, who is perhaps married with children and has become unemployed through no fault of his or her own. What does that person find? Despite all of their contributions, moral obligations and social functions, when they go to sign on, they will find they receive significantly lower social insurance support than somebody aged 25 who may never have worked and who may have come out of the system with just one year's contributions. I believe it is unconstitutional to treat people like that. I hope that, one day, some young person has the bottle to take the Government on, take it to court and prove that this is unconstitutional. They are equal before the law and the Government cannot discriminate like that. It is a disgrace. There are many people aged below 25 years who have plenty of social and moral responsibility and who have made a great contribution to this country.

There is no point saying we should look to Northern Ireland because it pays young people less. The British Government does not operate under a written constitution. We have it written down in black and white in front of our faces in our laws. We are not allowed or enabled to treat people in an unequal fashion like that. It is wrong, it is cruel and it is unfair.

With regard to families, a 10% reduction in child benefit was made as the Government wants to hit families because there is not enough money in the system. There is not enough money in the system because of the individualisation of the taxation system which happened in 2000 under this Government. In that system, single income families and families with children were discriminated against. As a result, child benefit payments were increased in a recognition that there had to be some balance. Now, when the chicken has come home to roost and there are insufficient taxes in the system, those families are being asked to pick up the tab again.

It is the child benefit payment that is taking the strain in regard to the reduction in the resources the Government has at its disposal. We are told that vulnerable children are those whose parents are in receipt of social welfare payments or social welfare support. That is a cop-out. There are plenty of vulnerable children whose families may well be working but who are heavily indebted, where perhaps one member of the family is unemployed and may not qualify for social assistance. Those children also require support and are vulnerable, but we are told they are not. We are told that qualified child allowance will be increased to help those on the dole. The reality about qualified child allowance is that we recognised previously, year in and year out, that it creates poverty traps and traps families in unemployment. When they get off the dole, they find they lose their allowance and they cannot afford the fall in income when they go back to work. It is a failed policy of the past and it cannot be used to get us out of the situation we are in at present.

I accept the social welfare bill at €21 billion is very high and that something had to be done to contain elements of it. However, what should have been done is to tackle the fraud. It has been reported this week that up to €2 billion of fraud is going unchecked in the social welfare system. People can use fake PPS numbers willy-nilly to establish new identities and claim for years with no consequences from the social welfare system. Who picks up the tab? It is the weak, the vulnerable, the children, the unemployed and the young. The Government must do the job. It must go out there and clamp down on that fraud so we do not have to suffer the indignity of having a society which makes the choices which are written into this law. It is a disgrace. The Government has hit the easiest and most vulnerable. It should go and do the hard job. It should clamp down on the fraud, get the €2 billion and recover the social welfare system so we can all hold our heads high in dignity, and so the values we support are reflected within the system.

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