Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)

People currently on social welfare are very poor. A single person on social welfare, some of whom may be 50 years of age, have lost their jobs and are on €204 a week, will find their benefit reduced by a significant amount relative to them. They will not receive any extra rent allowance because that is also being changed. It will mean a net loss to them. They live on loaves of bread and sausages; they do not buy fillet steaks because they cannot afford them. Steak is not on the menu for them. They will now be even poorer. The most vulnerable people are the blind, the disabled and the handicapped and they will all suffer severely arising from this.

I will contrast those we are arguing should have contributed with those whom the Government insist will contribute. People on supplementary welfare allowance, which is the last safety net provided by Government for people to stop them going hungry and to ensure they have a roof or some form of shelter, will pay, whereas the banker whom we recently funded with taxpayers' money - he is being paid out of the same kitty as the person on supplementary welfare allowance - thought he could not exist on €500,000 a year. He will pay nothing. That is what we are complaining about, the way the money was found. I take these two extreme cases as an example of the people who will pay and the people who will not pay, to demonstrate the point clearly.

It is a disgrace that the Government made a decision to target specifically and solely in this budget the poorest people in the country, the most vulnerable, the most in need and the people who are likely to suffer severely arising from the money that is being taken from them. The really galling aspect for them, particularly many of the recently unemployed, is that they are being forced to pay for the near criminal activity of bankers and speculators - in some cases, criminal activity - and the fact that the Government aided and abetted that activity by turning a blind eye, day in, day out, year in, year out, to their activities.

I will touch on the reason the Minister did not comply with the requirement in the Cabinet handbook to produce the poverty-proofing of her proposals or why the Minister for Finance, who is primarily responsible, did not do so and ignored that requirement on him to do so. The reason is plain as a pikestaff. Because such a proofing would demonstrate clearly that this would severely damage poor people and cause additional poverty, he skipped that requirement. That is the reason it is not included in the books we normally receive.

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