Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

-----but much of this would have been put back into the economy by being spent in shops at Christmas. There is much credible thought, going back to the 1930s and 1940s, to the effect that the people who spend are those on lower and middle incomes, and if we want to stimulate the economy we must give social welfare recipients more, not less. It is one thing for the Government to be mistaken - it is the continuation of an ideology that has been implemented over the past 12 years - but I do not know what the SFA and IBEC were thinking when they sought cuts in social welfare. They have left people with less money to spend, and the very people who would have bought things in their members' shops at Christmas will now need to cut back further. People on social welfare or in receipt of public sector pay, who would have spent money in the new year by getting work done about the house or buying things they need, will now think again because of their reduced incomes.

The Fine Gael motion concentrates on particular sectors, but it is a much bigger issue than that. The cuts in social welfare will mean more people in poverty, while some people in the public sector may end up needing social welfare top-ups through the family income supplement because their pay has been reduced. According to Irish research, the people at greatest risk of consistent poverty are those who are unemployed. The Government has taken money away from those people, yet the rich have been unscathed. Unless one is a public sector worker, one's situation is not much different after the budget. The carbon taxes and so on will not affect the very rich, but they will affect people who have had their social welfare or public sector income cut.

This was a time at which the Government could have tried to do more for people in poverty. There are many people who are poor but do not claim the benefits they are entitled to. The number of people claiming family income supplement has gone down, and one of the reasons given for this by the research team in the Oireachtas Library is that people who were low-paid have lost their jobs.

The Government should have looked at many issues in this budget such as helping people who have mortgage payments, who would normally require assistance, to become eligible for family income supplement. Given that their incomes are so low, they should be qualifying for family income supplement. This was an opportunity to move away from the ideology of the past 12 years, the philosophy of the Progressive Democrats, to the effect that inequality is a good thing in society, an idea which IBEC and the Small Firms Association have bought into. Instead we could have begun to change things. We should be trying to bring about more income equality. We should have kept social welfare payments where they were at least and done more about redistributing the incomes of the highly paid. Such people have done really well out of the Celtic tiger and have not paid their fair share of tax.

That is the way we should have gone, rather than down the road the Government has brought us, where it is basically being cheer-led by organisations such as the Small Firms Association and IBEC.

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