Áine Brady (Kildare North, Fianna Fail)

I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond to the Fine Gael motion on the subject of supports for people with disability and carers and to sum up the arguments in favour of the Government's counter-motion.

I appreciate that the cuts being made in the welfare area will not be easy for people, but I believe that if the Government does not take the steps now to reduce overall public expenditure and avoid excessive borrowing, we risk making the economic situation far worse for everyone, including welfare recipients in the long term. The Government has avoided making any cuts in the State pension. We have also fully protected more than 420,000 children in welfare dependent and low-income families from cuts in child benefit and ensured that cuts in weekly rates for those aged under 66 are lower than the decreases in prices over the past year, so that their income has been protected in real terms.

As the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Mary Hanafin, highlighted last night, the improvements made in recent years have been unprecedented. These include increases between 1997-2009 in the weekly rates of payment to people with disabilities and carers, which were more than three times greater than the rise in the cost of living in that period; greatly increased eligibility for income support payments as a result of significant easing of the means tests, with much higher income disregards; and the introduction in 2007 of the half-rate carer's allowance, which provides significant additional support for carers in receipt of social welfare payments. The value of the respite care grant has also been increased from €254 in 1997 to €1,700 in 2009.

There have been real improvements in additional supports that many people with disabilities and their carers receive, including the household benefits package of free television licence, electricity and telephone as well as free travel. As a result of these and other improvements delivered by the Government, expenditure on the disability allowance has increased fivefold since 1997, while expenditure by the Department of Social and Family Affairs on supports for carers has increased fourteenfold in the same period. Even with the reductions in last week's budget, the weekly rate of payment for the disability allowance and carer's allowance will still be almost 20% higher next year than in 2006. In the context of a very difficult budget, the Government has avoided any cuts in the carer's allowance for those aged over 66.

I understand that people with disabilities face particular challenges in their daily lives and that family carers have to make sacrifices in order to look after their loved ones. Caring for someone else can be very challenging, as I know from personal experience. Caring for another person, especially on a full-time basis, can have an enormous impact on the carer and his or her family, often meaning that employment opportunities have to be sacrificed, and the carer's health can even be affected. I strongly believe for these reasons that such groups should be a priority for Government and I am glad that, when the resources were available, the supports to them were dramatically increased.

As the Minister stated last night, however, the Government was faced with a stark choice in this budget. The major improvements in welfare payments in recent years were made possible by increases in the amount of money the State was taking in from taxes. This year, the tax receipts have dropped dramatically and, as a result, Ireland is borrowing €400 million weekly to pay, mainly, for welfare, health and education. If the country does not reduce its borrowings not only will it have to pay enormous interest in the future, but we face the very real prospects of international banks not lending to us. Our risk was to be in a far worse position next year and to have to make much harsher cuts then in welfare payments. This was not an easy choice. It was not a decision the Government took lightly, but it was the right thing to do.

A number of Deputies also raised the issue of social welfare fraud. It is worth repeating, however, that there is absolutely no evidence to support the contention that 10% of all welfare recipients are engaged in fraud. In fact, the level of fraud is generally very low. Nonetheless, every euro of welfare expenditure that is fraudulently claimed is one euro too many. There are more than 600 staff working in areas related to the control of fraud and abuse of the welfare system. More than 600,000 individual claims have been reviewed this year. Controls on payments such as child benefit to EU workers have been tightened up this year, and the Social Welfare Bill passed by this House last week included extra powers to tackle welfare fraud. Welfare fraud is theft, which is a serious crime. The Department of Social and Family Affairs is doing everything it can to crack down on people who abuse the system.

The reduction in weekly payment rates in this budget is necessitated by the dramatic drop in tax revenue this year. They are difficult, but unfortunately they are necessary.

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