Martin Ferris (Kerry North, Sinn Fein)

This Government's claim to be introducing measures to discourage people from defrauding the taxpayer might carry more weight were it not for its actions in other areas. Only yesterday, the new management at Anglo Irish Bank admitted that we are unlikely ever to see a return on much of the money that has been pumped into repairing the criminal negligence of those who were there before the State had to intervene. It is ironic that this Government seems to have no problem nationalising banks and having the State pay for the mistakes of incompetent members of the so-called elite but is embarked on a moral crusade against public service workers and those on social welfare, including many who have directly lost their jobs as a consequence of that incompetence.

The lesson clearly is that if one was lucky enough to be a member of the so-called golden circle of criminally incompetent financial and property speculators, then one can expect have one's tab picked up by the taxpayers, but those who directly lost their jobs as a result of the manner in which those people destroyed the economy then will have to do with even less than that to which they are currently entitled in social welfare.

The former leader of Fianna Fáil was wont every now and again to describe himself as a socialist. The former Deputy Joe Higgins was quite amusing about that, but perhaps he misunderstood what Deputy Bertie Ahern was referring to. There are many different types of socialism and clearly what we have here is a socialism of the failed millionaire class.

I am not arguing that there is no such thing as social welfare fraud, nor that people who are guilty of defrauding the system ought not to be brought to book. People who defraud the system are committing an offence and directly impacting on those who are genuinely entitled to support. We have seen many people imprisoned in the past for small amounts of social welfare fraud, but we have not yet seen the bankers, developers or the golden circle of the political elite brought to book for their crimes against the Irish people.

The Bill makes cuts to the lone parent payment scheme. It seems the Government now wants to punish families who have growing teenagers. The Minister has claimed that the changes are aimed at addressing the high number of lone parent households in poverty. I would welcome steps to address this level of poverty, but sadly this Bill is not an anti-poverty measure. It is the opposite. It is an unscrupulous, penny pinching measure, primarily directed against the less well off in our society.

This Bill is not about moving people off welfare and into paid employment because the job, education and training opportunities simply do not and will not exist on the basis of current Government policy. It is about moving lone parents from one welfare payment and onto another less flexible, less supportive and unsuitable payment. This will also have severe and counterproductive consequences for lone parent claimants in low paid part-time employment. There is no denial that the lone parent payment scheme is in major need of reform. The Government's own 2006 report, Proposals for Supporting Lone Parents, contained a range of recommendations including a recommendation that the age of qualifying children be lowered. However, that report clearly stated that any such move must be accompanied by ensuring that child care supports are available. Even the Minister has admitted that the availability of after school and summer supervision support is patchy at best. The 2006 report also stated that the selection of a particular cut-off age is a matter for decision by Government following a consultation process.

Where was the consultation process? Why pick 13 years as the cut off age? Research conducted by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice into the cost of a minimum essential standard of living clearly demonstrates that households with adolescents spend more on food, social inclusion and education than households with younger children. What then is the logic behind this? Does the Government expect all single parents to rush into marriage before their children reach the age of 13? Perhaps it envisages a situation where all 13 year olds will, in a few years time, be able to get full-time jobs working for its gombeen friends overcharging people for coffee and breakfast rolls, if and when the economy ever recovers.

The Minister might think he will make savings with these penny pinching, but he should not kid himself; over the longer term if parents are forced to cut spending on these essentials, he is storing up far more costly problems for society in the future. However, that thinking seems to be completely absent on the Government side, where the whole focus appears to be on how to take more from those who have the least. That is what underlies the proposals to cut social welfare, and also what lies behind the earlier signalled intent of the Government to allow employers to opt out of agreed minimum wage rates.

There seems to be no understanding that by driving people, including more people who are working, further into poverty overall society is damaged, and all for the purpose of ensuring that a small number of people at the top will continue to make money. It is not just a short-sighted policy, it is an anti-social one, and one that I suggest would not have gone down well with previous Fianna Fáil Cabinets which were attacked not for cutting social welfare payments and programmes but for increasing them. They were attacked by the very same sort of people whose interests Fianna Fáil now seems to have as its priority. These were the people who in the 1930s claimed that they could not afford to take their money out of London's Stock Exchange and banks and invest it here because the tenement dwellers of Ireland would have no incentive to work for buttons if they were given outrageous luxuries like proper housing, schools and hospitals. We now hear the very same arguments from people who are of the opinion that the only way to get the economy working again is to force people to work for a few hundred euro a week and as part of that to reduce social welfare far below what it is now.

In theory this may make sense but it overlooks a few important facts. Do these people realise that low income earners, social welfare recipients and single parent payment recipients spend every cent in the local economy, and by doing so they create employment? Much of the growth during the Celtic tiger was in highly skilled and well paid employment and a large proportion of that came from overseas investment in technology and other sectors. The economy did not grow on the basis of employing demoralised brow beaten poorly educated people on low wages, as IBEC and ISME and their cheerleaders in Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael would have us believe.

The greatest contribution of some of our native entrepreneurs was to piggyback on the genuine growth in the economy by charging us exorbitant amounts for everything from mortgages to rents to pints of lager and paninis, while being careful at the same time to ensure they paid as little as possible in tax or wages. These are the patriots whose bacon the so-called republican party proposes to save by imposing a massive drop in living standards on the decent people of this country, whose only crime was to work when there was work only to suffer the indignity of unemployment when the work was gone. Unlike many of our great elite, they could not avoid the obligations of citizens by departing into tax exile. Perhaps more of them ought to have followed the elite's example and engaged in the anti-national and criminal activities that have brought this country to its knees. It seems this is what earns one the respect and help of the Government.

I call on people to oppose the measures proposed in this Bill. Not only will they not contribute anything towards the objectives claimed by the Minister, but they will make things much worse by contributing to a further undermining of the social fabric. The measures also contrast to the manner in which the Government has mollycoddled those responsible for the scale of the current mess in which we find ourselves.

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