Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

When one breaks down Government expenditure, one third is related to wages. That is comprehensively dealt with in the plan, including pensions for retired public servants.

Some 38% of current expenditure relates to the Department of Social Protection, which is my Department. My Department must have a huge focus on the old, the unemployed and the invalid. Therefore, we must look at how we can reduce expenditure while minimising the impact on ordinary people.

People often ask where all the revenue from the Celtic tiger building boom went? Much of it went on improving the social welfare system. For example, expenditure in 2000 was €6.7 billion and expenditure in 2010 will be €20.9 billion. Some people, who do not do the sums, will argue that this is caused by the increase in unemployment. However, the total payment for jobseeker's allowance and jobseeker's benefit is approximately €4.5 billion, and there are always people in receipt of unemployment payments, full-time or part-time. Unemployment payments clearly account for a very small fraction of total expenditure. The rest of the increase went on improvements in schemes and a huge increase in the rates of social welfare payments. For example, we increased the average rate of payment for schemes by approximately 130% at a time of 40% inflation. There were real gains for people receiving payments from my Department. In ten years, we multiplied expenditure on carers by six, at a time of 30% inflation. How did we do that? We introduced a half-way carer's allowance, which is much prized by, for example, pensioners who are caring for other people. We also introduced the respite allowance. We increased income disregards for the means test and we increased rates. We used a lot of money during the Celtic tiger years to improve the lot of carers. The challenge in my Department is to hold onto as much of that architecture as we can in the middle of a world downturn. That is what we will seek to do.

As I indicated yesterday and as is indicated in the plan, there will, of course, be cuts in rates this year. We will also be seeking to match those with other savings that will not impact on the provision of services.

It is also our intention to cap the payment to RTE and CIE in relation to the free television licence and free travel, but that will not impinge on the existing or future rights of people to free travel or the free television licence. It is our belief that the sum we pay on behalf of people entitled to free television is more than adequate for the service being provided by the public service broadcaster.

How will we deal with the reduction of €3 billion in the spend of my Department, which will still be by far the biggest spending Department in Government, over the next four years? I take exception to the statement issued by Social Justice Ireland yesterday. It tried, totally contrary to what is said in the plan, to indicate that savings would be made solely by rate cuts. Rate cuts are the least attractive option. They will be the option of last resort and every effort will be made in 2012, 2013 and 2014, to ensure that rate cuts will not be a major contributor to savings.

How will we make these savings?

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