Brian Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

I do not have the details of the issue raised by the Deputy but I will certainly follow it up. It is clearly a detailed Finance Bill matter. I want to make the social welfare position clear. We have had to make changes for the full-year effect. There was a time, before we came back into office, that an increase - when there were increases - was not effected until July the following year. We changed that to give a full-year effect.

Unfortunately, as the Deputy knows, with 38% of total spend in the social welfare area, it is not possible to make the correction which must be made in our public finances without reducing our welfare spend. Nevertheless, our welfare spend this year is €3 billion more than what it was in 2008, when the crisis began. In times when there were available funds to improve welfare, we trebled the total spend on social welfare. This was in the past decade at a time when cost of living increases were not 300%. We did this because of national anti-poverty strategy commitments and a range of areas where real social advances were made. In the golden era often referred to by the Labour Party, when it was part of a Government, the cost of living increases were approximately 5.5% per annum and the total welfare increases in the three budgets was just 10%. Members will recall the famous £1.50 increase from one of the Labour Party heroes, Proinsias de Rossa.

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