Kathleen Lynch (Cork North Central, Labour)

I listened to the speech of the Minister for Social Protection. Those of us who know the Minister accept that he has a certain degree of sympathy for people who are underprivileged and marginalised. However, in this instance, he has lost the battle to protect those people. I was more than surprised. I know this is not the budget the Minister would like to have seen, but it is the budget that was brought in. It is a disaster for anyone who is dependent on the State.

The Minister spoke of the difficulty of protecting one group. I do not accept his argument. I do not believe the Government has protected old age pensioners. It has isolated them and, probably, made them more vulnerable in the future. Now, they are sitting out as a group on their own. That is a difficulty for them. The Minister cannot say he has protected old age pensioners when it is not true. The old age pension has not been cut this year, but what the Minister says is not true. People want honesty and openness. As a woman said to me, "It will be awful in the next few years, but we would settle for honesty". We need to be honest about this.

One cannot break up the disability sector into different groups. The blind pension is a different payment from disability payments. It is separate and different and was constructed separately and differently, but one cannot isolate that group. We must accept that there are certain things in society that one must protect. In times of crisis, we must ask what services and sections of society we hold so dear that they will not be touched. We could all rattle them off. They are education, health, people on very low incomes, people with disabilities and people who need additional protection, such as those on farm assist. People on farm assist still populate rural Ireland, despite the fact that they are on very meagre incomes. The Minister must decide not to go below that floor. This morning he referred to this protection but the difficulty is that he keeps moving the floor. If it was set in stone and in legislation, that no one will fall below €200 a week, or any other figure, say, €220, at least we would know. The difficulty is that these are shifting sands. People do not know their position nor where it will all end. They are very fearful as a consequence. The argument for people with a disability needing additional money has been made many times. A person in a wheelchair cannot cut his or her own grass nor clean the windows. Such people need transport and heat and additional medical facilities. We have made the argument many times. It should be a question of what we want to protect and not a question of how much can be cut. If it was looked at from that standpoint, it would have been a different budget.

What has this Government got against widows or widowers? I am always staggered that women or men with children who lose their partner in life at a young age do not qualify for the household benefits package. If one income is unexpectedly lost from a household with small children, whether the income is small or big it is nevertheless a loss. No one wants to be a widow or widower but such a person has to continue alone caring and providing for a family which two people created between them. I refer to the policy of changing widows or widowers to the single or lone parent family allowance which I regard as the biggest con job of the lot. It is argued that the changeover to this payment will enable them participate on a community employment scheme. This scheme lasts for one year, at most, two years and if one is very lucky, for three years. When it finishes, one is suddenly on a means-tested payment and at the mercy of the Government and the whims of a budget. This should not be the case.

Approximately 400,000 people are unemployed and they do not want to be unemployed. They are unemployed now because they were sucked into an industry which was fuelled by the Government but they were left high and dry when the air was let out of it. Many of these people are not in receipt of any payment because they were equally persuaded to go on C2 and C32 certificates. It was a case of become self-employed and you will be fine, which is not a path to social cohesion and definitely not the way to go if we hope to provide a single social pot. I hope the lesson has been learned on that one. These people are now left floundering and desperate to know how they will cope with Christmas. This issue should be dealt with urgently.

The Minister lost the argument when it came to this budget. The people who are depending on this Government to put food on their tables and heat their homes and maybe allow Santa down the chimney this year, will feel the pain as a result.

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