Charles Flanagan (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I am grateful for the opportunity to make a very brief contribution and add my voice to earlier speakers who condemned the Government's actions with particular reference to the section of the Bill we are debating, section 3, and specifically about carers and those in receipt of the pension for the blind. There is an eerie irony that this issue is being debated in the Dáil on the same day that bank executives and senior bosses who contributed in no small way to the destruction of our economy are divvying up a Christmas bonus of €40 million between them while we are engaged on savage cuts for the most vulnerable and needy people in society.

The Government is against those on welfare but this budget is particularly anti-children. The cuts in child benefit are harsh and biting and will affect children in a fundamentally unfair way, particularly in cases where there is no safety net. I ask the Minister to deal with this in his reply before we finally dispose of this Bill. There is no safety net to assist families who have children on the poverty line. The qualified child increase has not been increased in any way in this budget, nor has the family income supplement. As the Minister will be aware, in 2009 the €26 weekly rate of qualified child increase was paid in respect of 363,000 children and a further 129,000 children were involved at the €13 rate. Now there are 615,000 children availing of this basic child payment rate. This is fundamentally unfair. I ask the Minister to tell the House and reassure the people that he will not proceed with these cuts as proposed. How can he say it is fair or just to treat a family on €19,000 in the same way as a family on €120,000 a year, with reference to the payment of child benefit? This is seriously unjust and unfair. It will ensure the Government continues to foster injustice and unfairness in its attitude towards children and child policy. It will ensure an unhappy Christmas for hundreds of thousands of children in this country. The Government had the choice; it made the wrong one.

I ask the Minister to deal with the following matter, which I cannot understand. A value for money review of child income supports was published by the Minister's Department earlier this year in advance of the budget. This recommended a policy shift towards an integrated child income support payment but this was not acted on in the budget. Why was that? The child poverty index will show that children in this country are living in consistent child poverty at totally unacceptable rates. In 2008, it was estimated that 6.3% of children were living in child poverty but this has risen to 8.7% in 2009 and will increase further and substantially in the context of the changes the Government is introducing. If further injustices towards young people and children are added in the general budget, as with the cut to adult social welfare rates, the 24% cut in the youth justice budget, the cut in the school transport budget and the cut to special needs assistants, the Minister and his colleagues will do a grave injustice to the children of this country.

Families receive no concession from this budget. Children continue to live in deprivation and poverty. The Minister still has time to withdraw some of the more unfair and unjust aspects of this budget. I ask him to accept the amendments put forward by Deputy Ring to ensure at least a modicum of fairness, in which the Minister has failed to engage with this Bill.

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