Michael McCarthy (Cork South West, Labour)

It states, "The cuts will bring about significant changes to current support arrangements and a clear emphasis on rationalisation". Sinn Féin, along with its coalition partners and friends, the DUP, has overseen the following cuts to community and voluntary sector services in the North this year: the withdrawal in March of 25% of funding or £440,000 from Action Mental Health, a leading mental health charity. This will cost 21 jobs and it means that 500 fewer people will be able to avail of mental health services. I remind the House that last Monday was world mental health day. There has been a cut in funding of £200,000 in the Family Fund, an organisation which provides grants to low income families raising severely disabled or seriously ill children; a reduction in funding of 50% for Down Community Transport in respect of its Dial a Lift service which provides door-to-door travel for individuals living in rural areas who are unable or find it difficult to avail of public transport. Three jobs have gone and the total cuts amount to £350,000. The Fermanagh Rural Community Initiative has received a cut in funding of £200,000 or 30% of its original funding. This will result in another job loss and a reduction in education for the long-term unemployed.

I could go on but what I wish to highlight is the hypocrisy of a party that comes into this House with no cost-benefit analysis for any of its policies, with no realistic economic view of how this country should emerge from the current economic mess in which it finds itself, a very selective amnesia by that party who voted in this House for the blanket guarantee for-----

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