Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)

I agree with Deputy Healy-Rae. I am delighted to have the opportunity to say a few words on this issue. I condemn out of hand the conduct of the Government and its shameful attacks on elderly people. These shameful attacks will mean not just that the safety of elderly people is at risk, but that their lives are at risk. The actions of the Government and of the so-called Labour Party Minister for Social Protection in cutting back on heating, electricity and gas allowances will have a huge effect on elderly people over the coming winter. The cuts will not only affect their health, but unfortunately, elderly people will die as a result of the cutbacks. James Connolly and Jim Larkin must be turning in their graves when somebody who claims them as her predecessors will implement these savage and shameful cuts to allowances for ordinary elderly people.

The Age Action Ireland organisation recently set up a petition on its website which asks how low the Government can go. It states that hundreds of older people die each year in winter here because they cannot afford to keep themselves warm and that lives could be saved if the Government reversed its decision to cut their electricity and gas units. It goes on to call on the Government to reverse the cuts to the free gas and electricity units available under the household benefits package, given the increased hardship they will cause for older people on low incomes. Age Action Ireland believes that deaths will arise as a result of the savage cutbacks to allowances to elderly people.

Age Action Ireland goes on to say that this is a life and death issue for hundreds of older people who will struggle to heat their homes to safe levels over the coming months. The organisation has indicated that research which will be published in the next fortnight or three weeks by the Institute of Public Health and the Dublin Institute of Technology will show that during the winter of 2006-07, some 1,281 excess winter deaths occurred. Of these, the majority were deaths of older people. Some 1,216 were aged over 65. Age Action Ireland says that these people are dying because they cannot afford to heat their homes to a safe level. It is concerned, in particular, about older people who live alone on low incomes in older, poorly insulated houses and who are often in poor health or suffer with a physical disability.

These cuts are outrageous, particularly in the context of the €770 million the Government paid over to faceless and anonymous speculators in Anglo Irish Bank today. The choice was to pay these bondholders, speculators and bankers. The Government paid them, yet it imposed cuts on the fuel, electricity and gas allowances of elderly people. These cuts will have a serious impact on the health of these people and will cause deaths this winter. These cutbacks come at a time when gas and electricity prices have increased by 20% and 25%.

I call on the Minister, who is a Labour Party Minister, to reverse these cuts and to ensure that ordinary elderly people who had no hand, act or part in creating the recession are decently treated by the Government.

See this speech in context