John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)

The budget will be best remembered as an attack on the little people. These are low and middle income families, lone parents, the disabled, the elderly and small business owners. The budget will leave a legacy of fuel poverty. A generation of lone parents and families are being abandoned by the State and less well-off students are expected to survive on just more than €1 per day. This makes a mockery of the notion that education is the right of children. The resounding message is that the poorest will pay the most.

Once again the burden of adjustment falls disproportionately on those less able to bear it. Our most vulnerable are taking the pain for the greed of the ruling classes. I ask the Government to please not blame it on the EU and IMF. They did not tell the Government to cut child benefit for the third child or to reduce fuel allowance. The proposed 2% cut in funding to higher education is contrary to IMF policy which states that investment in this area helps future recovery in countries in economic difficulty.

Some weeks ago Social Justice Ireland, a respected and highly regarded organisation, made its budget submission. I have been informed that it has not even been given the courtesy of a response by a Minister. This is no wonder given the statistics it presented. A total of 628,781 people, 210,000 of them children, live in poverty, with hundreds of thousands more living on the edge. How can this be? How did it come to this? Ireland is now the seventh wealthiest out of 27 EU countries according to EUROSTAT 2011. It has the second highest proportion of millionaire households in the EU according to a Boston Consulting Group report of 2010. The 300 richest people in Ireland have a combined net worth of €50 billion according to the Sunday Independent rich list of 2010. The number of high net worth individuals rose by 5% last year according to the global wealth report.

Who speaks for the hundreds of thousands in the categories of the marginalised? Who speaks for the low paid, the single mothers, the elderly and the unemployed? It is certainly not the so-called pillars of society namely the trade unions, the major political parties and the church. They have been abandoned by these groups who see no injustice, speak no injustice or hear no injustice. This is why so many are in the cold grip of helplessness. With the exception of small groups such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Social Justice Ireland and those of us on the political left they have no voice. Many of those struggling to survive have given up on politics, which suits the large political parties as very many of them do not vote and if they did they would probably vote against the status quo.

The trade union movement will not march on the Dáil on behalf of these people. Come to think of it, the trade union movement will not march on anybody's behalf; it would be an embarrassment to the leadership whose ideology is probably most linked to Fine Gael, the Labour Party and Fianna Fáil as it has spent so many years snuggling up to successive Governments. The church spends most of its time promoting a mythical Shangri-La in the next life instead of dealing with the harsh realities of how people live in this life, and it calls them its flock. With no leadership from the aforementioned many decent people are bewildered and demoralised.

The Manic Street Preachers sang, "If you tolerate this your children will be next". What we have tolerated is gambling and robbery from the banks, greedy developers deliberately inflating house prices, corrupt politicians, austerity measures which have destroyed people's quality of life and broken promises that continue with the present Government.

The previous and present Governments have picked a fight with children through cuts to back to education allowances, fuel allowances, disability payments and child benefit. The Government has waged war on the most vulnerable in our society who cannot fight back. They cannot threaten to take their money from the country or to cease to give political donations. This Government, like the previous one, is bleeding families dry.

I have addressed many meetings in my constituency and believe the tolerance level of people is wearing thin. The man working all week with a wife and children at home does not even have €10 disposable income at the end of the week; the aspirations of a young couple in love are shattered because they cannot afford a house; a mother and father cannot properly feed and clothe their children; and a Waterford Glass worker made redundant after working 30 years had to wait six months for a social welfare payment and a year for redundancy payment, and suffered a pension cut.

The day might very well be fast approaching when the hundreds and thousands of people unjustly treated in Ireland may not need the trade union movement, the church or the political parties to rise up and vent their anger and frustration on this unjust society. This day will come. I have always believed that the quality of life in any country is not judged on its wealth, its historic sites or its beautiful scenic places. It is judged on how people live and the quality of their day-to-day life. Ireland today is not a good country in which to live.

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