Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

Many of the budget day traditions have been changed, as this year the budget was delivered over two days with various presentations. A change from the scene of previous years was that the now Minister, Deputy Burton, used to come to the House and put herself into apoplexy in language and tone describing various measures in the budget which she abhorred and which horrified her. She threw into it every verb one can find in the English dictionary. The budget and this Bill marks the night that the Peig Sayers of previous budgets became Maggie Thatcher. She has launched attacks on the disabled about which Deputy Browne has spoken, and thank God Fine Gael has become the socialist party of Ireland and has had the conscience to keep the Labour Party in check. It is a measure of which the Progressive Democrats would have been proud. It is hard to believe the party of James Connolly would propose it.

The Minister of State, Deputy John Perry, has responsibility for small businesses. I accept companies such as Dell and TalkTalk and others which abandon workers here should not receive redundancy rebates. However, can he honestly defend the redundancy rebates for small and medium businesses in the country being cut from 60% to 15%? They are struggling to try to keep their doors open and now this full-scale attack on them has been launched.

Section 13 is an attack on home help service providers. The income they receive will be included in social welfare protection, on the same day that the Minister for Health told the joint committee there is a question mark over the viability of any community nursing home with fewer than 50 beds. We will close community nursing homes and penalise home help service providers. This is another example of one Department not speaking to another. We will send many people away from homes and penalise home help service providers.

This morning, the Tánaiste was trying to dance around the issue of community employment, CE, schemes and clarify that bodies in receipt of other funding will be examined, and they may not lose funding or may have other resources. The Tánaiste needs to examine the budget with regard to the Department of Health because contained in the budget is a cut - I love the word "efficiencies" which is used - of €50 million to organisations providing mental health and disability services. I presume this includes many of the groups which sponsor CE schemes in the sector. They will be hit by a cut in the materials grant, from €1,500 down to €500, which will undermine many CE schemes. They will also be hit by the €50 million cut which will come down the tracks in January and February when they are notified of their allocation.

Future widows and widowers will have to increase the number of contributions from 156 weeks to 520. This is madness. It will not even be phased; it will be done over two years. Other changes will be made to the way in which the contributory pension is measured. The way of assessing people who have contributed for 20 years will be changed and it will be cut from under them. This is all being done by a Minister of the Labour Party who made her reputation through what she thought was her ability to speak for the people. She came here and wailed for Ireland and now comes and proposes this.

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