Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

As the party spokesperson on health and children, I argue this has been an anti-children budget and this is an anti-children Social Welfare Bill. It has followed weeks of cynical news management by means of deliberate leaks from the Government that served a purpose, as I noted previously in the Chamber, of softening up the public for the punishment to come. It was also used to fly kites, test public and media opinion and serve competing ministerial agendas in Cabinet. The leaks were designed to give the impression that the Labour Party, and the Minister, Deputy Burton, in particular, was putting up a great fight on behalf of the vulnerable. As the Minister, Deputy Burton, has a new-found interest in the North, to which I have referred and welcomed previously, she may know of Scarva in County Down, where the Orangemen put on what they call a sham fight every year. They dress up as the respective King Billy and King James. There is great excitement, roaring and shouting but the result is always the same. After the sham fight between the coalition partners of Labour and Fine Gael in recent weeks in particular, the result was the same: yet another anti-people austerity budget.

What needs to be stressed repeatedly is that not only is the budget cruel, it is also futile. It will not lead to recovery. It will not grow jobs and it will further depress the economy. That is patently obvious. The Minister should not take my word for it. Exactly a year ago yesterday on 7 December 2010, the then Labour Party finance spokesperson, Deputy Joan Burton, said in her Dáil speech on budget 2011:

This is our sixth budget or adjustment statement since July 2008 ... The first five budgets and adjustment statements took €14.6 billion out of the economy but those in the austerity and hairshirt camp want more ... Today, €6 billion of further austerity will bring the total taken out of the Irish economy over three and a quarter years to an eye-watering €21 billion, or 16% of GNP ... there is no modern example of a developed economy deflating to this extraordinary degree but claiming it can grow.

The Minister, Deputy Burton, did not get her wish to become Minister for Finance. She got the social protection portfolio instead. As Minister for Social Protection she has now signed off on a budget that continues the futile austerity programme that she lacerated in this Chamber exactly 12 months ago. Her Social Welfare Bill makes the vulnerable and the poor pay the price yet again for the austerity programme. It takes a massive €811 million out of the social protection budget. What Deputy Burton said of budget 2011 applies exactly to budget 2012: "There is pain for the poor, money for the rich, particularly for the bankers, and the rolling back of the State."

Last year also Deputy Burton pointed out that under budget 2011, a family with three children lost €40 a month, which was in addition to the previous cuts in child benefit in 2010, where a significant amount was also lost. Under Deputy Burton's Social Welfare Bill as Minister, which we are now discussing, a family with four children will be down €432 in 2012 rising to €768 by 2013. That is the measure of the achievement of the Minister, Deputy Burton, and the Labour Party in Cabinet regarding child benefit. Shame on them. We are expected to be grateful for the fact that there was not an across-the-board slashing of child benefit. Repeatedly over the years, Deputy Burton, her party colleagues and I sat in this Chamber and listened to a succession of Fianna Fáil, Progressive Democrats, and Green Party Ministers point out what they called the generous universal child benefit payment in this State and used the payment as an excuse for not providing better child care, early education and health care for children. Now we see the Minister, Deputy Burton, proceeding with cuts to that universal safety net - child benefit. That is what it has been and must continue to be. She should forgive us if we do not thank her for wielding a knife on this occasion instead of an axe. Let us make no mistake, the child benefit cut for third and subsequent children is a direct attack on families with children, pushing more of them below the poverty line. That will become apparent in a short period.

It is not only the young that have been targeted in the budget. Our older citizens were targeted also. The cut in the fuel allowance from 32 weeks to 26 weeks is an attack on older people, more of whom will now experience fuel poverty. People will have colder homes for more months of the year. When one combines that with the increased excise on home heating oil, one has a recipe for greater fuel poverty and for deaths of old people from the cold. We have already had an example of that in the past week in this sad city.

It is reprehensible that the Government even contemplated a cut of €88 per week in disability allowance for 18 to 21 year olds and its abolition for 16 and 17 year olds. This measure, it seems, is now being withdrawn, but what is most alarming is the thinking – if one could call it that – behind the measure. It would represent the abolition of support on the basis of their disability for people with disabilities in the 16 to 21 year age group. Incredibly, the cut was defended on the basis of reform and equalisation.

Cuts to community employment schemes and community development projects will severely damage another safety net – the services provided by these schemes to communities across the country. These are services that the State is not providing directly, including preschool and afterschool care, breakfast clubs, family resource centres and a myriad of other projects.

The Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, said, as a Labour Minister, he never expected to have to introduce such a budget. The point is that he and his colleagues led people to expect something very different from the Bill and from the budget. Instead, they have given us a recycled Fianna Fáil economic strategy. We reject it just as vehemently as we have rejected Fianna Fáil efforts in the past.

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