Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)

I ask Deputies on the Government benches, when is a cut not a cut?. In particular, I ask Deputies Joan Burton and Kathleen Lynch that question. The answer is, when one feels the heat of public anger and calls for a review.

The Sinn Féin budget proposals, Route to Recovery, were based on the key principles of fairness, equality and jobs. The Government's budget was based on identifying the most vulnerable in society and attacking them. When Labour felt the heat of public anger at disability allowance cuts, the Government quickly announced that they would be subject to review. This review is a smokescreen. The truth is that if Labour Ministers had an ounce of fairness and equality, they would never have announced these dreadful cuts in the first place. They thought they would get away with it.

They live in some parallel universe, surrounded by ministerial cars, perks and allowances, and the thought of cutting €88 from a weekly income did not seem a lot. How wrong they were. Like their Fianna Fáil predecessors on the Government benches, they are feeling the wrath of the people, as Fianna Fáil felt the anger of pensioners over the medical card issue and quickly attempted a U-turn. The Government should forget about reviews and reverse the cuts now. People feel passionate about these cuts because they go to the heart of who we are and what we want to be as a society.

The proposed cut of 66% in the training and education allowance for community employment, CE, workers is nothing short of a disgrace. I know many people who have benefited from that allowance over the past 20 years and were able to move from unemployment to employment because there was a training allowance. I was one of those people myself. One of the worthwhile aspects of the CE schemes was the training and education element. The Sinn Féin office in my constituency has received numerous calls and e-mails from people pleading for these cuts to be overturned. They range from requests from people seeking to have a decision overturned to others expressing desperation at what is happening.

Community employment schemes continue to provide essential services to local communities. They range from drug rehabilitation projects, meals on wheels, crèches, community centres and all sorts of environmental works, all meeting the needs of the public who otherwise would not have these services in their communities. I commend the CE schemes on the work they have been doing and the vital services they provide.

A core component of the schemes is the training and education they provide. The Government, in its wisdom, has decided effectively to cut off that budget by reducing it to 34% of what it was, because what is left is meaningless. This not only drastically reduces the training, it will also force many CE projects to close because many of them depend on the grant to pay their rent.

The Government, nevertheless, found money to promote Tús and JobBridge, two programmes dreamt up by the Government as a fig leaf for the absolute failure to introduce any kind of real job creation strategy. Tús is CE lite. It has no training or education component and there is no commitment to long-term employment in it. It is the total opposite to CE and will not help people to move from unemployment to employment, which is the key thing. JobBridge is merely a headline grabbing exercise. Rather than strengthen the CE schemes, the Government has taken the worst option, which is to starve them of funds and redirect those funds into Tús and JobBridge.

Sinn Féin will continue to work with trade unions, community groups and community networks in campaigning to have these cuts overturned - not reviewed but overturned. I appeal to Deputies to put pressure on the Ministers to do that.

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