Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)

The cuts to social protection announced on budget day place the Labour Party firmly to the right of politics. The attack on the lowest paid in society shows where the Government's priorities lie. No longer can it blame Fianna Fáil. It is now responsible through the decisions that it has made. The decision to row back on the cut to disability allowances is welcome, but it was a headline social welfare rate and it is beyond belief that it was even included in the budget in the first instance.

Children in single parent families are at the highest risk of poverty, with 65% of the poorest children living in single parent families. A one-parent family where the parent is on a CE scheme with three children living in a rural area will be more than €2,000 per year worse off. This does not even include the extra costs incurred by the VAT increase.

The slashing of child benefit for third and subsequent children is a direct attack on poor families. Anyone can tell the Minister that larger families are mainly poorer families. The Minister referred to Fianna Fáil picking off low lying fruit, but this is one of the lowest lying. The complete refusal even to contemplate a way to target high earners for reductions in child benefit, something that none of us would have had a problem with, shows clearly where the Government's sympathies lie.

Increasing the contribution of tenants on rent supplement hits them directly and lets landlords off the hook. The introduction of minimum rental levels a few years ago has created a black market for landlords where, in order to get rent supplement, tenants must make off-the-book payments to landlords to be able to find somewhere to live.

A bit like King Canute, the Minister has tried to shorten winter by cutting six weeks from the fuel allowance. Each year, almost 2,000 elderly people die from winter-related illnesses and this cut sadly will lead to an increased number of deaths among people who will not be able to heat their homes. This is not my opinion alone, as the Institute of Public Health, IPH, has estimated that 70% of the additional winter mortalities from cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses occurs in the poorest socio-economic groups. I have received calls from elderly people who have told me that they would be turning off their heating because they were afraid that they would not be able to afford it.

Increasing the income assessed from fishing and farming for farm assist and jobseeker's allowance is a further regressive cut that will affect more than 5,000 people living in the most neglected areas in the country where there are no other employment options.

Changing means testing to include income from home support attacks the poorest. The Department explains this by claiming that home support is now a well paid job. This shows how dysfunctional the Government is. It would not take long for the Minister to find out that hundreds of thousands of hours of home support have been slashed by the HSE in the past two years. Many home support workers only work a half hour per day without any assistance towards their travel. Their incomes will be slashed on the double.

The Government had choices. It chose to target lone parents, young people with disabilities, people in fuel poverty, widows and widowers. It chose to hit poor families by more than Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen's pension cut. It chose to give its members' advisers €35,000 pay rises and it chose not to tax high earners. It has chosen to widen inequality in our society.

The Social Welfare Bill is only implementing some of the cuts, with another Bill to appear before the House in the new year. The latter will savage part-time workers and reinforce the inequality that the Government is forcing on us. The full impact of changing jobseeker's allowance to a five-day week calculation has not even been fully evaluated by the Department, yet the Government is going to hit part-time workers anyway.

The economic think tank TASC has called for budgets to be equality proofed. I support this call. By any measure, this budget has failed on equality proofing. The lack of communication between Departments about the cross-departmental impacts of their slashing plans highlights the need for equality proofing even more. It is no accident that the most equal societies are weathering this recession better than the most unequal. Unfortunately, Ireland rates as one of the most unequal societies in Europe. This budget will only increase that inequality further.

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