Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I am pleased the Minister of State, Deputy Ring, is in the House because he is genuinely concerned about ordinary people. No more than myself on the other side of the county border, he has always worked for the less well-off in society. I am incredibly saddened by the approach taken in the budget and will try to explain to the Minister of State why the Government got it wrong.

I am not arguing with the figure of €470 million that had to be taken out of the social welfare budget. Let us be honest: those who think we can go on spending in the way we did, with the same tax take and range of charges as heretofore, are patently wrong. If that were the case, we would have to keep borrowing money. This would quickly become unsustainable. The way in which things were done, however, was wrong. I therefore ask the Minister to consider putting the Committee Stage debate back to next week. There are petty cuts that will not save significant amounts of money but that will hurt small numbers of people. These decisions could easily be rectified within the figures. I have some experience of this; the one thing I tried to avoid last year was making deep cuts on individuals. If people suddenly find a few hundred euro disappearing from their weekly income and they are of modest means, it could be the tipping point for them.

One of the problems with the way thing were done last Monday was that a lot of the micro-information was not made available. For example, under the heading of "Other Measures", some €20 million has been provided. This refers to administrative budgets, means-testing rationalisation, treatment benefit and other miscellaneous measures. In some cases the bread will literally be taken from the mouths of ordinary people. I want to put this matter in context. The Department of Social Protection spends approximately €100 million a day. I understand it makes payments during a ten hour period. Therefore, this amounts to the equivalent of a two hour payment in the whole year. That is what we are arguing about in the case of some of these meaningless measures which include home care and carer's allowance.

The Minister of State could save himself a lot of trouble if he were to spent the weekend studying the data. Unlike last year, there are no great time pressures. We all know the circumstances that prevailed this time last year. As I have no doubt the Minister of State hopes to be in office for five years, time is on his side. He should, therefore, take time out this weekend to examine some of the harsher measures that might not save €1 million a year. It amounts to margin-of-error stuff in the Department of Social Protection. He should examine these measures and seek to have the Bill changed accordingly. If we proceed to meet an arbitrary deadline of 3.30 p.m. today, the Government will always be remembered as the one which seemed to go after families, women in particular. It chose the better-off ahead of the less well-off.

I have the height of respect for the Minister of State, and we all serve the interests of the people. Unlike what happened when we were in government, I will never say that any significant amount of people in this House have anything other than the good of the ordinary people at heart. I have always objected to the allegation that we were acting for some big vested interest; the Minister of State knows this was not true and I know it is not true in the case of the current Government.

Whether it is naïveté or purposeful policy, the Government made some strange decisions. I will outline one which shows a philosophy that I find strange as an ex-Minister. We can take the fuel allowance as it applies to pensioners. That allowance is paid to those on a non-contributory pension, with an allowance of €100 per week.

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