Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will deal with a number of matters raised by Deputy McDonald. Nobody wants to live in an era when we reduce spending, and certainly not to the degree we are required to as part of the programme obligations we must meet to fund all services. We are borrowing money from a lender of last resort on certain conditions. The Deputy knows this full well.

When considering equality in the last budget, we had to consider the budget in its sequence, with a number of measures having an impact over time. We cannot repeatedly go to the same well and we must look to spread the impact. The ESRI SWITCH model does not, for example, take account of capital taxes or VAT, so that has a disproportionate effect. We increased three different types of capital taxes last year and they were not taken into account in that model. We took 300,000 of the lowest paid people from the universal social charge net and we restored the minimum wage, which the Deputy argued we would not or could not do. We also maintained basic social welfare rates.

This was a time when difficult decisions had to be made. More than 70% of all current public expenditure is in areas that affect ordinary people very heavily, such as the health service, provisions for vulnerable people and the social protection and education budget. It is impossible to make the reductions we are obliged to make without considering our options, and we have done that as carefully as possible.

All international studies indicate we must give lone parents the opportunity not to regard themselves as excluded from the workforce but rather provide a chance for them to enter this workforce through education and upskilling. That is the sort of focus the Minister for Social Protection has outlined in some detail.

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