Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Once again Deputy Boyd Barrett manages to twist things. The figures he cited refer not to people who are in poverty but to those who are at risk of poverty. The reality is that Ireland has one of the lowest levels of poverty risk in the OECD. That said, however, poverty and risk of poverty are real concerns for this Government. That is why we have to restore our public finances. We are borrowing €3 out of every €10 that we spend on social protection, education, health and delivery of services. If we cannot continue to do that we will be condemning the children of the future to poverty. This Government is not going to do that. Our priority is to restore our public finances so that we can pay for the social protection programmes required to keep people out of poverty and in a decent living. That is why we have prioritised getting people into employment, sustaining employment and working towards a sound economy. The best way of getting out and staying out of poverty is to have a job and a decent income. That is the priority of this Government.

Although we would all wish it were otherwise, we are in a financial crisis. We can complain forever about why we got into that financial crisis or who was responsible for putting us into it, but the responsibility of the Government, which we are not going to shirk, is to get out of the economic crisis and ensure the country has the resources to provide for our people and keep them out of poverty.

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