Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

He was.

The cuts announced in social welfare are a grave error and one which should be remedied before next week. As anyone who has been unemployed will agree, cutting jobseeker's benefit when people are vulnerable as they desperately try to return to work is reprehensible. The mean cuts in the back-to-school allowance and household benefits package do not have anything to do with the Labour Party's ethos and are the wrong approach.

On the measures taken in the Department of Education and Skills, it is not necessary to make promises before elections but if one does so, one should keep them. The Minister talked the talk and should have walked the walk. Incidentally, the increase in the pupil-teacher ratio in post-leaving certificate programmes and cuts in funding to the vocational education committees are also mean spirited. The Minister has cut the pupil-teacher ratio for many kids who did not have a chance to go to third level.

In health, people on home care packages face another year of anxiety.

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