Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

What the final budget decisions reveal is a Government that holds many meetings with outside groups but rarely ever listens to what is being said. How else could one explain all the meetings with children’s organisations which were followed by the targeting in this budget of families with children?

Yesterday’s announcement that 100 Garda stations will be closed will rightly lead to demonstrations throughout the country. When closing stations the Government repeatedly said they were only marginal stations, which were more trouble than benefit. In seeking to close 100 stations this excuse is irrelevant. It is a programme to change policing in Ireland radically by making it more distant from the community and exposing large sections of the country to significantly reduced coverage. If one believes the Garda make a difference to keeping us safe - I have no doubt that is the case - then one must accept that this radical and dangerous proposal must be stopped before it goes any further.

Each one of the welfare cuts imposed in the budget could have been avoided if the proposal to target the highest income earners had been adopted. Instead, Fine Gael insisted that social welfare must feel the pain and the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, went about designing a set of cuts which is deeply mean spirited. Families with children have been singled out for major cuts in their income. Last year the Government told us that Scandinavian child care was on the way. This year the Fine Gael and Labour vision of Scandinavian child care is being implemented, with cuts to child benefit, taxing of maternity benefit, cuts to clothing and footwear allowances and a handful of extra child care places. When she was in opposition the Minister, Deputy Burton, liked nothing more than to find ways of attacking welfare packages no matter how generous they were. She was particularly happy to have coined the term "savage 16" and said of the Minister concerned, “her actions make Margaret Thatcher look like a socialist.” Today, the conscience of the Labour Party in government-----

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