John Halligan (Waterford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Government commemorated the 90th anniversary of the enactment of the first Constitution of modern Ireland yesterday in a very ironic manner. The Constitution recognised the inalienable rights of the family as superior to all positive law, but what the Government did was to hang out the ordinary man and woman to dry. Our debt is growing more than our growth rate and this budget will do nothing to move us in any other direction. We have done this for wealthy foreign speculators who have bankrupted this State.

We must be the only country in the world where a Labour Party pursues right-wing policies. I know of no Labour Party in any other country that would pursue the policies that the party is pursuing. This is a Labour Party that can suggest that it is fair that the low paid pay the same PRSI increases at the rich, that child benefit be cut, that carers sustain a significant reduction in respite care and that those who cannot afford to pay their mortgages now have to find money to pay the property tax. How can it stand over a budget that will reduce the average family's income by €120 per month but makes no mention of cutting the salaries and pensions of Deputies, culling or merging ineffective quangos, cutting the private education subsidy, abolishing the Seanad or cutting the bloated pay or pensions of top civil servants?

It is inevitable that the reduction in spending power brought about by this budget will once again result in the loss of thousands of jobs. The Government has insulted the people by failing to increase tax on high earners and instead increasing tax on people earning just over the minimum wage by €250. It simply does not make sense that a person earning over €100,000 also faces this same increase of €250. There is much more in this budget.

I addressed a meeting in Waterford on Monday night that was attended by about 500 people. For the first time in the history of the State, the Society of St Vincent de Paul addressed a political meeting, as did a GP, and the stories they told were horrendous. The people at the meeting were from all walks of life - small businesses, the unemployed, middle-income earners, those on low pay and single mothers - and were all stressed and in a state of turmoil. What is offensive is that the Government refused to meet the Society of St Vincent de Paul and read its pre-budget submission. This is an organisation at the coalface in dealing with the problems of the less well-off. We are not talking about few hundred or a few thousand people. We are talking about 700,000 people on or below the poverty line and 250,000 children who will go to school hungry or without proper clothing. The Society of St Vincent de Paul used the term "malnutrition" for the first time in its history. Did the Labour Party think it would hear that terminology in 2012 because this is what is happening? It is out of touch with the reality. There are people going hungry and people who do not have a cent to spend and the Government wants more from them. It wants more from people who have no income and rely on the State and middle-income groups. It wants to take more off those 700,000 people on or below the poverty line. Shame on it.

It wants to take a property tax off 170,000 people in mortgage arrears. They cannot pay their mortgages so how can they pay the property tax? The Government is out of touch with reality. When it will not listen to the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and Social Justice Ireland, it will listen to no one.

Within a number of years, perhaps before the three remaining years of the Government are up, the Labour Party Deputies will be put out of office and reduced to having a paltry number of seats, and rightly so.

During our lives we all make personal and individual choices, and there are choices to be made in every given situation. A swathe of people in the country rely on others to make choices for them because they are economically unsound through no fault of their own. They have been buried in bad debt and have lost their jobs through no fault of their own. All of these people are put on social welfare and bring with them mortgage, car and credit union arrears. They all rely on someone to make choices for them and they need compassion when these choices are being made. They need people to tell them they will show compassion and help them, and not leave them go hungry, send a child to school without proper footwear, sit in a house with no heating or wonder on Thursday whether they will have money to buy food at the weekend. This is when governments, and those of us on the left, when we have the opportunity to do so, are supposed to step up to the plate and look after those who need our help. What has the Government done? It has abandoned them, and this will never be forgiven.

The Labour Party Deputies have fallen into a false sense of security if they think things will get better in time for the budget after next. By then they will have done irreparable damage to hundreds of thousands of people in the State. They will have been complicit with the bankers who have sent people to their deaths and to absolute despair. A total of 450,000 people in the country suffer from depression, which is one of the highest percentages per population in Europe. The Government is complicit with this, and shame on it. These are not my words, they are those of a GP who spoke at my meeting on Monday about people who have attended his constituency office and clinic, some of whom have killed themselves. The Government is complicit in this. It has let down the ordinary everyday average people who wanted it to make a choice for them because they cannot do so. The Government Deputies will pay a heavy price for this.

This morning I received an e-mail from a girl called Jean who stated she could have cried when she heard the details of the budget because the Government is bringing our people to their knees. She is a lone parent with a mortgage who works part-time but also attends college part-time, for which she pays. This year she approached the Society of St. Vincent De Paul to help her with her college fees, having never thought she would be in such a situation. She stated she does not know where she will find the money to put food on the table from week to week or to bring her children to the doctor if they get sick. She stated she is embarrassed to find herself in this position as she has always kept her head above water and tried to pay her bills, but she is slowly sinking. This sums up what the Government is doing to people in Ireland. All of these people will remember what the Government has done and they will make the Deputies pay for it.

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