Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

People are protesting today and they will be protesting tomorrow, Thursday and Friday. These protestors understand that unlike the Clearing House Group, whose members sit down with officials of the Department of Finance and script the budget for the Government, their voices are not being listened to. Did the Taoiseach read what the ESRI said today? It said that people are trapped in unemployment because they have all the extra burdens of large families to support, because of a dysfunctional social welfare system which puts obstacles in the way of getting back to work, and because of the lack of child care facilities and public services. The Government has made all of those issues worse through, for example, cuts in the income disregard for lone parents, in the back to school allowance and in child benefit. All of those measures further trap these people in poverty.

My question to the Taoiseach is very simple. Does he accept that his party has betrayed the solemn promises it made in the last election to protect the vulnerable, particularly the disabled, and that the Labour Party has betrayed its absolutely explicit and solemn promise not to cut child benefit? This Government is turning on the people to whom it made these promises. Does that not make him ashamed? Does he not agree that it discredits the entire political system?

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