Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

There is no mention of targeted redundancies whatsoever in the Haddington Road agreement, although I accept that the Minister will implement that policy. No trade union voted "Yes" to targeted redundancies. They were not asked to do that because it was not in the Haddington Road agreement. The Minister may say it is implied now that the agreement has got over the line safely.

We are in the second half of the year. The Minister knows well that most of the money in the group of 30 Estimates has already been spent; any amount not expended has already been committed. That is no way to do business. Thank God for Europe and for the changes for 2013. It has nothing to do with the establishment of the Minister's Department or a new way of doing politics; it is as a result of changes imposed from Europe. The Estimates for 2014 will be published on 15 October and hopefully voted through before the end of this year. That is the way to do business.

The essence of today's debate is to discuss the €2 billion of cuts which the Government has sanctioned for this year, 2013, and to which there is no reference in the Minister's opening contribution. These cuts are the equivalent of a reduction in 465 services, or a cash cuts of €1,218 for every household in the country. I refer to the Minister's budget speech on Wednesday, 5 December 2012:

The expenditure adjustments I am announcing amount to just under €2 billion out of an overall adjustment of some €3.5 billion.

In my view this means that the expenditure cuts accounted for 58% of the adjustment and the taxation side accounted for 42%. Fianna Fáil maintains that there should be fairness and equity with regard to the balancing of expenditure cuts against tax increases, in the order of 50%. It is clear from the Minister's budget announcement that 58% of the adjustment has come by way of expenditure cuts of €2 billion. The Minister has attempted to spin it by saying that the €500 million was a capital expenditure reduction, but these are real cuts as well. Capital expenditure leads to employment and improvements in services and facilities. One cannot exclude capital expenditure cuts and pretend they did not happen in order to say a 50% cut in expenditure has been achieved, as well as a 50% saving by way of taxation changes.

I refer to the reply I received to a parliamentary question. I asked the Minister to outline the number of major construction projects that have been tendered but that have not progressed to construction. His reply on 2 July states:

The information sought by the Deputy in relation to public works contracts tendered is held by the individual contracting authorities concerned. They are not required to pass this information to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform.

When the Minister approves his capital expenditure budget he does not have a mechanism to track whether the project actually happens. That is a shambolic way of doing business. There should be a requirement to inform the Department.

The Minister announced an extra €150 million as a jobs stimulus for expenditure on education, roads and insulation of social housing. There is still a reduction in the capital expenditure budget this year of €350 million. He had previously announced a reduction of €500 million. The budget and these current expenditure proposals are to be voted on. Under no circumstances will Fianna Fáil stand over the choices the Minister made to make those cuts of €2 billion. We will call a vote on this issue. These cuts were not poverty-proofed, gender-proofed, family-proofed or equality-proofed. The Minister broke his commitment in the programme for Government.

I wish to highlight a cut introduced this week. Last Thursday morning, the rules for the one-parent family payment were changed. I tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister for Social Protection. Her reply states:

There are currently 83,210 people who receive the one-parent family payment (OFP). The cost of the OFP scheme was €1.06 billion in 2012 and is estimated to be €935 million in 2013. In 2013, on foot of the OFP reforms which came into effect on 4 July, it is expected that up to 9,300 recipients will leave the OFP scheme. Up to 8,000 of these will lose entitlement this month. These numbers reflect the maximum number of cases who may lose entitlement in 2013. This reform is expected to yield estimated savings of €3.94m in 2013.

The Minister's reply further stated: "It is expected that the majority of those who will lose their entitlement to the OFP payment will apply for the jobseeker's allowance (JA) scheme." The Department of Social Protection issued a press statement on this issue, which stated: "Lone parents who are in part-time employment and are affected by the recent one-family payment reforms who then move to jobseeker's allowance will experience loss of earnings". This is a result of the reduced jobseeker's allowance earnings disregard of €60 versus €110 for the one-parent family payment and the fact that the means-tested jobseeker's allowance is different. This is classic Joan Burton talk. She did not cut the rate of one-parent family payment nor the rate of jobseeker's allowance but she cut people's money by over €50 per week starting last Thursday morning. The Minister's note further stated that approximately one third of that 9,000 were in part-time employment but they will be unable to retain the same level of income now that Deputy Burton has switched them from the one-parent family payment to jobseeker's allowance. Lone parents are recognised as having the highest rate of consistent poverty in Ireland but the Minister for Social Protection has sought to impoverish them even further. This is overseen by the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform and by the Government, and we are expected to vote for it today. There is no chance of that happening.

I refer to the changes in the budget for those relying on social welfare services. There is a cut of €325 in the respite care grant. Embedded in these figures are cuts to the mortgage interest supplement of 25%. The figure last year was €55 million in repayments and this has been reduced to €41 million. The Minister does not like that payment and she has made it more difficult for people to get it. The measure was to help people who were likely to go into mortgage arrears, but the Minister now wants people to have been in arrears for 12 months and to make an arrangement with the banks, which will have a veto, before they can receive the payment. That is the only financial contribution this Government is making to people in mortgage arrears this calendar year. There are plenty of guidelines, rules and regulations, but the Government has cut the mortgage interest supplement budget for this year by 25%.

I refer to the cuts in child benefit introduced this year. The rate was €140 for the first and second child and this has been cut by €10 to €130. The rate for the third child was €148 and it has been reduced by €18 to €130. For the fourth and subsequent child the rate was €160 and it is also reduced. A family with three children will see a reduction of €38 per month. A total of €436 is being taken from the mother's hand over a year. That is the cost of what the Minister is asking us to vote for - taking money from people's child benefit. For a family with four children the cut is €696 per year. Under no circumstances should this House vote for that cut.

I cannot understand how the Labour Party would have no problem with conscience when its members vote on issues such as cuts to child benefit, the one-parent family payment, mortgage interest supplement and the carer's allowance. For good measure, the Government last week started to tax maternity benefit for the first time since the foundation of the State, adding insult to injury. I do not know what the Labour Party has against mothers with young children but it was single-handed in targeting them in last December's budget, and it is important to remind people of that.

In the Estimates before us, which were discussed in committee over the past couple of weeks, there is a cut to the back-to-education allowance, and it has effectively been abolished. That was €300 for students and the scheme has been abolished entirely. With regard to the cost of sending children back to school in September and the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance, there is to be a 50% cut for each child. That again hits families with young children.

The Minister should have labelled the Estimates for 2013 as an attack on families with young children and especially mothers, as it is the essence of what we are discussing today. These are the Minister's choices, and he indicated on 5 December last year, "The expenditure adjustments I am announcing amount to just under €2 billion out of an overall adjustment of €3.5 billion." Fine Gael won the day and got its way while the Labour Party suffered, and the party is now making the people relying on State services take the brunt of cuts. There were also cuts to the household benefits package, which helps pay for the telephone, gas and electricity bills for elderly people. That took €61 million from the pensioners of Ireland and people with household benefits packages, including those on certain invalidity or disability payments.

There was a commitment given before the last election when the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, signed his name on a placard outside Trinity College. There was no reference to the following issues by the Minister today, but under the Estimates the student contribution to fees will rise by €250 in 2013 and an additional €250 in 2014 and 2015. We do not agree with it. I loved the Minister's line on student grants, which epitomises the doublethink of the Labour Party, and it is interesting that most of the cuts are being made by Labour Party Ministers. The leaflet issued by the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Quinn, on the day of the budget indicated that there would be no reduction in the payment rates for student grants in 2013, although the next sentence indicated that the income thresholds for eligibility for student grants would be reduced by 3%. People will be cut from the scheme but the rate will not be changed, meaning money will be saved by imposing a 100% cut on people who will no longer be eligible. There were also changes to the income disregard for payments to people on the farm assist programme.

I have provided an example of what this Estimates debate is about. These are €2 billion in cuts that did not have to be made. They were the choices of the Government, as the troika did not seek the €2 billion in expenditure cuts. They are the result of discussions of the Minister, his party leader, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, and the Taoiseach. They informed other members of the Government of the decision to put 58% of the adjustment on the people by way of expenditure cuts, and those who could have paid more were not asked to do so. That is why we have all the alarming cuts before us today, many of which could have been avoided if there had been a fifty-fifty adjustment of expenditure cuts and taxation measures. As the Government chose not to follow that path, we will vote against this motion.

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