Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I have three points to make in response to Deputy McDonald's comments. First, I agree with her entirely that we need an objective analysis and not a partisan analysis from either side of the House. Objectively, if one looks at the totality of our public spending and taxation regime, one will see that we have a very progressive one in place. Can one tweak it one way or the other, do a snapshot of that and pretend that is an accurate snapshot of the totality? No, one cannot, which is why I am saying we need better tools to do that. I know that Deputy McDonald will use whatever data she can to her own political advantage but that is not good in terms of society.

Deputy McDonald mentioned lone parents. There has been a change, which has been explained. We would like to see greater opportunity for women who have children alone to get back into the workplace and not be permanently dependent on welfare. That is the Scandinavian model that has been looked at independently by outside specialists in this area. They are the recommendations. It is the norm in the developed countries we look to like those in Scandinavia. The Deputy can have those debates with the Minister for Social Protection.

In respect of disadvantage, we have focused on disadvantage and disability significantly in our expenditure. That if why if one looks at disability and adds up what we spend as a Government on disability issues this year, one will see it is €6.2 billion. In the education area alone, our expenditure on disability is now coming close to what we spend on third-level education so we take the fact that every child deserves full participation very seriously. Could we do more if we had more resources? The answer is "Yes" and please God, when we fix our economy, we will have more resources.

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