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

This budget was depressingly predictable. The Government has clearly chosen as its targets the young, the old, the sick, particularly the chronically sick, and the unemployed. At the same time it has chosen to protect the very wealthy and the profits of enormously profitable corporations. I am sure Fine Gael is very pleased because its stated agenda is being vindicated, that is, to look after the well-off in society and defend the champions of the free market and big business in big corporations. At every hand's turn, they are protected. Of course, one would expect this from Fine Gael, but it must be particularly happy that it has the Labour Party to do the dirty work in the form of the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Brendan Howlin, delivering the pain to the old, the young, the chronically sick and the unemployed. I must tell the Minister for Education and Skills, Deputy Ruairí Quinn, that this is pathetic on the part of the Labour Party.

The amount of the cuts in the health budget of €660 million alone makes a mockery of any attempt by the Government in the run-up to the budget to state it would improve access to free GP care. In reality, what it has done is attack eligibility to access health care for some of the sickest people in the country, namely, the old and the chronically sick. Frankly, I am sick of it. Day in, day out and week in, week out, very sick people come to my clinic to tell me how they are being denied medical cards. We must plead and beg with the Minister and the Department to give them what they are entitled to. People who are very sick and in pain and on multiple medications have been hit again and again in a series of measures in the budget. It is nothing short of despicable to leave people in pain in this way.

The Government's big plan in health involves delisting drugs, increasing prescription charges, reducing income thresholds for medical cards and what it laughingly calls "probity" - trying to find ways not to give people medical cards. It promised free GP care for everybody, but, of course, we know this will never be delivered. Let us not forget the downgrading of the invalidity pension for 65 year olds. The Government knew 65 year olds were in trouble because of the cut in the State transition payment, but instead of rectifying this unfairness, it has downgraded the invalidity pension for this bracket of individuals who have worked all their lives and reached the age of 65 years. The Government has knocked them down.

The cutting of the bereavement grant is nasty beyond belief. It is bad enough that the Government attacks the old and the sick while they are alive, but to attack people in death really is appalling. This will hit the least well-off and well the Minister knows it.

The abolition of the telephone allowance will probably go down in history as a notorious attack. The one time Minister Ernest Blythe became notorious for decades because he took one shilling off the old age pension. The Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, will go down in the annals as the Minister who left old people frightened, alone and isolated in their own homes when they needed company and support the most.

The attacks on young people are utterly despicable. Cutting jobseeker's allowance for those aged between 22 and 25 years when there are no jobs available for them is a straightforward invitation to leave the country.

That is what they are doing. The facts are clear and the Government cannot deny them. The CSO tells us that 40,000 people are leaving a year, not all young people but mostly young people. The intelligence, the education and the energy that could help this country recover is being pointed towards the door. That is what this cut is doing to them. It also makes a mockery of the Government's claim that it is defending core payments. This is a core payment, or are young people not entitled to core payments? The Government is slicing and chipping away at core payments. It is the slippery slope to attacking the social welfare state, again, something Fine Gael has long been committed to, but for the Labour Party to do it is nothing short of disgusting.

Other cuts that will hurt young people include the €35 million from third level education and registration in FÁS projects, VTOS and Youthreach, again hitting the least well off. Not mentioned today, of course, is a further €8 million in cuts to the budget of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs, where there was a €16 million cut last year. This will precisely hurt the outreach, community and youth projects in the most disadvantaged areas of Dublin, other urban centres and other parts of the country. People have already been out protesting, saying that the futures of the most vulnerable young people in the poorest of areas are being put in danger by last year's cuts, and now the Government is going to do it to them again.

There is also the cut to the mortgage interest supplement. It is bad enough to lose a job but, now, when a person loses a job, he or she will be threatened with the loss of his or her home, compounding one misery on top of another. Then, as a token, the Government tells us it is going to build 500 council houses and spend €30 million. Five hundred council houses against a background of 110,000 families on the housing list will not even cover the new applicants who go on the list this year. In other words, the housing crisis will be worse next year anyway. What is the Government going to do to reverse that?

A serious housing programme and a serious stimulus programme would spend €3 billion, as we proposed. By simply multiplying the Government's figures, a sum of €3 billion would build 50,000 council houses. That would pay for itself over a five- or ten-year period because we would save €500 million a year in rent supplement and generate an extra €300 million or €400 million in extra rental revenue to the State. I do not understand why the Government will not do that but, of course, there is an answer in the speech of the Minister, Deputy Noonan. It is that the Government's answer to stimulating the economy is to give more tax breaks to the speculators and developers who are still standing through the new real estate investment trusts, through breaks in capital gains tax and through other tax incentives for the very same people who ruined the housing market, ruined the economy and inflicted such suffering on ordinary people. I understand why Fine Gael would do it, but why would the Labour Party do it? Can we not make the big corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share and protect the vulnerable people who voted for the Minister, Deputy Quinn?

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