Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is hard to believe that we are at the seventh austerity budget and that over €30 billion has been taken out of the hands of Irish families. In his speech, Deputy Mathews tackled the misnomer with regard to the level of debt in the State and there were a number of misnomers spouted yesterday with regard to the expunging of the promissory note. What we have seen is the latter translated into a 40-year bond, which put the debt on the generations to come.

One of the most significant issues from next year's budgetary figures that I have seen is that €9 billion will be paid in interest on debt - a figure that is higher than the complete education budget for the year, which is shocking. In part, that interest is at its height due to the failure of the Government to get a deal on the retrospective recapitalisation of bank debt.

On a human level, this budget has angered hundreds of thousands throughout the State. It again targets the sick, the elderly and the vulnerable. This morning I spoke to a pensioner who rang and asked if he should get rid of his telephone line and the panic button in the house, and I had to persuade that pensioner to do all in his power to keep those in his house for safety reasons. Outrageously, TDs in Labour will vote for 20,000 families to lose the bereavement grant.

The Tara mines are in my constituency. Many of the former workers are on pensions of no more than €10,000 a year. Because of the pension levy, these individuals lost 2.5% of their pensions. The Government promised to get rid of this pension levy this year, but it increased the pension levy, which will result in an increase in the loss in these individuals' pensions.

With all the talk in this House of maternal health over the past number of months, we have seen maternity leave targeted for a second year in a row, culminating in each mother being up to €140 per week worse off, not including child benefit reductions.

The health position is a complete disaster. The fact that eligibility for medical cards for the over 70s will be restricted shows the disdain of the Government for the over 70s. Some €130 million worth of medical cards will be excluded next year, on top of the poor and sick who have been excluded already this year.

In health, 8,000 beds, 10,000 staff and €3 billion have been taken out of the system in recent years. The Government's answer this year is to take €666 million out of the service. That will mean that accident and emergency departments, such as the one in Navan serving all of County Meath, will be closed. It will mean that the ambulance services, that are already 20 to 30 minutes late in responding to cardiac and stroke victims in my region, will be later again in the year to come. The Government is playing with patients' lives in this regard and it is desperately reckless for the Ministers opposite to vote for these measures.

A lack of focus on the key ingredient, growth, and its consistent overestimation by the Government, has made the path to recovery even steeper. Emigration is outstripping job creation in this State by three to one and those who are coming off the live register find themselves now in an ecosystem of low-wage activation campaigns and random training. At the height of the Celtic tiger, 4% of the population were unemployed - that level of chronic unemployment is considered to be full employment in this State. Now under 14% of the workforce are unemployed. That 10% differential who, through no fault of their own, have lost their jobs would take up work if they were allowed but there is no work available for them. The youngest of that cohort are having their welfare supports slashed and, in effect, are being told to get out of the country altogether.

That is not the response to encourage job creation. I ask the Ministers to focus on growth.

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