Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour) | Oireachtas source

This budget takes us out of the bailout programme. When we think back to where we started from and the worries people had about whether the State would be able to continue making social welfare payments and the extent to which it would continue to be able to make old age payments, pay secondary benefits and so on, being able to get out of the bailout programme without cutting basic social welfare rates or the old age pension and while maintaining most of the benefits available to pensioners and people on social welfare is quite an achievement. When people look at the budget, the question that must be asked is not whether this cut or change should have been made. The choice is between what we have done and what Fianna Fáil would have done. The four year plan published by Fianna Fáil prior to the last general election included a figure of €17.9 billion for social spending in 2014. The Government will spend €19.6 billion on social protection measures next year. In other words, if Fianna Fáil was still in power, some €1.7 billion extra would be removed from the social protection budget. I have a question for Deputy Willie O'Dea who is his party's spokesperson on social protection. What measures would he take and what additional cuts would he make in the Social Welfare Bill to get the extra €1.7 billion? If we look, for example, at what we have done in the budget, €1.7 billion would represent approximately eight times the total of the various changes made in this year's budget. Therefore, it is not for Fianna Fáil to get up and raise this or that issue, but to tell the people what additional measures it would take. What additional cuts would it make to pension, social welfare protection and various secondary benefits to reach the figure of €1.7 billion extra in cuts that it stated it would implement in 2014?

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