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

I move amendment No. 1:

In the final paragraph after “UN Convention on the Rights of Older People” to insert the

following:“ -- the reversal of previous budget cuts to the household benefits package and fuel allowance; and

-- the restoration of the full entitlement to the medical card for all pensioners over 65 and for the Government to deal with income inequality through progressive taxation on higher incomes, not by attacking universal health benefits; and

further calls on the Government to safeguard the free travel pass into the future.”

It is nothing short of obnoxious to cut away at the entitlement of our senior citizens to proper medical services. It is appalling in the extreme to take away their telephone allowance. Symbolically as well as practically it is disgusting to take away the bereavement grant, and to remove the subsidies for those who feel forced to take out private health insurance, which will now make it unaffordable and throw those people back into the public health system, from which the Government intends to take €1 billion and which will not be able to cope with the pressures it will face in the coming year. These cuts mean misery, suffering, cruelty, anxiety and, in some cases, may even lead to unnecessary deaths of people. That is the reality and it is all the more appalling that it could be done by a Minister and several members of his Government who railed against precisely these measures when they were attempted by the last Fianna Fáil Government. How can the Minister look people straight in the face after saying the things he said in 2008? How can the Tánaiste or the Taoiseach do so, and then do what they are now doing to our pensioners and vulnerable citizens?

This is appalling and I ask the Minister to pull back from the brink. It is not fair. I appeal to the pensioners to get out on the streets again because it seems it is the only way to stop this cruelty that the Government is trying to inflict on them.

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