Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

This has been a terrible week for social protection in Ireland. This Social Welfare and Pensions Bill, like the budget, makes swingeing economic attacks on the elderly with its callous snatch back of tens of thousands of medical cards, on the young with the savage cuts to their jobseekers' allowances and on pregnant women with the callous cut to maternity benefits, among many other attacks.

As we discuss social protection today, the Irish State stands ashamed in front of the world for a situation in which a bigoted busybody sent an ignorant and bigoted Facebook message to a journalist to the effect that a child in a Roma family has blonde hair and blue eyes and, I quote, "It's a big problem with missing kids, the Roma robbing them to get child benefit in Europe". On foot of this, journalists and two powerful State agencies, the Garda and the HSE, swallowed an assumption based on the most abysmal ignorance and racial stereotyping to the effect that it is impossible for a Roma person to be blonde and blue eyed and peremptorily removed children from their homes in Tallaght and Athlone. It is pathetic for the Taoiseach to say that he believes this was done in good faith. So-called good faith arising from ignorant and bigoted assumptions is not a basis for child protection policy.

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