Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is likely to sneer at many of the comments from the Opposition. It seems that Ministers have to grin and bear listening to us. I have taken a look at some of the Minister's own reactions to hard budgets when she was an Opposition finance spokesperson. She referred to the 2009 budget as a nightmare on Merrion Street. She said the 2009 supplementary budget was the budget from hell. In addition, she said the cuts in that budget were being introduced to pay for the global speculation of some of the greediest people on the planet. In 2010, Deputy Burton said the budget was the slaughter of the innocents.

In budget 2011, however, she delivered what was perhaps the biggest lie of all when she said the principle of the Labour Party was that we are a one-Ireland society and that those who have most should contribute most. That has not been borne out by any of the subsequent budgets which the Labour Party helped to shape. The expectation was that all of the necessary adjustments could be avoided by substituting Frankfurt's way for the Labour Party's way, but the Minister's ten-yard walk from Opposition to the Government benches seems to have fundamentally changed her view of the world. It has discredited politics along the way because that party's policy was played for every vote it could get.

The clip we saw recently on the "Tonight with Vincent Browne" television programme featuring the outrage of the current Taoiseach and Tánaiste in 2008 has been expanded upon. I well remember the current Minister for Social Protection's outrage at that time. I am sure there will be clips played of that at some point also.

There was no shortage of outrage. Would the Minister's outrage in those years have extended to forcing, in the main, low paid workers to live without any income during the first six days of illness; to cuts in State assistance for those who could not pay their mortgages - this Bill provides for a cut in the mortgage interest supplement and its elimination by 2018 - or to the cut in the bereavement grant to those who need it to bury their dead, many of whom paid for it all of their working lives through PRSI because it was part of the PRSI package introduced in 1970? Countless people have asked me to explain the universal social charge and the reason they are also paying PRSI. People cannot figure out what it is they are paying for as their entitlements are reducing all the time.

While I agree education and training is essential if people are to have productive futures, does the Minister really think that people under 25 with primary and master's degrees and PhDs need more training? They are not sitting in front of flat screen televisions leeching off the State and do not require more training. The cut in social welfare benefits for these people will not create new jobs.

I regret that we have so little time to debate this Bill. We have all been shoe-horned into speaking in a small amount of time. It was only when we sat down at the Whips' meeting this morning that we realised just how bad the situation will be tomorrow. If each of the 166 Members of this House wanted to contribute tomorrow on the section on maternity benefits, which is to be cut for the vast majority of people, and adoption benefit, they would have 18 seconds to do so. If each Member was to have an opportunity to speak on the discontinuance of the bereavement grant they would have to do so within the 20 minutes allocated for debate on that section. The 30 minutes allocated for debate on the cuts in jobseeker's benefits for under 25s equates, if all Members wish to contribute, to 18 seconds per Member. This is not the way to do business or to run the country. This is being done for one reason and one reason only, namely, to minimise the negative reaction on the Government, to allow backbenchers to go off next week and remain uncontactable and to prevent the Opposition tabling amendments.

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