Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to get an opportunity to speak in this debate and to highlight the Minister for Social Protection's attack on the weak and the vulnerable, despite her protestations to the contrary. The Minister claims to have protected the primary rates of social welfare. She might have done that in her own terms, but I suggest she has slashed and burned all around her to devastating effect. A rose by any other name is still a rose and a cut by any other name is still a cut. It is important to highlight how big the cuts have been. Every year, the Minister tells us she has kept the big bad wolf - the Department of Finance - from the door and single-handedly reduced the cut. When one digs into the figures, however, one finds this is an illusion - an accountancy sleight of hand performed by a Minister who is an accountant - rather than the reality.

The Minister announces a headline cut every year. The figure for the first year of her term in office was €475 million, the figure for the second year was €390 million and the figure for the third year was €290 million. She never tells us that each year's figure is merely the current-year saving. As some changes do not kick in until well into the year, one has to wait until the full-year saving is known before one knows how big the cut is in the long term. When one examines the budget out-turn for the year in which the €475 million cut was announced, one finds that the actual cut was €811 million. In the year for which a cut of €390 million was announced, the actual cut was €452 million. We do not know the figure for this year - the Minister is smart - because the full-year saving is not put on the table on budget day.

The reality is that the Minister has cut an average of over €500 million from the social welfare budget every year since she came into office. The public is wise to this. When people are presented with big numbers, they look more closely at the detail of how they will be affected. The Minister cut every child benefit payment by €10, but she cut the payment to fourth and subsequent children by much more, thereby particularly affecting large families. She cut the back to education allowance from €305 to €200, or from €200 to €100, depending on the age of the child. She abolished the back to education allowance that was paid in respect of children between the ages of two and four. She cut the maximum maternity grant, which is what most people were getting, from €260 a week to €230 a week.

Having finished with the children of the nation, she moved on to vulnerable families. She reduced the age that the youngest child in a single-parent family has to be in order for the parent to no longer qualify for the one-parent family allowance from 14 to seven. In the case of rent supplement, which is the subject of the most severe means test of all, she increased dramatically to €40 a week the rental contribution that has to be made by the poorest cohort of people. This year, to add insult to injury, she has abolished the mortgage interest supplement. This means the withdrawal of the State support that has been offered for many decades to people who lose their jobs while they are waiting to get new jobs.

Of course the Labour Party has never had any grá for farmers. The Minister has changed the means testing rules that apply to farm assist payments. As a result, regardless of how hard one works on one's little farm, the Minister will take back from one's social welfare payment 100% of what one earns on that farm. It is the highest rate of tax in the whole country. We hear millionaires complaining about a 50% tax, but this is a 100% tax on small farmers, in effect. It is being overseen by a Minister who talks about encouraging enterprise. It is costing many families up to €100 per week in lost social welfare payments.

Having finished with the farmers, the Minister moved on to older people. She reduced the period of time for which fuel allowance is paid from 32 weeks to 26 weeks. This represented a cut of €120 per annum, or over €2 a week. Having initially cut the electricity allowance from 2,400 units to 1,800 units, the Minister got really smart and converted it into cash. When she decided to give people the same amount of cash regardless of the cost of electricity, she was saying that she did not care how expensive electricity gets. Given that energy costs rise inexorably, this was a cut, in effect. In the old days, one's units covered the price of electricity as it went up. As we all know, she abolished the free telephone rental allowance, which was worth more than €20 a month, in two steps. For some reason, she has an awful set against women.

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