Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister is aware, funerals cost between €3,000 and €10,000. People in Dublin West and Dublin North-East, the Minister's constituency and my constituency, respectively, have few means of addressing these costs. One way of doing so is to use rural funeral directors to try to introduce competition in the market. The Minister may recall that Deputy Maloney and I introduced a Bill on this very subject.

The Minister admitted the Department made payments of €4 million to cover the costs of funerals. Is the abolition of the bereavement grant not an egregious cut which will create additional pressure on people who have been bereaved?

The Minister is also cutting the exceptional needs payment. A Growing Up in Ireland report published the other day provided information on the position of families with children. It found that two thirds of families with children were desperately struggling to make ends meet and one third of them could not make ends meet. This is the cohort of the population with which we are dealing.

In the area of housing, the rental accommodation scheme has collapsed and housing benefit-----

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