Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----"the Government has supported and protected the core weekly social protection payments". That might be true to a certain extent, but not for those under 25 or 22 years of age whose weekly jobseeker's allowance payments have been cut, those who have seen their weekly maternity benefit reduced by including it in tax calculations, those whose jobseeker's benefit payments have been cut by three months to nine months in respect of full PRSI contributions or those whose fuel allowance payments have been cut by six weeks. Last week, we saw the unprecedented targeting of people in receipt of the single parent allowance. It was not reduced. Instead, when their children turn seven years of age, their weekly allowance will be gone. While the Government may have protected the old age pension rate, what is being taken from recipients' pockets has increased significantly through, for example, prescription charges, which the Government was going to reduce upon entering office, increased fuel prices due to carbon taxes and three increases in electricity bills sanctioned by the Government in recent years.

According to the Government's amendment, it has "prioritised the concerns of older people across the whole of Government in a new way". I could not agree more, but the new way is a negative one that has terrorised every senior citizen like never before. If the Government wants to protect senior citizens, why have home help hours been reduced by 1 million in the past two years? In County Westmeath, there was a 60% reduction - more than 160,000 hours - in 2013 compared with 2012.

Consider the medical card fiasco. Every week, people on all sides of the House have been visited in their constituency offices by senior citizens in floods of tears and unable to control their anxieties about their medical card reviews. Medical cards have been removed from the sickest and most vulnerable in society.

A Deputy referred to the telephone allowance. In abolishing it, the Government took away what was a lifeline for many. When a person went to bed at night, he or she could press the panic button hanging around his or her neck upon becoming sick or someone breaking into the house. People no longer have that service thanks to this Government.

Charlie Haughey introduced free transport, an innovative creation at the time. As reported in the national media this year, some people are using their free transport because they cannot afford to heat their homes thanks to the Government's policy decisions. Not only has the Government discussed changing eligibility criteria, but it has cut the number of routes. A bus that used to go through my village is gone now. It transported senior citizens to the local town. A bus used to go through Multyfarnham in my constituency twice per day. Senior citizens had the opportunity to travel to Dublin or Mullingar for doctors' appointments. That bus route is gone. In Moyne in County Longford, 150 senior citizens-----

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