Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Despite its rhetoric, the Government's record on job creation is nothing to crow about. More than 370,000 people remain on the live register, including more than 56,000 young people. Emigration is official Government policy and has been actively incentivised by cuts to social welfare for young people. I wish the Government would dispense with the fiction that it has protected core social welfare rates as that certainly has not been the experience of those aged under 25 years.

While increased support to the JobsPlus scheme, as proposed by Sinn Féin, is welcome, the Government should have brought its shameful and exploitative JobBridge and Gateway schemes to a close and replaced them with real job opportunities in JobsPlus and by way of increased investment in community employment schemes.

Far from being neutral in its approach, the Government has again favoured policies that deliver least for those who have least. Ministers have spent almost four years in government crying crocodile tears for the low paid and the struggling, coping classes, yet today they have failed these groups again.

The Minister made a virtue of the fact that he did not announce new cuts to departmental budgets but he remained silent on cuts that have been already announced and are due to take effect in 2015. For example, the 1% cut to the capitation grant for primary and secondary schools will be devastating. We all know that schools are underfunded and struggle to make ends meet. Parents will be again asked to bridge the shortfall but many of them are not in a position to increase their voluntary contributions.

Therefore, how will the school insurance, lighting and heating bills be met? Does the Taoiseach care?

The €250 increase in the registration fee for third level students, in real terms, will mean that education will be beyond the reach of many, particularly younger people. By any standard, a registration fee of €3,000 per annum is excessive. I do not see Deputy Ruaraí Quinn in the House. I remember that fado, fado he signed various pledges to ensure this would not happen.

The budget does far too little to make getting children back to school more affordable; it provides no additional resources for school book grants or the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance. The Tánaiste and Labour Party leader rather glibly told parents to shop around, but I cannot emphasise enough to the Taoiseach how much of a strain children returning to school represents for struggling families. I hope he is listening. I hope that at some point in his political life he might understand this and that we might see some substantive response to it.

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