Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Tá súil agam go bhfaighidh an tAire an pacáiste ceart don cheantar, mar níl sé ann le blianta anuas.

I want to focus on the social welfare aspect of the budget. However, since the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection spoke before the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, the debate is a bit disjointed. As others have done, I want to highlight some of the failures and the unfairness of the budget to date. This Government has disdain for the unemployed and others on social welfare. One can see that from the fact that in the last three budgets the Tánaiste has cut jobseeker's benefit by three months, illness benefit by three days, the jobseeker's allowance for young people by €44, and the invalidity pension for 65 year olds. It has been easy for her to agree to give back €690 per year to a single person earning €120,000 but only €25 to the young, impoverished jobseeker.

I do not believe that the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection and Labour Party leader wants people on social welfare to have any comfort in their lives. She does not believe they deserve to have a proper Christmas because they will only get 25% of the Christmas bonus, which is a pittance for young jobseekers. All they will receive is €25. Despite the spin, almost 200,000 unemployed will not get that bonus or any support for their water bills.

In her press statement yesterday, the Tánaiste stated categorically that there would be no reductions to any social welfare scheme in 2015, but this is patently untrue. Next year, the one-parent family payment will be restricted to children under the age of seven. The income disregard, which the Government has already cut from €146.50 to €90, will be cut to €75. The effect will be that low-paid working lone parents, who have already lost €28 each week from these cuts, are set to lose a further €7.50 weekly.

Where is the fairness for lone parents and children? We have circulated and published our alternative budget. Where is the fairness for carers? Sinn Féin would have done things differently. In one of the Government's mean cuts in budget 2013 the respite grant was cut by €325 which affected 70,000 family carers, yet nothing was done to help them in this budget.

People have been forced to give up work to care for loved ones with disabilities. Their mortgages did not shrink when their families were hit by disability. Their utility bills did not shrink, in fact the opposite happened. Their weekly grocery bills did not shrink, but their entire worlds did. The restoration of the €325 grant for carers was at the top of our alternative budget. The measure should have been in this budget. It would have cost €29.6 million and would have been money well spent. Every last penny would have been spent in the local economy rather than being squirrelled away in bank accounts.

Where is the fairness in this budget for children? Sinn Féin would have done things differently. This Government cut child benefit by between €10 and €47 per child. When we discuss this issue, we also need to bear in mind that it cut maternity benefit by €32 per week and the annual back to school allowance for the poorest children by €100. What is the answer? It is a €5 a month increase in child benefit. That is some end to austerity. Sinn Féin's alternative budget recognised that growing numbers of children now live in a household headed by a person in employment and the actual cost of returning to school each September far exceeds the current payment level. We propose a 10% increase to the family income supplement which would have delivered an increase of €18.50 each week to poor working families, a €50 increase to the back to school clothing and footwear allowance, and much more. It is a pity the Minister did not listen because the budget would have been fairer and one which we may have been able to support.

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