Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. I wish to focus on what the austerity policies of the Government, including the Labour Party, have done to families and children. I include the austerity policies of a Labour Party Minister and Tánaiste. We know that families, including children, have fallen further and faster into poverty in Ireland than in any other developed country. That is despite commitments and promises made by the Labour Party in its 2011 manifesto and its famous Tesco advertisement during the course of the election campaign. I shall remind the House and public what the Labour Party said in that manifesto about children, families and older people. Under the heading “TIME FOR CHANGE”, it states:

Ireland should be the best place in the world to grow up, and to grow old. It is a scandal that, despite a decade of prosperity, vulnerable children have been allowed to die for want of proper care; and that the privileging of profit in healthcare has put older people at risk of abuse by unscrupulous businesses. The Labour Party believes that it is time to put aside the ‘me first’ philosophy of Fianna Fáil, and to work together to build an Ireland that is a safe place for children ...

Under the heading “BREAKING THE CYCLE OF CHILD POVERTY”, it states:

Child poverty in Ireland has remained stubbornly high ... Labour will adopt a radical new area-based approach to tackling child poverty ... [This] involves all of the existing state services, such as public health nurses, schools, childcare professionals, and social workers coordinating their efforts, with expert Irish and international support, to tackle every aspect of child poverty within Ireland’s most disadvantaged communities.

These were the promises made.

We all remember the famous, or perhaps infamous, so-called Tesco advertisement that warned the public not to vote for Fine Gael, stating "LOOK WHAT FINE GAEL HAVE IN STORE FOR YOU!" There are six items in the advertisement. One of the main ones is a €252 child benefit cut, and it goes on to state, "FINE GAEL: EVERY LITTLE HURTS!" Of course, what happened was that the Labour Party reneged on those promises and the austerity policies espoused by the Labour Party, the very same policies that were put in place by Fianna Fáil and the Greens, have hugely disadvantaged and ravaged young people, children and families. Indeed, Labour Party budgets alone have taken up to €1,500 from families in child benefit.

Despite the so-called Tesco advertisement that warned not to vote for Fine Gael because it would reduce child benefit, the Labour Party went even further and reduced child benefit by up to €1,500 per family. There were cuts in the back-to-school allowance, maternity benefit and fuel allowance. Indeed, the recent 2015 budget widened the rich-poor gap by €499 a year. The result of all that has been that families have been decimated and a recent report by UNICEF tells the story only too well. According to UNICEF, Irish families with children have lost the equivalent of ten years of income progress and families with children have fallen further and faster into poverty than in any other developed country in the world. The child poverty rate, as measured by EUROSTAT, rose from 18% to 28.6%, an increase of 10.6 percentage points. This corresponds to a net increase of more than 130,000 poor children in Ireland. That is what the Labour Party has done for children in Ireland. The party has put 130,000 additional children in this country into poverty by the austerity policies that it has espoused over the course of recent years.

The UNICEF report goes on to state that Ireland ranks 37th out of 41 OECD countries, when UNICEF measures relative changes in child poverty. It states the recession and the policies have hit the 15-24 age group particularly hard. It adds that 18 OECD countries recorded a reduction in child poverty during the same period, including Chile and Poland, which saw a reduction of 7.9%. UNICEF states:

Countries should place the well-being of children at the top of their priorities during economic recessions ... Children living in poverty are more likely to become impoverished adults and have poor children, creating and sustaining intergenerational cycles of poverty.

The report goes on to state that it need not be that way. It states that for each country, the extent and character of the impact of the crisis on children depends on the strength of the social safety net and, most important, the policy responses of governments. This Government, this Minister and this Labour Party could have done it differently. They could have ensured that Irish children and families were protected. They promised that, they made that commitment in the course of the previous general election but, of course, they reneged on those promises and commitments. I say, "Shame on the Labour Party."

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