Mary Mitchell O'Connor (Dún Laoghaire, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The following are the areas that were improved in budget 2015: the back to work family dividend, JobsPlus, child benefit, the living alone allowance, the Christmas bonus and substantial housing investment. These are improvements that will directly impact and assist those who are unemployed. Previous Fianna Fáil budgets cut the carer's allowance, the blind pension, the Christmas bonus and child benefit, to name just a few. This Government protected the most vulnerable over four budgets by protecting the core social welfare rates of jobseeker's benefit, carer's allowance and State pension.

If we are assessing budget fairness, then let us be fair and look at the economic context the Government has been faced with. The Government has spent the past three years dragging the country, which was almost written off as debt-burdened and unrecoverable and one of the PIGS countries, out of an economic recession. Today, interest rates are at 1.4% and the unemployment rate is at 10.9%.

The budget deficit in 2011, when this Government came to power, was unsustainable at 8.6% of GDP. We have now set a target for 2015 of 2.7% of GDP. This Government has stabilised the economy. This 2.7% target is a direct result of strong and wise management of each budget since coming into Government. Reflecting these improvements, our credit rating has seen repeated upward revisions by ratings agencies.

Last week, 220 jobs were announced. The week before, 1,755 jobs were announced. This month is the 28th month in a row that the unemployment rate has decreased. The facts are that last year 27,700 persons entered the workforce, with 94% of them getting full-time employment. Since 2012, some 80,000 more people are at work. This is a fact. Sometimes when I listen to the minority of the Opposition I think they do not want to hear about the unemployed getting jobs. They prefer to peddle doom and gloom.

Creating jobs is what it is all about. Creating jobs means we get the people back to work and help lift those poorest and most vulnerable out of that poverty trap. Mothers I meet tell me that they do not want to see their child jobless. No mother wants to see her child reliant on social welfare. No mother wants to see her child emigrate. Unemployment is the greatest inequality in society.

This budget has ensured that the richest in society bear the larger share of the burden and that the poor and most vulnerable are protected as far as possible. Let us not forget the great contribution middle income earners have made.

Middle income earners are burdened with costly mortgages, high child care costs and high taxes. In my constituency people have paid very high property taxes. Such people have contributed enormously in helping us emerge from the EU and IMF bailout programme.

See this speech in context