Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

We all have our own ways of presenting things. I thank Deputy Maureen O'Sullivan for tabling the motion and creating a stimulating debate on the issue. We can massage figures and play with words, and when it is done in the Chamber here it is called spin. Everyone is capable of it in their own way. When the Government came into power, its Members thought they could never spin it like the previous Government. However, in fairness to them, they have got better at it and have learnt a lot in the nearly four years they have been in power. We are at the mercy of considerable Government spin at present.

We are told that Ireland is growing faster than any other country in Europe. However, of the EU 28, only Romania, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Croatia, Greece and Bulgaria have a higher percentage of people at risk of poverty or social exclusion among their own nationals, and we fare better than all but one of these countries by only a percentage point or two. According to recent EUROSTAT figures, the Government has presided over a situation where nearly one third of all people born in this country live either in or are at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

The Government often advises us to look at the bigger picture, that everything is getting brighter, and that the impressive growth figures mean a lot to the country. While, of course, they help, as we have pointed out many times of late, sadly they do not reflect the real lives of many people who look at the small picture and see many problems and challenges.

The very clear-sighted writer Richard McAleavey, speaking of the Government, has said it has presided over:

The suffocation of public finances to pay off banker debt; attacks on the working majority in the form of wage cuts, withdrawal of vital services, free labour schemes for employers, regressive indirect taxation measures that attack the poor whilst creating a tax regime that favours the rich even more, scapegoating and criminalisation of people dependent on social welfare payments ... and presented them all as measures in the public interest.

The Tánaiste has outlined how the Department of Social Protection publishes a social impact assessment each year with the help of the pro-business lobbyists in the ESRI. Each year the Government manages to give the least help to those who need it most. Budget 2015 gave the largest tax breaks to those on the top rate of tax, which goes to show that the Department of Social Protection does not practise what its name would imply.

Either the ESRI is getting it wrong or the Department of Social Protection is codding us.

The fact that those in government constantly talk about the spending money people have in their pockets acutely demonstrates that they cannot see the wood for the trees. The quality and availability of public services are central to any debate about the welfare of the people of any country, but the Government seems to box them off as if they were not relevant to our collective well-being.

It is little wonder then that the social impact analysis did not do much to deter the Minister, Deputy Noonan, from planning massive public spending cuts every year up to 2018. In October, Michael Taft performed a budget analysis using data from the Government's budget report that adjusted for inflation and the IMF's predictions for population increases in Ireland. He found that total spending on public services, social transfers and investment will fall by more than 9% by 2018. He claims that funding for schools, hospitals, policing, transportation, enterprise supports - all our public services - will fall by more than 8%. Government investment, which is vital for our infrastructure, will fall by 15.4% by 2018. Those in government constantly talk about the necessity to make this country an attractive place for the international market but it would be good if it changed tack a bit and made this a more attractive place for Irish people who want to start up their own small business or who are trying to keep the existing one going and gave those people a little more help. We keep forgetting that the domestic economy employs 75% of our people and it is very problematic for most people trying to work within that area at the moment.

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