Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

My apologies. The Minister seems to indicate that the position has improved appreciably since the end of 2013 to which these figures relate. The Department of Social Protection in its assessment of the 2015 budget admits, more or less, that it is regressive, like all the four budgets that preceded it. I refer to the Minister's own document which states that the distributive effect of budget 2015 is uneven, with higher than average gains for better-off quintiles - who make up 10% of the population - and that middle and lower quintiles gain less than the average, with the smallest gain in the bottom quintiles.

The statistics for the end of 2013 showed that over 30% - more than 1 million people in this country - were suffering some form of enforced deprivation. It also showed that almost one in eight children - 135,000 to be specific - had sunk into consistent poverty.

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