Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

A lot of people will resent what the Tánaiste just said. The point I made clearly is that it not that people will not pay but that they simply cannot pay. The Tánaiste should know that. Her legacy is that there are 1,000 children in this city sleeping in emergency accommodation every night as a direct result of her decisions with regard to the cap on rent allowance. I will take lectures from many people but on this issue, I will not take a lecture from the Tánaiste.

There are thousands of families who simply cannot afford to make a contribution to bills for water because they do not have the money. That is evidenced by the fact that people are queuing up before community welfare officers across the State week in, week out to try to access additional payments because of the cuts to social welfare over the past number of years.

I will name the cuts. There have been cuts to the education allowance, fuel allowance, back to school allowance, one-parent family allowance, farm assist, household packages and respite care grants and a cap on rent allowance. That is the legacy of the Tánaiste. The Government will pass legislation which will take no account of ability to pay. Reference was made to the fact those in the House earn €84,000 a year. Nobody in the Chamber is on social welfare but there are hundreds of thousands of people in the country who are and who cannot afford to make their weekly payments. I am not making up those figures; every statistic and survey show that there is a major problem with poverty in the country. Some one in eight children are living in abject poverty. Some 30% of household incomes are on the breadline.

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