Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the partial restorations of pension payments under sections 3 and 4 and Schedule 1, the partial restoration of child benefit payments under section 7, the restoration of the respite care grant under section 6, the partial back-tracking of the family income supplement earnings threshold under section 8, the changes to the carer's allowance under section 9 and the amendments to certain PRSI credits and earning thresholds under section 10 of the Bill.

It would be churlish of me not to acknowledge these partial restorations, yet it is also disrespectful of the Minister of State and the Tánaiste to refer to them as increases. The social impact assessment, based on ESRI's SWITCH model analysis, about which the Tánaiste told us this morning, may show tiny gains under budget 2016, but these partial restorations of levels of benefit and income for some of the most vulnerable citizens come after seven years of brutal austerity and horrendous cuts. They cannot undo the damage already done to households and individuals. The basic minimum rate of social welfare has stayed exactly the same throughout this Government's term despite the Tánaiste's input.

Sections 3 and 4 and Schedule 1 provide for the partial restoration of a number of payments, including the State pension. In many interactions with my constituents in Dublin Bay North, I found great disappointment at the €3 a week change to State pensions. Many told me they were hoping for a €10 a week increase, or at least a €5 increase. As one senior citizen said to me a few days ago, the increase would barely cover the cost of a daily newspaper.

Once again, in the 2015 Social Welfare Bill, the Tánaiste refuses to address the serious cuts to pensions of deferred members of the Irish aviation superannuation scheme, the IASS. She also has not addressed the serious complaints of the ESB retired staff association and countless other public service pensioners who were left with drastically reduced payments due to austerity levies and other cuts introduced by this outgoing Government.

What of women workers who spent many years working in the home and rearing families? For nearly five years, the Tánaiste has singly failed to remedy the unfair predicament of women workers who had perhaps made 15 to 25 years of social insurance contributions. These women are now being disadvantaged as pensioners at 66 years of age, particularly following the Tánaiste's changes to contributory pension qualification bands. I am sure the Minister of State, Deputy Humphreys, has come across that experience as well. One hard working constituent who has just turned 66 years of age and spent a lot of time rearing a great family is bitterly disappointed that she will receive just €196 per week instead of the higher amount of €233 because the Tánaiste has failed to address this serious issue of gender inequality.

I welcome the provision in section 6, amending section 225 of the principal Act, restoring fully the respite care grant from €1,375 to €1,700. However, the provision in section 5, renaming the grant as the carer's support grant, is disingenuous. The Minister of State knows that I was a social welfare spokesperson in this House for a good number of years and we always intended to have a carer's support grant in addition to the respite care grant.

The Social Insurance Fund is set to increase to almost €8.9 billion next year, recovering from the devastating deficit of almost €2 billion at the worst time of the crash. The projected surplus of €216 million is welcome but it also reminds us that a huge percentage of the social protection budget comes from workers' weekly contributions. Neo-liberal journalists and economists like to talk about a €20 billion social protection budget while ignoring the role of the Social Insurance Fund. In reality, the Tánaiste and her Government have followed the prescription of those reactionary and well-heeled ideologues and relentlessly kept the social assistance budget under €12 billion during the 31st Dáil, with terrible consequences for the most vulnerable sections of our society.

In her speech this morning, the Tánaiste referred to the cost of administering the rent supplement scheme for approximately 63,800 people and noted that it will be more than €298 million this year. The Minister of State, in particular, knows that this represents a savage cut in rent supports over the lifetime of this Government. In 2010, the cost of the scheme, as the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will remember, was approximately €520 million to house 96,500 people and families. The Tánaiste's mantra since 2011 has been that raising rent supplement levels would push up rent levels nationally, yet she has known all that time that the Government could legally introduce rent certainty and regulation. We know this from the work of Senator Aideen Hayden and various barristers who briefed us and helped push towards the uplifts in rent thresholds.

When I called for rent regulation in this House four years ago, we immediately saw bitter hostility to the proposal from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, which are the political parties of landlords. The Tánaiste and her party knew throughout the lifetime of this Dáil that Fine Gael would never agree to rent regulation or certainty. They also knew Ireland was facing the worst housing crisis since the 1920s, yet the Minister of State and his party persisted in joining and staying in a Fine Gael-dominated Government which has given us five years of paralysis and terrible suffering for homeless families. I was the only Deputy to stand up in UCD and say not to enter government, that we could be the leader of the Opposition, oppose a Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government, run them out of office and have a government of the left that would look after people and not yield to crazy austerity economics.

The Minister said this morning that people who vote against this budget will be putting politics before people but it is the Government that has put politics before people. I apologise to Deputy Creighton for going over time.

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