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

I would not be in favour of the amendment, as drafted. The Minister of State can correct me if I am wrong, but as far as I can recollect, the cost of child benefit this year is in excess of €2 billion. There are questions around how we should proceed in the future and whether some of the current allocation should go towards direct child care provision, but, obviously, that is an argument for another day.

I understand the thinking behind Deputy Thomas Pringle's amendment, but there is also a case to be made for the means-testing of child benefit payments. Why should fathers and mothers who are millionaires and have occupations such as tribunal lawyers and so on be paid the same amount as those fathers and mothers who are in receipt of social welfare payments? If memory serves me correctly, a committee established by the Minister for Social Protection, the report of which was discussed by an Oireachtas committee, proposed recasting the system in such a way that higher rates would be paid to persons on lower incomes. If memory also serves me correctly, the net result of that recommendation would have been that the higher one's income the lower the rate of benefit received. The report has obviously been gathering dust somewhere for the past two or three years. Whether it will ever be resuscitated, I do not know. Even if we were to agree that child benefit should be means-tested or recast in the way suggested in the report, I would not be disposed to a reduction in child benefit for persons who are working and on the minimum wage or an amount slightly in excess of it. That would be the effect of the amendment, although quite unintentionally I am sure. It would hurt a lot of poor people. The solution is much more complex. As Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh said, the amendment would be a blunt instrument and, obviously, we cannot support it. However, this is an issue to which the next Administration, whatever its composition, will have to give its immediate attention.

See this speech in context