Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy.

It now seems that the Government wishes to recreate itself as saviours of the struggling classes. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are coming to the rescue to save unfortunate welfare recipients in their hour of need. For that reason people outside the House now refer to this budget as the "fiver budget". There are budget fivers all around. We are still not clear when the €5 increases will be paid. We are clear that it is not a fiver for younger welfare recipients. For them, it seems that they are only worthy of an increase of €2.70.

We are also clear that for all of the talk about championing pensioners, the Government has left one particular group of pensioners in a desperately unfair situation. I refer to those pensioners who, because of their work contracts, must retire at the age of 65 but are not entitled to the State pension until the age of 66. Time was when there was a transitional pension for that set of pensioners. The previous Government, which included the Labour Party, put paid to that. This was the budget where the Government should have reversed that cut. There is an insane situation whereby 65 year old workers having, in many cases, done their full 40 years and sometimes more, retire at the age of 65 and are sent off to seek jobseeker's benefits. That is not a sustainable position. Anybody who actually cares about pensions or pensioners in this State would have addressed that issue as a matter of priority.

The Taoiseach failed to reinstate the bereavement grant. He mentioned my constituency, the north inner city, in his remarks earlier. I will tell him one lesson that comes from the communities I represent, namely that the abolition of the bereavement grant was among the cruellest of all blows in the course of the austerity budgets. If the Government cared about people at their most vulnerable moments and was the saviour of the struggling classes, it would have reinstated that grant and taken the opportunity of the budget to do so.

The Taoiseach often lectures us about the squeezed middle. They include middle-class voters that he assumes we in Sinn Féin have no clue or concern about. The budget finally lays bare that canard. It delivers for many of the struggling squeezed middle families precisely nothing, and they are very disappointed.

What has the Government left intact for those families? Not a single cent in the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil budget has been set aside for the abolition of water charges. Fianna Fáil cannot be trusted on this issue because, after all, domestic water charges was its idea to begin with. It said it would suspend or abolish them and do this, that and the other. The budget resolves the mystery for us. It is now very clear that the Government and its partners in Fianna Fáil have no intention of abolishing water charges. That is not missed by the squeezed middle because it is bill that will be with them, it seems, come March. If I am wrong and the Government proposes to abolish water charges, it has not taken account of that in its budgetary arithmetic.

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