Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to participate in the debate. I pay tribute to the staff, as I always do when I speak on this topic, because the Department of Social Protection has excelled in providing services, and I want to say that publicly.

There were points in the Minister's speech that lie outside the legislation, such as the Christmas bonus, the earnings disregard for disability allowance and the increase in the fuel allowance, and I will come back to some of those shortly. I welcome some of the positive things that have happened and the overall budget, which is €25.1 billion, including approximately €4 billion in regard to pandemic payments.

I want to make some general points and then specific points. Without the Department of Social Protection and without this budget, we would have a far more unequal society. Those Deputies who came into the House today and talked about Sesame Street economics fail to see that the public purse is going some way to reduce the equality gap because the wages paid to workers are simply not sustainable. Into that gap comes the public purse.

The worst thing that ever happened in my short time in the Dáil, and it will be my fifth year here in February, was the campaign led by the current Tánaiste, then Minister for Social Protection, in regard to fraud. It gave a completely wrong image of the Department of Social Protection. In fact, the percentage of fraud, as I understand it from my time on the Committee of Public Accounts, is minimal and the level of error is higher. However, a completely wrong message went out as opposed to a message going out asking people to look at what the State is doing in terms of payments so we can have a more equal society. If the Minister was to do anything, I would ask her to run with a different image and to run with an image that is absolutely positive. We cannot do without these payments.

With regard to the comments about Sesame Street economics and Deputies on the left not knowing what they are talking about, one has to understand that this budget is unprecedented because, as Deputy Joan Collins said, the pandemic is unprecedented. The pandemic came into a country that was ill-prepared on every level, with a housing crisis and with more than €1 billion going into the pockets of the landlords through public money, making the market unsustainable. The pandemic came into a country where the health system simply could not cope and where decisions were made that led to people suffering - certainly people aged over 65 and 70, people in nursing homes, workers in meat factories and so on. This happened because decisions were made on the basis of the inadequacy of our public services.

On top of that, approximately 680,000 people were living below the poverty line, although that figure might be slightly down. Of those, 200,000 are under 18, and that is happening in this Republic. Then, we have at a minimum 100,000 working poor, and the workers who are working part-time who simply cannot get full-time work and are struggling. That is only a little pen picture of the background that I am talking about when I talk about this social welfare budget.

With regard to specific issues, I welcome the U-turn on the pension age, which is very welcome. It is now confirmed this is not going to happen in regard to the increase from 67 to 68 and 66 to 67, and I hope the Minister sees sense and it goes back to 65. I hope we will stop talking about people over 65 as a burden to the economy because they are certainly not a burden to the economy.

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