Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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I call Deputy Catherine Byrne who is sharing time with Deputies Seán Kyne and Martin Heydon.

Catherine Byrne (Dublin South Central, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak to the Bill. I commend the Cabinet for its achievement in facing up to the very difficult decisions that had to be made in the budgetary process for 2013. I accept that some of the changes announced are unpopular. However, it is important to remember that these changes are aimed at raising €500 million in additional revenue that will help to keep the country afloat. The bottom line is that we cannot continue to spend more money than we collect in taxes. Since taking office the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Joan Burton, has worked very hard to protect those most in need. Having inherited the mess left behind by the Fianna Fáil-Green Party Government, she has already made a series of changes to reform the social welfare system and ensure greater fairness in its provisions.

I listened to Deputy Micheál Martin on radio this morning as he spoke about a "mean" budget which had failed to look after the most vulnerable. Let me remind him that when he was in office, the cream of the land were entertained in the corridors of government as if they were the high kings of Ireland. That is how the Government of which he was a member chose to spend hard-earned taxpayers' money. It is time for him to apologise to the people for the reckless spending and over-inflation of social welfare payments overseen by that Government. He and his colleagues offered no accountability or rationale for the sizeable increases in benefits they introduced, with no plan for how they were to be paid into the future. They must take some responsibility for the state in which they left the country.

As for Sinn Féin and others, if they had their way, every garda, nurse and teacher would be earning the minimum wage.

It is deeply hypocritical of Sinn Féin to claim it represents the poor and downtrodden and that its members take only the minimum wage, giving the rest to the cause, as they call it, while some of their colleagues drive top cars around the area and live in mansions. The ordinary decent person on the street knows their past and clearly does not want to be part of that future.

My grandmother was an invalid for 17 years, cared for by my mother and extended family. My mother reared eight children, worked hard all her life and even found time in the evening to work outside the home to support the family. She passed away at the age of 87, surrounded by her sons, daughters, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. For the little help we received from the hospice during her last days, we were all very grateful. She never asked for anything in her life and never expected anything, least of all that the State would keep her. Many people I know do not have the luxury of being able to depend on an extended family and it is those people we need to support in their communities. Voluntary organisations have played a most important role in reaching out to those people who live at home and need a helping hand, especially elderly people and those with a disability. I pay tribute to all these voluntary organisations.

I agree with the speakers who remarked that bankers who behaved recklessly should go to jail. As I see it, however, many former Ministers of the previous Government also belong in jail for what they did to the country. It is never easy to make hard decisions and nobody wants to ask people to put their hands in their pockets and pay more than they should have to. However, we must remind ourselves of the bigger picture and what we are trying to achieve for the future of my children, my grandchild and future generations. I hope my colleagues in Fine Gael and the Labour Party, as well as those in Opposition, will look at the bigger picture rather than complain about it.

The Minister, Deputy Burton, has the difficult task of supporting 1.4 million Irish people who are in receipt of a social welfare payment while also ensuring there is enough money in the pot to pay them year in and year out. The Department of Social Protection needs to spend more than €20 billion in 2013, while saving €390 million in the same year. This compares to an initial prediction that a saving of €540 million would have to be made. The main argument of the Opposition during the debates has been about the reductions in the respite care grant and child benefit. Given the difficult choices confronting the Minister, however, she has taken the best decisions and is maintaining core social welfare payments for 2013. These include jobseeker's benefit and allowance, carer's allowance and the State pension. There has been no reduction to the fuel allowance or the free travel schemes, speculation about which caused much hysteria in the media in recent weeks. The Department will spend €775 million on carers in 2013, some €5 million more than it did this year.

Although there have been reductions in some areas, there are also some good news stories which we should not forget. Next year, the Department of Social Protection will allocate €14 million to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs to provide more than 6,000 after-school child care places for children in primary school. These will be targeted at low-income families. An additional €2 million will be allocated to the school meal programme, which will aim to provide regular nourishing food to children from lower-income backgrounds. A further €2.5 million fund will be allocated to the Department of Children and Youth Affairs for its area-based child poverty initiative, which is really worthwhile. There will be 2,500 new JobBridge places, which will increase overall numbers to 8,500. In recent weeks, I have met many people who went through the JobBridge scheme, all of whom ended up with permanent jobs - I spoke to two of them only this afternoon. There will be an additional 2,000 community employment scheme places next year. On behalf of the community where I live I welcome this, because if we want to get people back to work properly we must introduce them slowly. The community employment schemes have added great value to people's lives.

The Minister is committed to clamping down on fraud and to that end additional fraud and control measures will be introduced, as well as legislation to enable greater recovery of social welfare overpayments.

An additional €10 million will be allocated to the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to facilitate the delivery of social housing units, a measure that I welcome. In my constituency alone there are 7,500 people on the waiting list, so this will prove to be a good initiative. It is expected that more than 5,000 units will be provided in 2013, including 350 units for people with special housing needs and 150 units specifically for people leaving institutional care. An additional 400 permanent homes will be delivered through capital expenditure under the social housing initiative, which I welcome. I live in an area where many flat complexes have gone through a regeneration programme. It is worthwhile to put money into such a scheme to ensure that people have proper accommodation.

The Department of Education and Skills will allocate €500,000 to tackle bullying in schools. The funding will be spent in line with the action plan on bullying, which will be established shortly. I welcome this measure because in too many schools around the country young people have been bullied. Unfortunately, we have seen the consequences of that in recent months and weeks in cases in which young people have taken their own lives.

In line with the ongoing reform of the political system and the drive to cut costs across the public sector, the Government has cut the level of expenses paid to politicians and the State funding of political parties. All expenses must now be vouched. I fully support these changes.

The Government has had to make some tough but necessary decisions in this budget to ensure that we stay on course for exiting the bailout programme and continue on the road towards economic recovery. We must consider how far we have come already in rescuing our economy, pulling it back from the brink. We have worked hard to fulfil the terms of the EU-IMF bailout, without which this country would have ground to a halt. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Future budgets will not be so difficult, and families and businesses can make plans for the future with confidence.

Seán Kyne (Galway West, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on this important Bill. I believe in and understand the necessity for a social welfare system and have often highlighted the fact that the vast majority of citizens will rely on this system of support at some point in their lives. It is much more than a safety net that helps citizens through hard times.

The social protection system does not exist in isolation; the State must be able to raise the necessary resources to fund it. Much of the debate and commentary on social welfare matters is devoid of facts and figures. Social protection accounts for 37% of all State expenditure. In other words, almost two of every five euro this Government spends is on social welfare support schemes or programmes. In 2013 social welfare will account for €20.3 billion - by far the largest proportion of State spending. Given the sheer size of the social welfare budget, it is unthinkable that it would be not be examined for efficiency and effectiveness at a time when the gap between our State's income and spending is so large. We are, in effect, borrowing €42 million every day just to meet current day-to-day expenditure. In spite of this, budget 2013 strives to protect the most vulnerable in our society and does so by maintaining all weekly social welfare payments. There have been no changes or reductions in core social welfare payment rates. This is vital, not only because the budget comes at a time when the State's financial position is very constrained, but also because it recognises that social welfare is a lifeline that helps citizens who have fallen on hard times. It also recognises that social welfare spending is a hugely significant economic stimulus, which crucially supports local businesses and jobs.

It is important that the State pension has been maintained at its present level because this provides certainty to our senior citizens. In addition, the retention of the free travel pass ensures that they can continue to be active in their communities.

While recognising the financial constraints on Government spending, the changes to the household benefits package also recognise that the State is no longer the provider of electricity and utility services and has a duty to taxpayers to obtain the best value possible for public money. Further work will be required in this regard in order to assist citizens to shop around for the best energy deals in the marketplace. It is apt to note that there has been no change to either the rate or duration of the weekly fuel allowance.

Social welfare must be more than just financial assistance. There must also be non-monetary supports which are more important in the long term. These include labour activation measures, whereby the Department of Social Protection, in partnership with the Department of Education and Skills, assists citizens in reducing and then ending their dependence on social welfare.

I welcome the new initiatives introduced by the Minister, including the €14 million which will be provided for the Department of Children and Youth Affairs for the provision of 6,000 after-school places and the additional €2 million for school meals programmes which will cater for those children in disadvantaged areas and ensure they receive regular school meals of good quality. I also welcome the 2,500 additional places allocated under the Tús scheme, the 2,500 new places being allocated under JobBridge and the 2,000 additional places being made available under community employment schemes. I particularly welcome the initiative to provide 3,000 places under a new social employment scheme that will operate within the local authority system. Local authorities have been obliged to deal with job losses owing to embargoes, the non-replacement of staff, etc., and this initiative offers them a great opportunity to provide people with valuable work experience.

I am concerned by all cuts contained in the Bill. When money is taken from people's pockets, difficulties can arise. Cuts to child benefit, respite grants and farm assist payments are difficult. While the cuts to child benefit will hit all areas equally, the cuts to farm assist payments are particularly and obviously anti-rural. I appreciate that the headline rate is being maintained and that farm families with the lowest incomes will be least affected by these changes. I also welcome that the farm assist payment will remain flexible, that changes in income will be taken into account and that farmers can ask community welfare officers to review their claims where their circumstances change. There is no change to the disregards in respect of income under the REPS and the AEOS, which is welcome. Child benefit payments have been the subject of debate for many years. There is no doubt that a simple across the board cut is the easiest to administer. There are significant costs associated with means testing, but the introduction of such testing should be considered in the future.

Overall, I acknowledge the difficult decisions the Minister was obliged to make. I hope a return to economic growth will reduce the requirement for such a large social welfare budget. If we get people back into employment, we will ensure their reliance on social welfare payments will be reduced.

Martin Heydon (Kildare South, Fine Gael)
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I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to the debate on the Social Welfare Bill. I intend to focus only on a number of the measures it contains because, given that it is so wide-ranging in nature, one cannot deal with all of them.

It is welcome that core social welfare rates are being protected. There are those in the Opposition who will demean and belittle that achievement. However, it is worth noting that basic social welfare rates were hit in budgets introduced by the previous Fianna Fáil Government. I refer in this regard to reductions in carer's allowance, the blind pension and the widow's pension. In one of the most difficult budgets in the State's history the Government has managed to avoid reducing the core rates. There is merit in this. Sinn Féin has not been slow to use the respite care grant as a political football. In Northern Ireland where it is in government the weekly rate of carer's allowance is £58.45, which is the equivalent of €72. In the Republic carers are paid three times that amount, namely, €204. Perhaps Sinn Féin is of the view that carers in Northern Ireland do not work as hard as their counterparts in the South. There is a huge disparity in this regard and it is worth highlighting.

In the context of the cut to the respite care grant, the one item of information which has not made the headlines is that in 2013 we will spend €5 million more on carers than in 2012. The overall amount relating to carers will increase from €770 million to €775 million, a fact which has become lost in the debate. That said, the cut to the respite care grant does not sit easily with me. I worked very closely with the Carers Association in the past, particularly in getting the carers strategy published. I acknowledge the huge sacrifices carers make for their loved ones and the knock-on benefits this has for the State. For this reason, I request that the method relating to how this cut is being imposed be reviewed. Considering that payment of the grant is not due until June, it would be possible to consider alternative and more targeted ways of finding the saving of €26 million required. We must also consider the possibility of putting in place an appeals mechanism for those most in need. The respite grant is not means tested and we must, therefore, ensure cuts are imposed on those who can cope with them. I ask that the debate on this matter not finish with tomorrow's vote. Last year changes to community employment schemes were announced in the budget, but a review of the matter led to more targeted changes being introduced. The process used in this regard was a great success. This is something which should be borne in mind.

I welcome the Minister's move to create 10,000 new places on employment programmes in 2013. She has visited most of the community employment schemes in south Kildare and those elsewhere throughout the country. She understands and has acknowledged the impact these schemes have in local communities. The increase in the number of places on the community employment, JobBridge and Tús schemes is welcome. I also welcome the new social employment scheme relating to local authorities. What is being done in this regard will have a real impact.

On the redundancy rebate, I am very cognisant of the significant shortfall in the social insurance fund. Some wealthy companies used the relevant scheme to subsidise moving their operations out of Ireland. I reiterate the point I made on previous occasions in the House, namely, that there is a need to differentiate between small businesses and very large companies such as TalkTalk which moved out of Waterford at the drop of a hat. I am concerned about the impact the removal of the redundancy rebate will have on small firms which have a small turnover of €700,000 or €800,000. I accept that there is an inability to pay mechanism, but what will be the position of an employer who has four staff and needs to let two of them go in order to keep the other two on? We should consider introducing some form of exemption in next year's budget. This could be similar to the current audit exemption for small companies which is based on employee or turnover levels. Such an exemption would provide some protection for small businesses, while not encouraging large firms to pull out of Ireland.

I acknowledge the fact that the headline rates for farm assist payments remain unchanged. Some €108 million was spent on this scheme in 2012. I have seen at first hand the value of this assistance to small farm families and rural communities. I request that the cuts announced to the farm assist scheme be carefully monitored. There is an estimated saving of €5 million in any given year in respect of these cuts. I hope the position will be monitored in order to ensure even more money will not be taken out of the scheme. Such a development would be detrimental. I accept the Minister's point on the flexibility of local welfare officers. Such flexibility is crucial, particularly in years such as this when the weather is very bad.

I acknowledge the fact that the Minister has found an additional €2 million for school meals. The allocation in this regard will increase from €35 million to €37 million. I have witnessed the impact of the school meals programme in my constituency. The provision of an additional 19,000 breakfasts or 6,000 hot dinners will be of benefit to 189,000 children in over 1,000 schools throughout the country. This is a real example of a targeted measure being introduced where it is needed most.

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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I call Deputy Billy Kelleher who is sharing time with Deputies Éamon Ó Cuív and John Browne.

Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I intend to repeat some of what I said last evening during the debate on the motion of no confidence in the Government tabled by Sinn Féin. It is incredible that, in the light of what has been said since the budget was introduced, Ministers and Government Deputies do not appear to understand why there is so much palpable anger among the people. The reason for this anger is that neither the budget nor the Social Welfare Bill bears any relation to what those now in government said in the period between the introduction by the previous Administration of its final budget in December 2010 and the general election in February 2011. There is no point in Members trying to put a spin on matters and stating that in some way the budget protects the vulnerable. Any critical analysis of the budget and the Social Welfare Bill will clearly show the opposite is the case.

The Government passed a regressive budget last year and this fact has been acknowledged by many independent organisations in the interim. In other words, last year's budget saw to it that those who had paid least gained the most and vice versa. Unfortunately, the budget introduced last week magnifies the position in this regard. We can argue about the make-up of the Government and whether Fine Gael is dictating matters from a policy perspective or whether the Labour Party is surrendering its policy positions.

The four horsemen of austerity discussed the budget around the Cabinet table - or the half-Cabinet table - week in, week out. The Social Welfare Bill is a result of those discussions among the Minister for Finance, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach. They presented a figure to the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton. What never ceases to amaze me is that the Minister, Deputy Burton, has been acting as the Florence Nightingale of the Social Welfare Bill, as if she is not responsible for the cuts to respite care grants, to child benefit, to the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance, to farm assist, to jobseeker's benefit, to the redundancy payments scheme, to the supplementary welfare allowance, to the back-to-education allowance, to the respite care grant, and to household benefit, telephone benefit and other packages for existing recipients. The Minister is as culpable as the four horsemen of austerity.

The Bill is a direct attack on the vulnerable and the poorest in society. The spin from the Government will not inspire hope because people are living from day to day. Government spokespersons, Deputies and Ministers say their hands are tied by the agreement with the troika. However, they take credit for any change in the deal. I accept the fact that the troika is in town, but the troika did not ask the Government to include in the Social Welfare Bill a cut in the respite care grant or in the back-to-school allowance. There is no way the troika demanded that the Government should tax the poor and let the rich off. The troika is only interested in the bottom line. It is clear that Fine Gael has dictated the policy; the horsemen handed it to Deputy Burton and she capitulated. She has included in the Bill proposals that will penalise the most vulnerable and those who are helping the most vulnerable. At the same time, some Deputies opposite are crying crocodile tears and saying it is a very difficult budget. Of course it is a difficult budget. It is difficult because of the outlandish promises made by the two parties opposite who form this great national Government. They promised they would not cut social welfare rates nor increase taxes. Fine Gael has got its way. There is no increase in taxes for high earners but the poor will pay. Any posturing from Deputies opposite that this is a caring approach to the vulnerable and that it is a progressive budget does not add up. This Government has betrayed its mandate.

It is evident that a chasm is appearing between Deputies on this side and those on the other side. The betrayal is on that side of the House. The Government has been dishonest and disingenuous with regard to its mandate. A perusal of the programme for Government or other Government literature will show that the Government has not adhered to those commitments.

The Social Welfare Bill is inherently unfair and it attacks the most vulnerable. The Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, made some glib comments - which is not unusual for Deputy Rabbitte - saying that the cut in the respite care grant was small. I can tell the Minister that €6.50 a week to a family who are already struggling is quite a substantial amount. We all know this is the case because we hear it from people in our constituency clinics or around our constituencies.

The Bill is a complete betrayal of anything the Labour Party has ever stood for or claimed to stand for. It does not protect the vulnerable or those who need the support of the State. The cut in the respite care grant is the outstanding issue. However, I could spend the night listing the other issues as outlined on page 15 of the Budget Statement. The list contains all the cuts outlined by the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, but the four horsemen of austerity are blamed for them. This Bill attacks those who need the support of the State.

Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)
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Tá sé deacair agam a thuiscint cén bunús a bhaineann leis an gcur chuige atá ag an Aire. Anuraidh, d'ionsaigh sí mná agus muintir na tuaithe. I mbliana, is teaghlaigh atá sí ag ionsaí, agus arís muintir na tuaithe. Ar ndóigh, is iad na teaghlaigh agus gasúir todhchaí na tíre ach is cosúil gur cuma leis an Aire faoi sin.

Is é an dearcadh atá ag an Rialtas, seachas athrú a dhéanamh de réir chumas íocaíochta nó é a roinnt beagán ar gach uile dhuine, ná díriú ar sainghrúpaí faoi leith a cheapann siad atá leochaileach agus nach mbeidh in ann troid ar ais. Níl cothramas ann agus níl ceart ann. Ba cheart go mbeadh náire ar Pháirtí an Lucht Oibre faoin méid atá déanta.

Caithfidh mé a rá nach bhfuil iontas ar bith orm nach bhfuil an t-Aire anseo tráthnóna, mar caithfidh go bhfuil sé deacair éisteacht le cur síos mion ar an mísc atá déanta aici i mbun a cuid cúramaí.

I will deal with the cuts in social welfare in the context of wider Government policy. Rather than taking a little from many or being progressive by taking more from those who can afford to pay, the Government has a policy of targeting vulnerable groups in small numbers. It attempts to pick them off in the hope that these groups do not have the capacity, the time or the organisation to fight back. The Government has no regard for whether it is possible to carry the burden or whether the proposed measure is progressive or regressive.

According to commentators, from the downturn in the economy until the change of government, budgets were broadly progressive in that those who could pay the most took the biggest hit. Since this Government came to power, there has been a complete reversal of engines. In last year's budget, the attack was on women, children and rural dwellers; this year it is families with children and, yet again, another mean cut for farmers. The cumulative effect on families as a result of the changes in PRSI, motor tax, child benefit and property tax is very large and is disproportionate. It will push many families with children over the edge financially. Families and children are our future; they should have been protected in the budget instead of being specifically targeted.

I could speak further about the budget but, unfortunately, we are constrained by time because of the refusal of the Government to allow time to hear a proper and detailed analysis of the choices facing it. As my party's spokesperson on agriculture I will direct my attention to the changes made over two years to the farm assist scheme, which provides a safety net for low-income farmers.

Until last year, 70% of the income of a low-income farmer was assessed as means. In other words, the total farm assist payment was calculated and 70% of one's farm income was deducted therefrom. There was a special allowance of €127 per annum for each of one's first two children and €190 per annum for each of the third and subsequent children. Over two years, the Minister has eliminated all of these allowances. Now, if one earns money on one's farm, one's farm assist payment is reduced on a euro-for-euro basis. Consequently, if a single person earns €200 from farming, his farm assist payment is reduced by €200. All the time and effort devoted to farming the land will literally yield one no money. This is going back to the old days and it will kill all incentives to work small farms.

This step has been taken by a Government that could not bring itself to increase the universal social charge by 3% on incomes over €100,000. Accounting for all the various taxes, including the universal social charge and PRSI, such an increase would mean that the part of one's income over €100,000 would be taxed at a rate of 57%. The Minister, Deputy Burton, has no difficulty imposing an effective tax rate or deduction of 100% on the very first euro of income earned by small farmers.

The Government's strategy is clear: protect the rich and impoverish the poor. For example, a farmer with two children who has a farm income of €200 per week will have lost €65 per week over the past two years. This is on top of all the other cuts, the property tax, etc. A single farmer in similar circumstances will have lost €60 per week. A farmer with a farm income of €400 per week and five children stands to lose €133 per week before taking into account the changes regarding child benefit, car tax, property tax and so on. The Government is literally taking the crust of bread out of the mouths of poor people. In a Department that spends €188,000 per minute, the total saving this year in this regard will be €4 million. This would not keep it going for an hour. There was no need to do this. It has nothing to do with the troika or cutbacks; it is policy. It is interesting to note that 80% of the farmers who receive the most through the farm assist scheme are west of the Shannon, or west of a line from Cork to Derry. We know the interest of the Labour Party in that part of the world.

John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to highlight some of the measures introduced by the Government that will affect ordinary people, families and people with disabilities throughout the country. The Government has managed to target all the vulnerable, despite the many promises of Fine Gael and the Labour Party before the last general election. There were red-line points and PR articles in all the newspapers, written in the main by the Labour Party, which stated it would not allow Fine Gael to bully it into introducing cuts in any shape or form. Obviously, this is what has happened in this budget. Child benefit has been cut by €10 to €130, thereby hitting families across the country. There is a cruel cut of 20% to the respite care grant. The term of payment of the core weekly social welfare payment represented by the jobseeker's allowance will be cut from 12 months to nine. There are also cuts to the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance and the back-to-education allowance, and there is a PRSI increase. The redundancy rebate has been abolished and maternity benefit has been taxed. There are cuts to farm assist payments, as outlined by Deputy Ó Cuív. All of the cuts are affecting ordinary families throughout the country.

The cut to the respite care grant is a really mean cut by the Government. The grant is for people who look after those with disabilities, sick people and those who are unable to care for themselves. Over recent days, we have received hundreds of e-mails and letters from carers who are very concerned about the reduction. Recipients have not been using the respite care grant to go on holidays or buy new fancy clothes. Some of the letters we received show that the grant has been used by parents who bring children to Crumlin, Beaumont or Temple Street hospital. They use it to put diesel in the car, pay for lunches and meet other subsistence costs. As we all know, often when children with disabilities go to Crumlin or Temple Street hospital, their parents must stay there for two or three nights, or perhaps longer, during the period of hospitalisation. The respite care grant was used to subsidise the incomes of families who suffer very severely.

As I have said in the House so often, I have a daughter in a wheelchair and am very much aware of the suffering of families with disabled members. They are struggling to make ends meet and to ensure the disabled person has a decent standard of care. The cutting of the respite care grant will only add to the difficulties and it will cause major problems for families. If the Labour Party and Fine Gael do nothing else between now and the passing of the Bill, I ask them to ensure that the €1,700 is restored. I am involved with the spina bifida and wheelchair associations and many others and thus realise that families depend very much on the respite care grant. It is important that it be restored.

The Labour Party said child benefit was a red-line issue and that it would not be cut. I could quote many statements from the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, the Tánaiste, Deputy Eamon Gilmore, and various Fine Gael spokespersons to the effect that child benefit would not be cut if they were in power. The children's referendum was passed very recently but it was a case of style over substance because the decisions taken by the Government in this budget will certainly do nothing for children or improve their quality of life. So much emphasis was put on the referendum, yet we now see all the cuts that are affecting children.

I was at a meeting in Askamore, County Wexford, last night, which was attended by 120 or 130 farmers, many of whom are in receipt of the farm assist payment. They are very concerned about the reduction. It is an attack by the Government on the less well off in society. When I was growing up, we believed Robin Hood was the man who took from the rich to look after the poor, but the Government has taken from the poor to protect the rich. The Labour Party has lost out badly to Fine Gael in this budget.

Seán Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, Ceann Comhairle)
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The next speaker is Deputy Durkan, who is sharing time with Deputies Twomey and Keating.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I am pleased to have this opportunity to speak on the Bill. There was a time when one would have had ample time in this House to speak on every Bill, but unfortunately times have changed. Every person I meet inside and outside this House is crushed at the thought of cuts having to be imposed on people at a very difficult time. They invariably ask why this is happening, but there is an answer to that, which the people who have just left the Chamber know better than anybody. Those people walked away from this country a little more than 18 months ago, having left it broke. I recall that when addressing a group of people in my constituency at the time I was asked what was likely to happen in the next few years and I pointed out that the outgoing Government walked away from its responsibilities and left a series of exploding financial devices that would blow up in the face of the Government and the people of this country during the course of the next five years. That response is as valid today as it was then, as I was right about that.

When I see the crocodile tears being shed by the Fianna Fáil Members opposite I almost cry, because it proves just one thing - they do not live in the real world. Having done almost irreparable damage to this country for 15 years and sunk it below the gunnels to such an extent that we thought we would never survive the damage, those Members have the neck to shed crocodile tears, blame the Government and say there were alternatives and that we should tax somebody else. We are hearing the same old story we have heard for the past 15 years. They are living in a world of their own. They live in a myth, an Alice in wonderland world. Knowing the situation full well and having said everything they said about it, they ran away and told us we could sort it out and that it was our problem. They are now using this situation to exploit it for their own political gain and nothing else.

I marvel at the fact that the unfortunate Minister has managed to do the job she did in the circumstances, having been told to cut €500 million by the troika on foot of an agreement entered into, written up and signed by the Members who have just complained and walked out of the House. They put their stamp on it, but now they are telling the people who are hurting that they did not sign it, that there was no need to do that and that there were alternatives. Where are those alternatives? They also say the troika did not specify the cuts that were to be made, but it did. Every Department was to receive a series of cuts year on year for five years or more until the financial situation was brought under control. The only problem is that the people who were responsible for that are away from here, including those Members who have run out of the House because they do not want to hear anything that is being said to them.

Out of all the hypocrisy I have seen in this House, what really takes me to the fair - having regard to what happened during the past 15 years, knowing what this Government had to take over a little more than 18 months ago and having heard what I have had to listen to for the past two days - is that I just cannot believe it. The same people who ruined the country expect to repeat the performance at the earliest opportunity. If the public do not believe that is their ambition, they will soon find out, because those people, having done it to them once, will find it much easier to do so a second time and in such a way that they will be forever indebted to the kinds of banking institution from which we had to borrow when they left office.

It is appalling for any Government to find it has to cut expenditure and increase taxes at the same time across a series of Departments to meet the budgetary requirements to which the outgoing Government signed up, from which it walked away and about which its members are now complaining. Amazingly, they are talking about the most vulnerable people in our society - children and people with special needs on the front line - and avoiding the issue they created as well as the fact that when they walked out the door they clobbered the poor in this country left, right and centre. Not only that, but they left the economy in tatters and in such a state that they thought nobody would survive the damage.

I compliment the Government and particularly the Minister for Social Protection for doing the job that was done in the most extraordinarily difficult circumstances that have faced any Minister for social welfare since the foundation of the State. I have listened to rubbish from the Members opposite and seen them shed crocodile tears about the problem, knowing well who caused it. They know how it happened because they lived through it. It is a miracle that the Government has managed to maintain some payments at the level they were at in 2006 during the height of the Celtic tiger boom. I do not know how it happened; it is part of the miracle. It is not possible in the time available to us to detail all the actions or inaction of the previous Administration, whose members now have the neck to condemn the Government for doing the job they left for it. They left it with no option other than to do it in a particular way.

Liam Twomey (Wexford, Fine Gael)
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I have great time for some Fianna Fáil Members but they warrant a good psychological evaluation because of the way they can come into the House and speak as if they personally had nothing to do with the ruination of our economy in recent years. It is extraordinary, but what is more extraordinary is the way we have managed to present a budget that does not cut social welfare rates or increase income tax. Our economy is fragile and our recovery is slow, but for the third year in government we have managed not to increase income tax or decrease social welfare rates. That is extraordinary. I do not believe we can manage to achieve that for the lifetime of the Government unless we see growth in the economy and achieve all the savings expected under the different agreements, because it is something that would be very difficult to do.

I will ask the Minister to waste no time in examining the report of the advisory group on tax and social welfare and considering how to deal with the issue of child benefit. We pay out more than €2 billion a year on child benefit. If we could divert even 10% of that money towards the most vulnerable children in our society it would be a remarkable achievement, because protecting vulnerable children has been a priority of this Government. We have moved forward in the way we care for children in our society, not just in passing the children's referendum but also in the fact that we have a dedicated Minister for Children and that all Departments examine the effects of their policies on children. That is a major step forward in the way the Government works, even in these extraordinary times of budget cutbacks.

Fine Gael and Labour Party members of the Government will protect children, patients, students and all vulnerable citizens. It will not be left to the flip-floppers in Fianna Fáil. They flip-flop on their own policies that they believed in a mere two years ago. It is extraordinary that Fianna Fáil believes it will inspire confidence in the electorate in a few years time, with its outright lies, flip-flopping on its core policies and playing the angry man routine, which, regrettably, I also see being played by some of our Sinn Féin colleagues. In future elections, in some respects, we will not have to worry about the promises that are made. Fianna Fáil will have to stand on its record of ruining this country, and comparisons will be made between what we have done in the Republic of Ireland and what Sinn Féin has managed to achieve in government in Northern Ireland. The electorate will have a much more balanced view in terms of how they will cast their votes in years to come because of our actions rather than what we say.

On the issue of the respite grant, it is important that we are realistic about what is actually happening. Some 52,000 carers are in receipt of carer's allowance and other social welfare supports. They do a fantastic job. It is a very demanding role and can be stressful, but to say that the Government does not care about our 52,000 carers is wrong. We will pay out more than €1 billion to our 52,000 carers next year. They fulfil a vital service for the people they care for at home, and we acknowledge that.

That is why we have made such a significant commitment to them. During this time of severe austerity, inflicted on us by Fianna Fáil, the Government is doing its level best to protect the 52,000 carers as well as the vulnerable children, people and elderly whom they look after. It is a fantastic testament to the Government that it has managed to achieve this over the past two years, although it has been extremely difficult at times.

Will Deputy Martin, the ultimate flip-flopper, ever apologise to the people for what he has done? It is amazing how he is able to re-invent himself. The Government is on the right track but we are due at least one, if not two, more tough budgets. We will have to defend these difficult actions but we are up to the task. We will not just accept what the Members opposite, particularly those from Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin, claim on this budget. While they criticise the Government on the respite grant and how we look after carers, the Government has spent in excess of €1 billion looking after our 52,000 carers. In Northern Ireland, the total budget for carer's allowance comes to €190 million. There are significant differences in how we go about our work in tough times and we will be examining the Opposition's proposals. So far, the Opposition has spun a good story but, in politics, I do not like the way some people can narrowly focus on vulnerable cases just to score a point. We are looking at the broader issues and making some tough decisions. We also care hugely about the most vulnerable in our society which we will continue to do over the next several years.

Derek Keating (Dublin Mid West, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Social Welfare Bill 2012 and I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy White, to the House.

Like many other Members, I feel for and am concerned for those in our community who are struggling to meet their day-to-day demands and the needs of the less well-off in our society. Carers in our communities work in some of the most demanding and difficult circumstances. They do so with great love, willingness and with the support of the State.

Since the budget was announced this day last week, I have been examining ways of trying to find €26 million to meet the respite grant reduction that was announced by my colleague the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Burton. All Members understand the economic crisis this State is in, particularly with the loss of our financial and social independence to the IMF because of the events and mismanagement of the previous Administration led by Fianna Fáil. However, it remains that social welfare in this country is one of the most supportive and highest paid welfare payments in the European Union, representing approximately 40% of total Government spend.

Accordingly, I find it incredibly difficult to listen to and accept Fianna Fáil's argument that the Government must find the money from the respite grant reduction from somewhere else. The reality is that in the 2011 budget, presented in December 2010, Fianna Fáil cut the carer's allowance and the carer's tax relief, along with the widow's pension, the invalidity pension and the blind pension. If that was not enough, Fianna Fáil removed the Christmas double social welfare payment. Fianna Fáil then opted for an across-the-board cut in payments which is exactly what this Government is trying not to do. It is unbearable having to listen, day in, day out, to the hypocrisy of Fianna Fáil Members like Deputy Kelleher when they criticise this Government which was given a mandate by the people to clean up the Fianna Fáil mess. It was under the Fianna Fáil Administration that judges' pay and severance pay was increased. From information in a reply to a parliamentary question, I note many of the 35 judges who retired in recent years went with a pension and a severance package equivalent to winning the lotto.

For many years I have been troubled by the growth in dependency on the State, the abuse and the fraud in our social welfare system, which can be all too apparent at times. I came across a case recently and when I examined it I noted multiple such cases. I discovered young women who find themselves caring, not for one child or two, but for three and four children by multiple fathers who are uncaring and failing in their duties of care and support with the consequences picked up by the taxpayer. In such circumstances, a woman will have a lone parent allowance, children's allowance, rent subsidy, school grants, a medical card, fuel allowance and special payments from the community welfare officer which come under section 13 of the Social Welfare Act for exceptional payments. When does the State stop providing services for people who, in my view, should not be getting them because of the failings of the fathers of these children? It is a chaotic lifestyle but this increased dependency on the State encourages a new lifestyle of welfare economy. When it was simply impossible to reverse such payments in the good times, how can we cut them when we are in an economic crisis? We cannot continue to fund a welfare dependency economy while other genuine and more deserving citizens are having their payments reduced, including the respite carer's grant.

The establishment of family support for a girl or woman who finds herself in the unfortunate situation of an unplanned pregnancy is far from today's reality when, for example, many women cannot afford to regularise their living arrangements, whether it is marriage or partnership. This simply cannot continue. It is morally and socially wrong. The State cannot continue to pick up this expense for these new arrangements where men, irresponsible fathers who do not accept their responsibilities, are simply coming and going in a blended family type relationship.

I am supporting this budget with a heavy heart because of its impact on some of the most deserving cases. I believe there should be a review of welfare payments, including those cases which I just referred to where there is such abuse. This will allow us funnel the limited resources we have to those who are most needy and those in most crisis. We need to get our economy going. The Government is focused and determined to do this after the mess Fianna Fáil led us into and the opportunities it missed to make necessary changes when, in its own words, the country was awash with money. This Government is committed to making those changes and bringing our country back to life again.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I call Deputy Ó Caoláin who I understand is sharing time with Deputies Stanley and Colreavy. I also understand there was an amendment on the Order Paper in the name of Deputy Ó Snodaigh that was not moved earlier. Would Deputy Ó Caoláin like to move that amendment?

Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)
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Yes, I certainly will.

I move amendment No. 1:

To delete all words after “That” and substitute the following:“Dáil Éireann declines to give a second reading to the Social Welfare Bill 2012 because it unfairly places the burden of recovery on children, carers and the low paid and having regard to the failure of the Government to consider taxing high earners and wealth instead.”

The test of our respective performances will come at the next general elections in each of these parts of Ireland. I warrant that Sinn Féin will hold and likely build on its latest vote share. I wonder whether Deputy Twomey and the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Deputy Varadkar, can look forward to the same prospect, but I doubt it.

Who were the winners in budget 2013? The Government pretends there were no winners but the reality is that the most highly paid, the wealthy elite, escaped yet again and those struggling on the edge of poverty suffered most. "The more you have, the least you lose" and "Winner takes all" are the mottos of Fine Gael, the big political winners in this budget. It has beaten the Labour Party hands down in all the discussions that allegedly took place in advance of the presentation of the budget last week.

The Labour Party boasts that it has protected the core social welfare payments. This is a false claim. It claims to have fought the good fight in Cabinet and pushed for a 3% increase in the universal social charge for those earning over €100,000. It lost and that is the bottom line. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Michael Noonan, rejected the Labour Party and instead took his lead from the bosses of multinational corporations. The House need not take my word for it. What did the Minister, Deputy Noonan, say himself? He said: "The people who were advising us not to do it were the multinational sector in the country...". He said it was down to the pay packets of multinational chief executives. That sums it up. This is the Government that cherishes all the chief executives equally while the children are left out in the cold.

I deplore the cuts to child benefit in the budget. They are possibly the most far-reaching of all the cuts. Let us make no mistake: child benefit is a core payment and it has been slashed, contrary to Labour Party claims and pre-election commitments. The incomes of households with children were already falling further and faster before the budget. The Central Statistics Office survey on income and living conditions demonstrates that the incomes of households with children fell five times more than the incomes of childless households between 2009 and 2010, the latest years for which figures are available. Households with children are three times more likely to be in debt arising from ordinary living expenses than households without children.

The value-for-money review of child benefit published in 2010 by the Department of Social Protection demonstrates the dependence of middle income families on the payment. Its analysis found that households in the fourth and fifth of ten income brackets fall below or onto the poverty line after paying their taxes and the child benefit payment then lifts them onto and over the line respectively. These are the families that pay for everything but are entitled to nothing.

The child benefit cuts come on top of other penalties and obstacles encountered by struggling families. In November the Minister informed us that working families who are in poverty and who applied for family income supplement in June of this year may be waiting as long as April next year before a decision is made on their claims. Child care and after-school care are remarkably expensive. Working families with young children spend up to 41% of their income on child care. According to the Commission for Energy Regulation families with children have the most problems with many falling into arrears on their energy bills. Despite programme for Government commitments, basic health care for children is decidedly expensive. According to a report by the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies published at the end of November this year, this is the only state which does not offer universal coverage of primary care. The average cost of a general practitioner visit here is €51 compared to €22 in France. We are one of only three states to charge individuals for essential prescription drugs. Common medicines are many multiples more expensive to purchase in Ireland than elsewhere. We are one of only six countries to charge for attending hospital emergency departments. The hospital charge is considerably higher here than elsewhere at €100 compared to between €2 and €30 in each of the other countries that charge. Now, families who face child benefit cuts must also face higher charges for medicines through the trebling of prescription charges for medical card patients and the increase of the drugs payment scheme monthly ceiling to €144. The reduction of the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance is another heavy blow to those least able to sustain the hit.

I have no doubt that the Social Welfare Bill, in combination with the health cuts, will damage the health of children. It would be fairer, simpler and economically sounder to introduce a third rate of income tax on all high earners. However, Fine Gael and Labour Party Ministers have set their faces against fairness. Will all members of their parliamentary parties follow them? I regret that this is what they all will most likely do.

Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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Last week we saw a budget introduced here that was unjust and regressive. Unfortunately it has further deepened the divide in society between those who are well off and those at the bottom. For the second year in a row the Government has broken promises made to the electorate. The lies the Labour Party peddled during the election campaign have been exposed in this budget. Despite this, according to the comments of the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, over the weekend, that is okay because they were only promises made during election time. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Social Welfare Bill, which could be more appropriately named the anti-social welfare Bill.

In the Bill the Government targets children, low earners, pensioners, small farmers, carers and the disabled. The Bill punishes those dependent on welfare for the sins of those who are well off. While the current economic crisis was caused by bankers, developers and, as earlier speakers noted, by the previous Fianna Fáil Government and its legacy of so-called light touch regulation or no regulation, those paying for it are those who can least afford it and certainly they did not cause the crisis.

We do not have a cohesive jobs plan and the Government is forcing more and more households into the arms of social welfare dependency and moneylenders as a result. Yesterday a report published by the ESRI confirms that 22% of families live in jobless households, twice the EU average. We do not have a jobs plan that is working. The study also shows that household joblessness should be recognised as a risk factor for poverty. It found that welfare payments were the most effective way of reducing poverty. However, rather than tackling the crisis in unemployment the Government and, worse, a Labour Party Minister, are attacking the unemployed and those who are dependent on welfare assistance to survive.

The best way to reduce the social welfare bill is to get people back to work. The abolition of the weekly PRSI threshold for all workers, including those earning only €352 per week, will impact hardest on those workers who are on lowest incomes. The pain is felt greatest by those earning the least. A single worker earning under €20,000 will experience a cut five times greater than those earning €100,000 and ten times greater than those earning €200,000. Not happy with punishing low income households, the Minster for Social Protection, Deputy Burton, will punish children in those households even more.

The proposed child benefit cut is punitive and cowardly. It will be the political legacy of this Government. A family with four children will be down a further €58 a month. The total cut to child benefit for a family of four since 2008 amounts to €208 per month. In her heart of hearts the Minister for Social Protection must know that this is wrong. This cut will add to child poverty, which currently stands at 19.5%. The current position is that one in five children are facing poverty over the Christmas period but the Minister's response is to cut child benefit.

There are cuts that are not apparent in the Bill, hidden cuts that impose reductions for the second year in a row. The back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance is cut by €50. This allowance is not a luxury, it is necessary. It is a necessity for many of the 700,000 people living in poverty when they are preparing children to return to school in September, an expensive period for parents. Following the Minister's cuts to the winter fuel allowance last year for pensioners and the disabled she has now cut the electricity allowance. This is an important point because many pensioners who live in old houses that do not have central heating use this allowance for the extra heating needed during the winter months to keep a bedroom warm at night.

The Social Welfare Bill is a litany of cuts and spineless decisions. Jobseeker's benefit was cut by three months following the earlier three month cut by Fianna Fáil. Only a short time ago it was for 15 months but now it is down to nine months. The respite care grant was cut by a sizable €325 down to €1,375.

The Bill will impact negatively on small farmers.

The proposed increase from 85% to 100% on farm income liable for tax will have a huge impact on small farmers, in particular this year owing to bad weather and fallen incomes.

The Government's cut to the respite care grant has been greeted with a great deal of protest. I understand there will be another protest on this issue outside Leinster House tomorrow. This cut, which it is proposed will yield €26 million, will have a huge impact on carers, including 6,659 carers in Laois-Offaly. The grant is a relatively small amount. This cut of €325 per family will have a massive impact on carers, particularly those living in rural areas in terms of the running cost of cars which provide them with necessary transport. The grant is a lifeline for many of the carers with whom I have met down through the years. This was repeated to me by some of the protestors outside yesterday.

The Government is determined and is not for turning. Neither are the protestors for turning. They are not going to go away. What makes these cuts even more unbearable is that it was not necessary to introduce them. The Labour Party and Fine Gael chose this option when other decisions could have been made. A previous speaker said that this is a difficult budget. It is a difficult budget, as are all budgets, particularly given the current state of our finances. Nobody has a magic wand but other choices could have been made. Sinn Féin put forward alternative budget proposals, in respect of which it has been derided and told it was living in fantasy land. However, those proposals are based on solid information from the Minister's office. Are those who suggest Sinn Féin is living in fantasy land saying that the people in the Minister's office do not know what they are talking about and are giving us and the Parliament false information? Surely, that is not what they are suggesting.

The Government had choices. A wealth tax could yield €800 million. Standardisation of discretionary tax relief could yield €965 million. A third rate of tax on income over €100,000, which proposal the Labour Party supported prior to its entry into Government, could yield €365 million. The Government had choices. The ones it made are the meanest. The rich will be rubbing their hands with glee while poor people will be rubbing their hands to keep them warm. That is the truth. The Government could still reverse these cuts. I appeal to it, party political differences aside, to use this opportunity to do so. Let us at least unite around these issues.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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Before commenting on this particularly nefarious piece of legislation, I would like first to comment on another matter. While I accept the Government's comment around the legacy it inherited from the previous Government, the latter is not responsible for what is happening today.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy must speak to the Bill before the House.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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I hope the response from the Minister of State, Deputy White, will not be to comment on what Sinn Féin is doing in the North because that is not helpful.

Alex White (Dublin South, Labour)
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I do not want to talk about that.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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As everybody is aware, these issues are addressed in the North by way of block grant from Westminster. The Government's concern, while belated, is quaint. Until such time as we have a united Ireland, on which project it is hoped the Government will work with Sinn Féin and that it will soon be achieved, and there is one good Government for all the people of this island, I will focus on what is happening in terms of the delays in processing applications for social welfare payments. The processing time for appeals in respect of invalidity pensions and allowances is ten months. Families in receipt of the family income supplement, which families have been assessed in detail and are the working poor with incomes inadequate to rear their children, are being denied the family income supplement payment while their eligibility is being reviewed, which process is taking several months. These people are often required to resubmit documents again and again and are advised, while waiting for their payment to be restored, to seek the assistance of the community welfare officer only to be told by their community welfare officer that he or she does not have the budget to meet their level of need. Many families do not have sufficient income to rear their children properly.

I do not know if the delay in processing applications is the result of incompetence or mismanagement. Thousands of people are owed hundreds of millions of euro. I am not a conspiracy theorist. However, I believe the Government benefits from delaying payment of social welfare benefits, student grants and farm payments. One wonders if these delays in processing by the Department of Social Protection are the result of cash flow problems, are an interest saving measure or if the purpose is to delay payments until next year so that the Government can receive a pat on the head from the troika for the savings it made in 2012 while at the same time the poor people of this country receive body blows. There must be some reason for it other than incompetence.

On the Bill, the Government says it has taken the hard choices. They are hard not for Government but for the people who are in the unfortunate position of having to depend on it for their existence. The Government can blame Fianna Fáil all it wants. However, it knows that for the many people who are not in a position to care for themselves the cuts proposed in this Bill will make that task even more impossible. It knows that these cuts will result in all sorts of social problems and the malnourishment of children yet it has chosen to impose them rather than tax the wealthy. That is disgraceful and shameful.

Only a few weeks ago we campaigned in the children's referendum on the rights of children. Every child in this country should have the right to food, heat, decent housing, education and a happy existence. The Constitution states that we should cherish all the children of the nation equally. As stated by Deputy Ó Caoláin this budget cherishes all the chief executives of this country. It certainly does not cherish all the children of the nation equally. Child poverty is among the worst forms of poverty. While adults who find themselves in poverty can do something about it, even in the Ireland of today, children have no way of lifting themselves out of poverty.

The Government parties have not lived up to their promises prior to the election, leaving the electorate faced with a different country from that promised. While the Government parties, in particular the Labour Party, campaigned on express solidarity for political and civil rights across the world, they are abandoning social and economic rights in Ireland. The cut to the respite care grant is an unprecedented attack on the sick and elderly. There are thousands of families across Ireland caring for their loved ones. The worst part of this is that the Government is not only taking money from carers but is paying lip-service to the service they provide. The Government accepts that they are saving the State a great deal of money and knows they will continue to provide that care even if paid nothing for doing so because they are caring for a loved one.

The Government is saying, "Go work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year because you are doing it for a loved one." I urge the Government, if it has an ounce of humanity, to reverse the particularly obnoxious cut to the respite care grant.

Michael McCarthy (Cork South West, Labour)
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We are living in an absolutely unprecedented difficult economic time. This is the second budget of five and there is not a Deputy in the House who wants to see the measures being spoken about widely being voted on this evening. We would all much prefer if that were not the case. To contextualise, the clean-up operation in this country, in economic terms, is akin to dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist aeroplane hitting the Sellafield plant. The clean-up operation is toxic, ugly, unpleasant and painful, but it is absolutely essential. The economy has been destroyed. I will deal later with the ideology behind the destruction of the economy, but, unfortunately, I cannot stop at that statement. I must extend it and say Irish society has been destroyed. We have to reconstruct it, from the foundation right up to the roof, literally brick by brick. Nobody was under any illusion during the general election campaign of 2011 about the scale of the task ahead of the new Administration. What is required, in the most difficult time in the history of the State, is strong leadership and difficult decisions. The most difficult decisions politicians will make, particularly those who lead the Government - the Taoiseach, the Tánaiste and Cabinet Ministers - are made under enormous pressure.

There have been some arrows pointing in the right direction. I am not going to repeat mantras such as "we have turned the corner" because when they were said on previous occasions, they turned out to be false. However, there is a wind of change blowing and we need to bring the people with us. That requires responsibility and maturity from all parties in the House. The budget is not about the next general election, it is about the next generation. Frankly, if that means I will be evicted from Dáil Éireann by the people of Cork South West, so be it because bringing the country back to where it was will require difficult and unpopular decisions. I do not, for one moment, doubt the sincerity of Deputy Brian Stanley who I know has an admiration for James Connolly, nor do I doubt the sincerity of the sentiments expressed by his party colleagues. I take them to be genuine, but let us not for one second stand back from the difficult decisions to be made and the hardship that will be caused by them in order to get the country working again.

We are in a period of fiscal retrenchment which is absolutely regrettable. Right-wing ideology and chasing the capitalist Celtic tiger began the unravelling of traditional Irish society. The fallout from that attack is nuclear - I mean no disrespect to those who have been affected by nuclear fallout - and we should not underestimate the scale of the task facing the Administration. It is estimated, based on data from 2011, that the Irish banking crisis ranks as one of the most expensive in an advanced economy since the 1970s. I am not going to rehash the arguments on the blanket guarantee, who voted for it and who did not. It was a decision made by all parties and none in this House and Seanad Éireann, of which I was a Member at the time. The full extent of the crisis was not clear at that stage and, clearly, the advice available to the Government of the day was not accurate. My party took a decision which, had it backfired, would have had horrendous consequences for us as a political party, but we made our decision based on the advice available to us and in the best interests of the country.

The move to the right in the country was absolutely regrettable. We had the Progressive Democrats and Fianna Fáil which introduced a series of tax breaks. We must remind ourselves that Governments do not and never did own people; rather people elect Governments. I ran in three general elections before I became a Deputy. We must cast our minds back to the electoral cycle that is linked with the economic cycle of the country. Bertie Ahern won the elections in 1997, 2002 and 2007. When it came to elections, he was the Messiah and after each one, Opposition Deputies would sit on the Opposition benches, scratching their heads and wondering where it had all gone wrong. It is so easy to answer that question now. We must remember that a mandate was never given to those Governments to plunge us into the crisis we are in.

I argue strongly that the founding father of the modern welfare state was a former Member of this House, a former leader of the Labour Party and a great politician, the late Frank Cluskey. He was Parliamentary Secretary to Mr. Brendan Corish who was Minister for Health and Social Welfare from 1973 to 1977. In his wisdom and foresight, he created the Combat Poverty Agency, an agency which was so shamefully dismantled by Fianna Fáil when in government. He initiated what was known as the unmarried mother's allowance at the time in response to a letter written by a young single mother who was living in Dublin, having had to leave her home area because of the social stigma attached to those who gave birth outside marriage. She found herself living in a city with a young baby and nothing on which to live. She was literally left to her own devices. The visionary individual who wrote to The Irish Times inspired a political process, begun in the Labour Party's rooms in Leinster House by the late Frank Cluskey. He initiated the scheme to provide support for that woman and her child to prevent them from starving. Resources were scarce at the time and he did not have enormous sums at his disposal, but he initiated a range of other schemes, including pension schemes, deserted wives' allowance, the prisoner's spouse allowance and so forth. These schemes were initiated for those who had no money and I argue, some might say flippantly, that the people concerned would have starved without them. That is the legacy of the Labour Party in the State and nobody should underestimate the lengths to which we will go to get us out of the economic morass in which we find ourselves.

That any Government could abolish the Combat Poverty Agency speaks volumes and illustrates its thinking about those who are less well off in Irish society. The previous Government also abolished the Christmas bonus. Perhaps €200 is not a lot of money to those who followed the capitalist Celtic tiger and made an enormous profit from it and who, in turn, collapsed the banking system and plunged the public finances into their current state, but it was a hell of a lot of money to widows, pensioners, the unemployed and carers. It was the equivalent of a 5% reduction in basic rates of social welfare. I could repeat the argument that the Government has maintained basic rates, but I accept that this is of little solace to those who have seen the respite care grant reduced to €1,375. However, I argue that if my party was not in government and Deputy Joan Burton who as Minister of State in the then Department of Social Welfare launched a national poverty strategy in the early 1990s was not at the Cabinet table, we would see reductions in basic rates of 10% or more. Frankly, we will not take lectures from the former governing party on social welfare Bills because they reduced the blind pension by €5, which was callous. It was not an economic decision.

This not a time for amateurs and the country cannot take a gamble with what the alternatives might be. If the budgetary discussions had not worked out - there was a possibility that they would not - we would be facing a general election in Christmas week. What would we have then? The likelihood is that we would have either a Fine Gael minority Government, supported by right-wing Independent Members; a Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael Government; or even a Sinn Féin-Fianna Fáil-Independent Members Government.

Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein)
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No way.

Michael McCarthy (Cork South West, Labour)
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We would be plunging the country into a political crisis as bad as the one in Greece, which is the line some Members opposite argued for when the crisis began. We would then have parties in government which did not take the time to go to the Department of Finance to have their proposals costed. It would be bringing amateurs into a very serious, high stakes game and it is high stakes for the citizens of the Republic of Ireland, not for anybody else.

The restoration of the minimum wage in the last budget was indicative of what left-wing politicians do when in government, as is exempting 330,000 lower paid workers from the universal social charge.

One might as well be speaking archaic Latin to a right-wing individual whose only interest is bringing down the Government so that it can be replaced with the right-wing ideology that allows his investments to be replenished. That is disgraceful. In the Croke Park agreement we have a vehicle that protects low paid workers in the public sector while achieving efficiencies.

I conclude by putting several questions to Opposition Members. They have rightly criticised the measures that the Government has taken. I am certainly not proud of this budget but it is essential. I hope for all our sakes that by the time we get to our fifth budget we will have fixed the banking sector and restored the public finances, which is what we set out to achieve, while maintaining the focus on those on low and middle incomes. I say that in deference to the people who are in trouble. We are trying to introduce measures that reduce the pressure on people in terms of their relationship with banks. I will not compare the Six Counties with the 26 counties. I have done that often enough to great aplomb in this House. I ask those who oppose the property tax whether they would abolish it if they are returned to Government at the next election. How will they restructure the public finances? Can they provide costed, constructive and honest proposals? Over the next couple of hours please tell the people whether they would abolish the property tax.

Sinn Féin's pre-budget submission, which did not make its way to Merrion Street because it would have been thrown out, suggests that Deputies' salaries should be reduced from €92,000 to €70,000. If Sinn Féin Deputies are currently drawing the average industrial wage of €40,000, and I have no reason to believe they do not, their submission proposes to increase their salaries by €30,000 per year.

Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour)
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I welcome the opportunity to express my views on the budget, many aspects of which are disappointing. I am particularly disappointed that there was no increase in the universal social charge on incomes over €100,000 to bring it to the level paid by self-employed persons with similar incomes. I am aware of the argument that an increase in taxes on income would further damage the economy, regardless of how high the income may be. However, that does not make sense when those who are self-employed and, therefore, creating employment for themselves and others are paying a higher level of USC. I am disgusted by the reports that have emerged in the media in recent weeks that any increase in the USC would have to be accompanied by a cut to core social welfare rates. In other words, if we dare to touch the rich it will have to be accompanied by more pain for the poorest.

I have consistently argued that the cut to the respite care grant could be avoided by imposing a 3% surcharge on the universal social charge for pensions of more than €60,000. Only retired bankers, senior civil servants and the former colleagues of Deputies Martin and Ó Cuív who ran for the hills 18 months ago receive pensions of more than €60,000. I am not arguing that an increase in the universal social charge would obviate the need for a reduction in the social protection budget. A reduction in the social protection expenditure has to occur if we are to reduce the money this State spends to the amount that it takes in. There is no alternative to balancing the books and narrowing the deficit. Even the economists who argue for default acknowledge that the deficit has to be reduced to zero if we are to take that course.

However, cuts to the social protection budget have to be implemented in the fairest way possible and should impact least on those who have the greatest needs. Those who drive to work from towns and villages across County Clare to earn €10 or €20 more than they would get by staying at home should not be hit any harder because they are the heroes of society and not those who sit in this House. They go out to earn a bit more money because they believe in the dignity of work and are determined to contribute to society.

Much as I dislike the worst aspects of the budget, such as the manner of social welfare cuts and PRSI increases, as one Deputy out of 166 I have a choice to make. I do not intend to throw my hands up and walk away from the challenge of supporting a Government which has to take deeply unpopular choices. I could go over to the Opposition benches and be led by Deputies Adams and Martin as they compete for supremacy. Deputy Martin introduced cuts to core social welfare rates, which the Labour Party has refused to do, and reduced the national minimum wage, a measure which my party has reversed. He supported these measures without so much as a murmur while he was in power. Now that he is in opposition, however, his perspective is different. I do not believe Deputy Adams wants to be in government. He could be representing the part of this island with the highest unemployment rate, West Belfast, but he walked away from that problem because he knows that it is easier to sit on the Opposition benches than to take a stand. A backbench Deputy could take a stand and be unsuccessful but I intend to continue sitting on these benches while arguing the case for the ordinary people of County Clare who elected me.

Anthony Lawlor (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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This is one of the most difficult budgets ever announced in this House. My party is associated with Richie Ryan and the budget that he brought forward in the mid-1970s. The Cabinet of the time also took difficult decisions which were supported by Fine Gael and Labour Party backbenchers. I commend the Minister for Social Protection on the hard decisions that she took regarding social protection. Not long ago the media reported plans to cut €540 million from the social protection budget. Opposition Members were roaring and shouting about these cuts. We are fortunate that the reduction will only be €390 million, although that in itself will be difficult to achieve. In 2007, when Deputy Cowen's brother was Minister for Finance, the Government gave away everything. The then Minister increased all core payments by between 10% and 15%. In 2009 the budget deficit had grown to €25 billion and all core payments were cut. It is difficult to take Fianna Fáil Members seriously when they supported a series of savage cuts in 2009.

Deputy Stanley acknowledged that all budgets are difficult. His party recently presided over a difficult budget in the North of Ireland which involved the closure of PSNI stations and schools but it claims the right to stand here and make hypocritical statements about the tough decisions we are taking in government.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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On a point of order -----

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Lawlor only has one and a half minutes left.

Anthony Lawlor (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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May I continue? I will lose time as a result of this interruption.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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May I make a point of order?

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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Briefly. I will allow Deputy Lawlor more time.

Michael Colreavy (Sligo-North Leitrim, Sinn Fein)
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I have already advised the House that a block grant comes from Westminster for the Six Counties. Sinn Féin has no influence on that.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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That is not a point of order.

Anthony Lawlor (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Stanley also spoke about a united Ireland, which many of us would welcome. However, would the rate of carer's allowance be the €72 paid across the Border or the more than €200 paid down here?

It is unfortunate that when we have promised not to cut core payments, cuts must be made in other areas to make savings. One of the cuts I find difficult to accept is the cut to the respite care grant and I have made a number of suggestions to Ministers with regard to how we could raise revenue elsewhere or make other savings. In my home town, Peter Riordan has been named carer of the year. He cares for his two sons and he cared for his wife. It will be difficult for me to face him on this, but I will face him and I will be honest and let him know what I have tried to do and what I hope to do with regard to respite care grants.

I will support the Government on this budget. We must make hard decisions and I am not afraid to make those decisions, so that even if I do not retain my seat in four years time, I will have left the country with a better legacy and in a better position than the one we inherited.

Michael Kitt (Galway East, Fianna Fail)
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I call Deputy Donnelly, who is sharing time with Deputies Ross, Halligan, Boyd Barrett, Daly and Pringle.

Stephen Donnelly (Wicklow, Independent)
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The Government's refusal to allow Dáil Éireann to have adequate time for a meaningful debate on the Social Welfare Bill is outrageous. This Bill will push many people into poverty, yet the Government will not even allow our national Parliament sufficient time to debate it. What is the Government afraid of? Is it afraid its backbenchers may get time to speak? Deputy McCarthy made an excellent contribution, although I disagree with much of what he said. As elected representatives, we should have adequate time to debate the Bill. Is the Government afraid the people will see understand the impact this Bill will have?

This Bill will push men, women and children in this country into poverty. We do not know how many it will push into poverty, because the Government has not even had the decency to conduct a proper poverty impact assessment. Let me, therefore, introduce some figures to the debate. CSO figures for 2010 show there is now in every six adults in Ireland at risk of poverty and one in every five children at risk of poverty. Two years into this Government, I am pretty sure those figures have increased. However, the Government is now introducing, through PRSI, a flat income tax rise and is cutting child benefit for everyone in the country. Both of these regressive measures will hit the most vulnerable hardest.

Why does the Minister not means test child benefit? The Government says that is not possible. It can set up NAMA, invent promissory notes, figure out how to tax everybody's house, but it cannot means test child benefit. Why does the Government not introduce a progressive income tax? Fine Gael says this would disincentivise higher earners from working, but it has nothing to back this up. It has no data, research or surveys on this. All it has is its own ridiculous version of economics, which promotes inequality and poverty, somehow in the national interest.

The removal of the PRSI threshold will affect more than 1 million workers and will hit those who have the least more than anybody else. In its defence, the Government points to a progressive tax system. We have a progressive system, but this sort of measure undermines that. A sum of €256 a year may not sound like a lot to a Minister or a Deputy. It certainly does not sound like much to members of the so-called Economic Management Council. However, if one is one of the 20% of children in Ireland at risk of poverty, that is a hell of a lot of money. The cut to child benefit also amounts to a lot of money for these people. Again, this will hit the poorest families the worst.

Since 2009, the annual child benefit for a three-child family will have fallen by more than €1,600 a year following this budget. For many people, that is the difference between being at risk of poverty and of being in poverty. What do these measures on PRSI and child benefit achieve? They will raise just €500 million, which will go just a small fraction of the way towards paying off the promissory notes. The fact the Minister will not even allow the Dáil adequate time to debate this is pathetic.

Shane Ross (Dublin South, Independent)
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I do not come to this debate with any strong ideological position, but I am staggered by what the Government is doing through its cuts, particularly to carers. Like many of the Members on this side of the House, I spent some time outside Leinster House yesterday and some time in my constituency this morning discussing the proposed changes and was staggered by the fact that carers are bewildered. They do not understand how the Government, for the sake of €26 million, can cause so much offence, discomfort, difficulty and hardship to them, when it could so easily get that money elsewhere. That is what amazes them. They are amazed that a government that is committed to caring, to an ideology that is soft left, is prepared to make these unnecessary cuts in social welfare.

In Stepaside this morning, these carers pointed out to me that they work for the social welfare benefits they receive. They do not begrudge social welfare benefits to anybody, but they work for their benefits day and night, 24/7, yet the Government is removing some of their benefit from them. Why is that? It is being taken from them, because they cannot walk off their jobs, because if they did, they would be deserting family, friends and people to whom they have been loyal carers. There are easier ways the Government could have found to save €26 million.

The Minister for Transport was in Leinster House the other day seeking approval for an extra borrowing requirement for CIE, a corrupt semi-State organisation, of €300 million. Earlier in the summer, he had agreed to give them €36 million, more than the Government is taking from the carers. He then took that away and then returned it.

The decision to reduce the carers' respite benefit is extraordinary. It shows the priorities of the Government are bizarre and perverse. The same is true with regard to the cut in children's benefit. There is a kind of myth abroad that somehow carers are spending their money on holidays and that mothers of the children of this country are spending their children's allowance on something else. That may be true in the case of a minority, but is certainly not true for the majority. People being deprived of this money are people who need it badly. In the case of children's allowance, these are the same people who are being crucified for money elsewhere.

I do not believe social welfare should be cut until we cut other benefits that are easily abused. What about social welfare fraud? Why is that issue not tackled properly in the budget? Why is there some sort of taboo about doing that, a taboo Governments continually refuse to tackle with the vigour necessary?

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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Just weeks ago, the Government promoted a referendum on children's rights, despite the fact it knew damn well it would follow it up with socially irresponsible direct attack on children which has the potential to affect some parents' ability to care and provide for their children and, possibly, push more children into the care of the State.

Cuts to the back to school clothing allowance will cause enormous hardship for struggling families. Overall, the awful treatment of mothers and children in this budget puts the once proposed Fine Gael tax on children's shoes in the ha'penny place. I listened to some of the Deputies on the Government side talking about ideologies, the left, the right and whatever. It has always been the case that the less well off in societies around the world are the most vulnerable to attack by the right. In Ireland, the less well off, the 700,000 people on the verge of poverty, or the 200,000 children on the poverty line, are under severe attack, with nobody to defend them.

They have been abandoned by the main political parties, as I have said in this House previously. They have been abandoned by the church. They have been abandoned by the trade union movement, the leadership of which really has no credibility with workers or families because of its close associations with successive Governments. It is easy to attack all of these people because nobody stands up for them, with the exception of a few parties and a few individuals. The Minister does not do it. The Labour Party does not do it. Fine Gael does not do it. If one speaks to those involved on the coal face in front-line organisations like the Money Advice and Budgeting Service, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and Social Justice Ireland, one will hear that every one of them is absolutely shocked by what the Government is doing.

I spoke last week to a woman in my constituency who has three kids. She was shocked and distressed that so much money is being taken from her. She really does not have any money to give. She described it as "cruel". Nobody should stand up here to make excuses or suggest that the Government is doing what it thinks is right for the years to come. I will repeat what I have said to Labour Party Deputies previously. The things that have happened in this country cannot be corrected in the next two, three or four years. When those on the Labour Party benches vote in favour of this Bill tonight, all they will have done is create enormous hardship that will live long in the memories of the 700,000 people and the 200,000 children who will be three years older at the next general election and will remember what has been done to them. I am looking at the Minister when I say that, but she is not looking at me. I know her well and I have respect for her. I speak to her regularly. I have told her that I would never criticise her personally and I will not do so today. The Minister and her party colleagues cannot deny that when this Bill is passed, it will drive thousands of people into poverty. That is clear from the statistics that are available to us.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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All of the political point-scoring - the jibes about Fianna Fáil, about what happens in the North and about the Labour Party - has to be set aside at this juncture, frankly. Notwithstanding the ideological differences we might have or where we might stand on the left-wing spectrum, I appeal to the Labour Party Deputies to think hard about what they will do tonight and tomorrow. If these measures had been introduced two years ago, they would have been screaming in denunciation of them and rightly so. These measures will drive people who are on the edge over the edge. It is as simple as that. The statistics make it clear. I am sure all Deputies are hearing about this on every street corner and in their clinics. People cannot take what the Government is planning to impose on them. There is no justification for it.

The Labour Party knows there are alternatives. Fine Gael does not believe there are alternatives. The idea of imposing higher taxes on the rich is anathema to Fine Gael Deputies because they represent that section of society. The Labour Party Deputies do not represent it, however. They know there is a just alternative to this budget. It would require the imposition of modest increases in income tax on those earning over €100,000. It would eliminate the need to impose these measures on the poorest people in our society. I assure the Deputies in question that the people who voted for them will never forgive them for this breach of trust. They must know it. We are getting it all over the place. The leader of the Labour Party, who cannot be pinned on many things, was pinned on one thing three days before last year's general election. He said solemnly that the Labour Party would not participate in a Government that would cut child benefit, but he has breached that line. He has crossed the Rubicon. That is a betrayal for which he will not be forgiven. I remind the House of the price Fine Gael paid for its attempt to impose VAT on shoes.

I would like to put a political point to the Labour Party. If there is one thing that could rehabilitate the fortunes of Fianna Fáil, which destroyed this country's economy and plunged us into this crisis, it is what the Labour Party is doing tonight. Those who represent the Labour Party in this House could be responsible for the return to power of Fianna Fáil when this Government is swept out of office, which is going to happen sooner or later as a result of what is going on. That would be a terrible testimony to the betrayal they are engaging in now. I appeal to the comrades of the Labour Party not to do this. I urge them to stand with the people who voted for them by defending working people, the vulnerable, the families of people with disabilities and the unemployed. I plead with them not to do this to the ordinary people who are the innocent victims of this crisis.

Clare Daly (Dublin North, Socialist Party)
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One of the most disgusting and reprehensible speeches ever delivered in this institution was made in 1924 by the Cumann na nGaedheal Minister for Industry and Commerce, Patrick McGilligan. In response to an outcry from Labour Party Deputies about the proposal to reduce the old age pension by 10% - the Deputies in question spoke of the hardship, horror and starvation being experienced by families across the nation - he said: "There are certain limited funds at our disposal. People may have to die in this country and may have to die through starvation." That was shocking then and it has a shockingly familiar ring now. It reminds me of the waffle and nonsense to which we have been subjected by Government Deputies in recent days. They have spoken about challenges and difficult choices. They have made their choices and now they are wringing their hands.

Deputy McNamara spoke reprehensibly and patronisingly about those who drive around west Clare for an extra €10 so they can engage in what he described as "the dignity of work". What is his answer? By agreeing to the changes in the PRSI regime, he will put his hands into their pockets to take €5 of the extra €10 they get for doing a week's work. People do not need the platitudes of those who are keen to pat them on the shoulder. They need answers. They need to know why the Government has chosen to elevate the interests of the wealthy and of corporations, rather than attacking such interests. It is as simple as that. We have made comparisons with the likes of Connolly and Larkin, who would be ashamed to think of what has happened to their party. To be honest, it is insulting to such people to mention them in the same sentence as the Labour Party of today, which has become like the Blueshirts it spoke out against in the 1980s.

The Government is talking about protecting core payments while cutting the respite grant. Some people who receive that grant do not get any other payments. This is their core payment - the only thing they get. It has been implied that these people are some sort of a luxury, or are a drain on the economy. The reality is that their efforts, in working to care for their loved ones in their homes, have saved the State a fortune. We have been told that this payment has to be cut to plug the gap in the social welfare fund. The gap in the social welfare fund did not develop because allowances are too high. It resulted from this State's chronic unemployment, which the Government has failed to tackle in any way. Government Deputies have argued that they are having to make difficult choices, but I assure them that the consequences of the actions they are foisting onto the shoulders of ordinary people will be more difficult. The statistics bear out what I am saying. The wealth of the top 10% of the population in this country has increased in the same proportion as the decrease in the wealth of those at the bottom. Corporations are getting away scot free. The Government's failure to tackle this is the direct reason people are in poverty. It will pay a hefty price for that.

Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent)
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In the limited amount of time available to me - I would not mind having 20 minutes - there is not much point going into detail on this Bill. It will suffice to say I am opposing it in every way. The manner in which the Government has handled the guillotining of the Bill shows the contempt it has for debate in this House. A member of the public asked me last week what the most disappointing thing is about being a Member of the Dáil. After thinking about my answer, I had to say that the worst thing is the cynicism in here. The debate on this Bill and on the budget in general has reinforced my view of the cynicism in this House. During our discussions on these cutbacks, some Government Deputies have shown a galling attitude when they have been challenged on what they said when they were in opposition and during last year's election campaign. It must be sickening for the public to hear Ministers saying the exact opposite of what they said when they were in opposition.

They are even dismissing the election campaign and suggesting we should really know better about the things said during a campaign.

The performance of the Minister, Deputy Pat Rabbitte, on "The Week in Politics" on Sunday said it all. I could not help but remember his performance on "Prime Time" when he attacked Fianna Fáil for destroying the country and how he appeared to express the anger of the nation that night. We now see that it was all a performance and meant nothing. It was all part of a show, like so many of the set pieces in this House.

The Taoiseach claimed there had been a democratic revolution in the general election last year. The counter-revolution is under way and victory is almost at hand for the politics of cynicism. The Government will be responsible for the death of real change in politics. Labour Party and Fine Gael backbenchers will vote in favour of the Bill and dash people's hopes further - the hope things could be done in a different way, the hope the Government would reflect their needs and put them first, and the hope that, when they got rid of Fianna Fáil, there could be change.

The Bill should be opposed by every fair-minded person in the House. The cut to the respite care grant is a touchpaper that has highlighted what is wrong with the budget. It could have been any other cut provided for in the Bill - for example, the cut to the back-to-school clothing allowance, on which the Minister only says there is good value to be had on clothes. There is a lack of imagination to the cut to child benefit and it seems it is just too hard to tax or means-test it. There is also the imposition of tax on maternity benefit and the cutting of the period in which people can claim jobseeker's benefit. The Minister has tried to suggest this is encouraging people back to work, but where are the jobs they are supposed to be getting? There is also the issue of penalising those who have been overpaid owing to mistakes made within the Department where the vast majority of overpayments take place and not through fraud. For all of these reasons, the Bill should be opposed.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I wish to share time with Deputies Seán Conlan, Billy Timmins and Joe O'Reilly.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

John O'Mahony (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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It was obvious as far back as 2009 or 2010 that the budget for 2013 was going to be the most difficult of all, whether it was introduced by Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Labour Party, the Technical Group or anybody else. At that stage, if one had looked back to the year 2000, it was a time when there was wastage and misspending and the economy was built on quicksand, with no provision being made for the rainy day, whereas now we have a torrent. In those early days of 2008 and 2009 we were being told it was just a mere blip, that there would be a soft landing and that the economy was sound. In reality, we were on a cliff and facing economic challenges that the State had never faced since its foundation.

The challenge for the Government has been as far as possible to protect the vulnerable, while getting back our economic sovereignty at the same time. This has to be done at a time when income from taxes is coming in at 2000 levels but social welfare payments need to be, as far as possible, kept near to 2013 levels. Many measures in the past couple of years have successfully protected the vulnerable in society. Some 300,000 people were made exempt from the universal social charge last year and in the past year 150,000 medical cards were issued when there was only a projected need for 105,000. The reality is that 42%, almost within shouting distance of half the population, have medical cards whereas, at the end of the time of plenty in 2007, only 27% had them. In many instances, therefore, the vulnerable have been protected.

In the budget announced last week the main social welfare rates for pensioners, jobseekers and carers were maintained and the social welfare ceiling was raised by €150 million over that which had been projected. Nonetheless, there is no doubt that there is much concern about the cut to the respite care grant which brings it back to 2007 levels. The fact is this payment is not made until June of any year and I ask the Minister to look at it again in the calm light of day, perhaps in the Finance Bill. With regard to carer's allowance in general, while I know the Minister is doing all she can, waiting times of up to eight to ten months are experienced on the ground. When applications for carer's allowance are made, we need to reduce waiting times by as much as possible.

Another change made in the budget which has a big impact in my constituency of County Mayo is to the farm assist criteria, whereby the income and child disregards will be abolished from next April. Again, as this change will not apply until next April, I hope it can be reconsidered in some way. There are 1,815 farmers on farm assist payments in County Mayo, the highest number by far of any county.

In recent days we have listened to Members on the opposite side of the House making a lot of noise about the cuts made. To return to my point about the protection of social welfare rates, carer's allowance was €220.50 in 2009, but this figure was reduced to €204 in the last two budgets of the previous Government, a cut of approximately €850 a year. Similarly, blind pension was reduced from €204 to €188, also a cut of approximately €850, and there were similar cuts to widow's pension and other payments. I had always assumed that these were vulnerable persons also. Let us not have lectures, therefore, from people who did not protect the main rates of social welfare.

Seán Conlan (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I welcome the Minister's intentions and commitment to move from a passive to an active welfare state. Everybody in this republic has a valuable part to play in its rebuilding. I note the Minister has been active in formulating activation measures to assist people to get back to work by upskilling and retraining. I note the comments she made about the previous two Governments' utter failure to address the problems of jobless households and the alarming statistic that the jobless figure rose to reach 15% of total households at the height of the Celtic tiger when there was large inward migration to fill job vacancies.

It is welcome that the Minister's Department will be providing 10,000 new placements on unemployment schemes this year and that, notwithstanding the enormous pressure she is under to reduce the social welfare budget, she was able to protect the basic rate of widow's pension, invalidity pension and carer's allowance, which were cut by Fianna Fáil to the tune of almost €850 in its last two budgets in power. The Minister was also able to protect the rate of jobseeker's allowance.

I have concerns, however, about certain parts of the Bill. An alternative should be found to the blanket cut to the respite care payment. While I understand the Minister is under pressure to save money, I ask her to go to the Cabinet to seek approval for a review of this measure. I have sought, with some Fine Gael colleagues and through internal Fine Gael channels, a meeting with the Minister to discuss the matter. I hope this meeting can still take place. I would like to make some constructive suggestions. This payment is not due to be paid until June next. Will the Minister seriously consider leaving the carer's respite grant at its current level on a fully vouched basis? This would allow those who rely on the payment to continue to receive it. In this alternative carers could be allowed to choose between retaining the current payment on a fully vouched basis and accepting the lower amount on an unvouched basis.

With regard to child benefit, in the interests of real reform, rather than cutting the rate of payment, in the future we need to look seriously at means-testing this payment in order to ensure it is protected for those who need it most. In this alternative all income, regardless of its source, whether through work or welfare, would be regarded as taxable to ensure we had a truly progressive tax and welfare system. However, in this scenario we would have to ensure married couples were not at a disadvantage.

I find it incredible to listen to and experience the collective amnesia and rank hypocrisy of former senior Fianna Fáil Ministers such as Deputy Micheál Martin, who sat at the Cabinet table, approved and then forced through the cuts to the baseline carer's allowance payment from €220.50 in 2009 to €204 in 2011. They are now crying crocodile tears about the reduction in the respite care payment.

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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That does not justify this measure.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Order, please.

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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The Deputy wants carers to vouch for their allowances. Apparently he does not trust them.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Deputy Conlan should be allowed to finish his contribution without interruption.

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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How could he be any more insulting? Are Labour Party Members listening to this?

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Deputy Halligan had the opportunity to make his contribution without interruption. He should afford Deputy Conlan the same opportunity.

Seán Conlan (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I had intended to finish on that point. However, I will take this opportunity to inform Deputy Halligan that I do not take lectures from a populist waffler like him who comes into the House with that type of rhetoric. I am trying to make progressive suggestions.

John Halligan (Waterford, Independent)
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The Deputy is insulting carers.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Deputies, please. I have called Deputy Billy Timmins.

Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Before dealing with the Bill, I refer to the commitment the Government gave to facilitate an analysis of budgetary proposals and greater transparency regarding the budgetary process, including the preparation of the Finance Bill and Social Welfare Bill. The idea was that there would be an opportunity to discuss the issues in detail - to prepare the ground, so to speak - whether in plenary session in this Chamber or at committee level. It is something that must be done in the future. Alongside that, it behoves Members on all sides of the House to come forward with proposals and meaningful analysis. Having been in the Chamber for the past 30 minutes or so, I am struck by the lack of analysis and proposals from the other side of the House. It is easy to condemn but rather more difficult to come up with positive concrete proposals.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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We have tabled amendments.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Deputies, please.

Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I would appreciate if Members opposite would show a little respect. I did not interrupt them and I ask that they have the manners to be silent while I am speaking.

I welcome the decision to maintain the headline carer's allowance rate. The reduction in the respite care grant represents some 7% of the €390 million of savings contained in the budget in the area of social protection. This proportionately small fraction of the overall savings package has caused great difficulty for many and angered even those who are not directly affected by it. It seems to have sent out the message that this Government does not care about vulnerable people, which everybody on this side of the House knows is not true. It is difficult to unravel the various figures contained in a budget at this point, but perhaps the Minister will undertake an analysis of the respite care grant and whether any modification of the decision in regard to it is possible.

It is important that we protect those who are most vulnerable. The Minister is well aware of the concerns Members on all sides of this House have in regard to this issue. The welfare system in this State was established with the objective of assisting the most vulnerable members of society. Nobody could dispute that this country offers very generous welfare provisions by any standards. Relative to any other country in the world, people in this State have access to very generous benefits. One of the difficulties, however, is that in the past 15 years in particular, politicians in this House have used the social protection budget to bribe the public. Child benefit, for example, increased by some 240% in a period when the cost of living rose by 40%. Government sought to buy off the public over a long period of time and we are now paying the price for it.

There must be the possibility for a row-back on welfare provisions that may have become inflated, but there must also be a row-back on other issues such as professional fees and public sector pay. We do not have a great deal of moral authority to argue for putting the welfare budget in order when so many other areas are neglected. Nevertheless, this should not prevent us from analysing this budget on its own merits. Welfare reform is necessary and I have every confidence that the Minister can achieve it. A difficulty in this regard is that due to the low standing of politicians in the public domain and the failure of the media to assist in analysing genuine reform proposals, we have a situation where anybody who puts his or her head up and seeks to develop a proposal will be pounced on in the manner in which my colleague, Deputy Conlan, was attacked by a Member opposite. Anybody who offers an analysis or makes a well-thought-out proposal is tackled in an emotive way. While I do not doubt the bona fides of anybody in this House in terms of his or her concern to protect vulnerable people, nobody has a monopoly of concern. If I were to analyse a cross-section of the people who voted for me or any of my Fine Gael colleagues in the last election, I would not expect to find a huge difference between them and those who voted for Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett, for instance. The notion of seeking to typecast different parties or individuals into certain categories does not wash with me.

It is important to acknowledge what is positive in the proposals before us today. I particularly welcome the provision for 6,000 additional child care places, an extra 2,500 places under the JobBridge scheme and the retention of the back-to-education allowance. There are many positive aspects of this budget which, we should not forget, sets out a spending programme of more than €20 billion. I am a strong believer in workfare as opposed to welfare, which is not to say that I do not acknowledge the situation of certain vulnerable persons who will never work again due to physical disabilities or otherwise. When I talk of workfare instead of welfare, I do not have in mind somebody sweeping the roads or cutting a hedge. I am talking about the architect, for example, who cannot secure employment and would be eager to build up both expertise and self-esteem by offering his or skills to a local authority or State agency. In this context, I look forward to the report on tax and social welfare which will be published soon. It is my view that all benefits should be taxed. If that means raising the disability allowance, for instance, to account for the tax increase, then it should be done. People who pay tax have a greater investment in and buy-in to the system. I am not suggesting that people's payments should be reduced - rather, payments should, where necessary, be increased in order to allow for their taxation. I also support Deputy John O'Mahony's comments regarding the farm assist scheme.

I conclude by asking the Minister to take another look at the respite care grant. I have no doubt that she has more compassion in her little finger than some of those in this House who have sought to undermine her. I wish her well in her endeavours in the coming months.

Joe O'Reilly (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I congratulate the Minister on bringing forward this Bill and acknowledge, as Deputy Billy Timmins did, her practical compassion in a very difficult situation. That compassion is reflected throughout these proposals. We cannot address the Bill without placing it in its proper context, namely, the requirement that €3.5 billion be taken out of the economy in accordance with the requirements of the EU-IMF programme and the inescapable fact that the country this Government inherited was effectively bankrupt. Every budgetary provision must be viewed in that context. I respectfully challenge Members opposite, such as Deputy Shane Ross, who urged that certain measures be rescinded on the basis that the savings forgone can be made elsewhere. Will they clarify precisely where this money can be found? It behoves anybody in this House who offers legislative proposals to be very clear in that regard. I address this point to Deputy Ross in particular.

The major achievement of this Bill and last year's Bill is that they have maintained headline social welfare rates, in real terms and every other term. These are the fundamental payments across the entire spectrum of social protection. There is no taking from this achievement in the context in which we are operating. I congratulate the Government on that success and am proud to be associated with it. This is not to say that I am not aware, or anybody else on this side of the House is not aware, that we are in very difficult times and that many people are in a very dark place. I know that from my work, from extended family and from everybody I deal with. People are undoubtedly suffering and nobody is suggesting the contrary. However, the maintenance of headline social welfare rates is a huge contribution to the alleviation of that suffering.

The effort of the Minister to achieve job activation, to create an opportunity whereby persons on jobseeker's allowance can truly be viewed as jobseekers, is a wonderful development. I encourage her to continue on that path. In this regard, I welcome the 2,500 additional JobBridge places, 2,500 Tús places, 2,000 additional community employment scheme places and 3,000 social employment scheme places. These amount to 10,000 extra places to assist jobseekers to make the transition to work.

The additional €30 million allocation for education and child care is of great significance, including the €2 million for school meals.

Schools meals can affect people's lives for the good. I say that as a former primary teacher. The implications of having school meals are considerable and I welcome the measure. It is simple and small but very real, with implications for learning, socialisation and development on every level, and I commend the Minister on it. I also applaud the 6,000 additional places that will be available for after-school care, a most significant step. In many ways, it negates the impact of what has happened in the area of child benefit, as, of course, it is intended to do. I salute the Minister because intervention that can allow people to go back to work will have real implications for the lives of the children in question. In many respects, direct interventions in the lives of children are very much in keeping with the spirit of the recent referendum about putting children at the centre of things. That is achieved here and I salute it.

We cannot avoid the issue of carers, for whom I have enormous regard, as does any right-thinking person in the country. There is a highly emotive dimension involved because we hold our carers in great regard and know the output of their work. They are the most productive sector of our economy, if one has the correct values. That is not at issue. It is a great achievement that we have maintained the headline rate for both the carer's allowance and the half-rate carer's allowance. The respite grant cut is regrettable and one of the first objectives I will bring to the Minister's attention as we get the country sorted will be to reverse it. However, there has been an enormous increase in the budget in the entire area of carers, and something had to give in order to protect the headline payments. Although the cut is painful and we do not want to do it, it is minor in the sense that we are talking about €8 a week. Given that, I salute our carers. To the Minister, I point out that just as it is crucial to have the job activation schemes to which she is committed, it is similarly crucial that during the course of the coming years we should do everything we can to augment the work of our carers and put them centre stage. They are the vehicle that provides quality of life and takes people out of alternative care.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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I understand Deputy Calleary is sharing time with Deputies Seamus Kirk and Robert Troy.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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Yes. Deputy Kirk and I have seven and a half minutes each, with five minutes for Deputy Troy.

I welcome the chance to speak on the Social Welfare Bill, but first I will pick up on something mentioned by Deputy Timmins and a number of other Deputies. This is madness. It is the same every year, regardless of who is outside the House. On this occasion we will spend only two days talking about social welfare cuts and then we will move on. Next year we will come back and spend another two days, but in the meantime there will be no substantial reform of the system. The debate is all about specific cuts, with no real analysis or consideration given to the system and no one asking the question of whether it is still fit for purpose as we deliver the budget in 2013. I refer, for example, to jobseeker's benefit and the difficulty involved in signing off and back on again if a person gets a day's work. Hurdles are put in the way which discourage many people from seeking part-time employment. This in turn has encouraged the growth, once again, of black-market practices. It is an area that needs fundamental reform, but it is not being discussed because of the cuts that have been proposed.

There are many other areas of concern. The Minister has made some sneaky changes in the cuts and restrictions she initiated in the community employment schemes. No longer can rental of offices be included as part of the scheme, which will have an enormous impact. I gather the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, plans to change the entire budgetary process, but it might have been beneficial if the cuts the Minister, Deputy Burton, proposed had been discussed in advance rather than in a two-day debate. We heard the Minister often enough when she was on this side of the House. If a two-day debate had been devoted to these cuts there would have been whingeing, whining and wailing, led by her. Yet here she is, satisfied to sit back and allow this Bill to be done and dusted in less than a day, when all the hours are counted together. It is just not good enough, especially when compared to the mandate her party sought. That is the difficulty. I have a lot of sympathy for the very decent people in the Labour Party. They sought a mandate in 2011 with a manifesto which, as her party's finance spokesperson, the Minister had prepared. She was in full possession of the facts about the seriousness of the country's financial situation because she had been briefed not by the outgoing Government but by the Commission and the troika. She made a great palaver about going to meet the troika. She knew the situation and yet she presented a manifesto that guaranteed no cuts would be made in many areas, including child benefit. Those genuine people who sought a mandate on behalf of the Labour Party signed up to that manifesto on the basis of a belief in the Minister, Deputy Burton, her integrity and her management of their economic policy. Now she comes into the Chamber and rams through these cuts affecting children, carers and small impoverished farmers because she did not take her responsibilities as Opposition spokesperson seriously enough in 2010 and 2011. By her actions, therefore, she is selling out many of her backbench colleagues. The Minister has set herself up as something of a little independent republic in this Government. Tonight, however, the reality is that those of her colleagues who sought a mandate on the back of her manifesto in 2011 are now being sold out by the Minister and her colleagues. They are being sold out by the Minister because she was in full possession of the facts in 2011 when she created that manifesto.

There are many areas and Departments in which the Government could have made different choices that would have allowed us not to target carers - the people who, as we speak, are giving unbelievable service to this State. We would not have had to target children, small farmers or the CE schemes had this Government made different choices with regard to those with high incomes and earnings. The Minister has made and presented her choices. I have no doubt about the sincerity of all the Minister's backbench colleagues in calling for her to examine the carer's respite grant and the farm assist payment before the cut comes in April. Tonight is their chance to force her to examine this, not by talking about it but by walking with us. The truth is that when the Minister gets out of the Chamber tonight and tomorrow she will be out of the gap and will not come back until next year. God knows what she will be doing in the meantime in the Labour Party. However, carers will have a cut in their incomes and small farmers will be destroyed because the Minister is taking the ground from under the farm payment in the Bill. I do not excuse her, although she is an urban Deputy and does not understand the issue. However, as farm assist is so utterly important, I cannot understand how the rural Fine Gael Deputies, in particular, are allowing her to do this. Children's benefit will be cut; for many families hundreds of months' worth of benefit will be cut. There are also the changes in the CE schemes.

I welcome the activation measures. JobBridge has been a fantastic success, and those who criticised it need to bring ideas to the table. The people who participated were excellent. There was an announcement of a local authority social scheme in the budget, but when I submitted a parliamentary question in order to get information on the scheme, an official from the Minister's Department contacted my office to inform me that the Department had not heard about it. Is this something for the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Hogan? I have full confidence it will be a good scheme if he has charge of it.

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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I believe they have heard of it.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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The Minister might share the idea with her colleagues. It sounds like a good scheme, one that would give skills to those who want to use their talents and who, because of the construction collapse, can now give their skills to the community. That scheme needs to roll out quickly. Flexibility is needed in such schemes in order to respond to demand. One of the difficulties in JobBridge is that there are not enough places to meet the demand. The marketing behind it has been quite poor.

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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There was no budget.

Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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This is where one must think outside the box, which brings me back to my opening point. The carers, small farmers and parents of this country are paying because of the Minister's inability to think outside the box. She is doing it the easy way, with cuts, instead of re-imagining the system. She has had 18 months to do that - to come forward, reposition and re-imagine social welfare - but we have seen nothing new from her yet. Perhaps in the course of the coming 12 months she might surprise us and present something new, but tonight, because of her failure to be imaginative and her inability to bring her Government colleagues around her in terms of re-imagining, it is the carers, mothers and small farmers of Ireland who are paying. Ultimately, it is the Minister's backbench colleagues who will pay.

Séamus Kirk (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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Fianna Fáil is opposed to the Bill and the provisions it contains. Budget 2013 places a deeply unfair financial burden on countless families throughout the country. It will whittle away the social safety net until only a bare thread remains. Mothers in particular are being unfairly targeted by the cuts, one of which will result in child benefit being hammered, workers are being hit by the regressive PRSI tax hike, and front-line carers are being undermined by a callous cut to the respite grant. Mothers have been hit hard. The cuts to child benefit and the back-to-school allowance and the failure to live up to the promise made by the Minister, Deputy Burton, to introduce a Scandinavian-style child care system will have a severe impact on them. The cut to child benefit is a direct break with Labour's pre-election pledge to maintain the payment. The Tánaiste, Deputy Gilmore, highlighted this pledge as a precondition of going into government with Fine Gael. The cynical betrayal of its promise to the electorate exposes the vacuum that is the Labour Party in government and leaves ordinary mothers to pay the price.

Core social welfare payments are being cut through the back door. The reduction in the eligibility period for jobseeker's benefit is simply a 25% cut in jobseeker's benefit for those who claim it during that period. The reduction in the respite care grant is a callous blow to carers working on the front line with people who require constant help. These individuals perform a vital social duty and save the State money. However, they will be penalised as a result of this severe cut.

The budget is unfair, anti-women and counterproductive. Gone are the election promises made by both Fine Gael and the Labour Party. This budget is one of the most harsh I have seen during my time as a Member of the House. I am disappointed with its lack of fairness. I do not doubt that Labour Party and Fine Gael Deputies will talk to members of the press about internal pressures. The bottom line is, however, that real people are affected. It should be easy to make the decision to vote against the Bill. Those in government were elected by the people to represent their best interests. There is no evidence of that here. This is the Government's second budget, but it seems that the economy is actually regressing and that all election promises have been truly and utterly broken.

Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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Is Deputy Kirk the only person who has not witnessed the growth that is taking place?

Séamus Kirk (Louth, Fianna Fail)
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Carers play a vital role in supporting those who need constant help. The contribution of carers to the economy has almost doubled since the level of that contribution was estimated at €2.5 billion in 2006. Carers engage in some 900,000 hours of caring every day. In financial terms, this amounts to €77 million per week. The overall amount involved in this regard is equivalent to one third of the total annual cost of the HSE, namely, €13.3 billion. The Government has slashed a vital support payment to carers which covered discretionary expenditure. A respite care grant of €1,700 is paid every year, usually on the first Thursday in June, for each person in care. This is not taxable. The grant will now be cut by €325 - a 20% reduction - to €1,375 per annum in order to save €26 million. Some 1,438 carers and their families in County Louth will be directly affected and left hurting by this cut.

In the past, Fine Gael and the Labour Party both issued statements in respect of the cutting of carer's allowance. In the context of budget 2011, the former stated:

Fine Gael believes we should support carers. It makes sense that carers are supported in the work they do because they save the taxpayer money in the long run. If carers are not supported they will experience physical, financial and emotional hardship and eventual burnout.

On the cut to child benefit, the great philosopher Plato once said: "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." In my view, this quote describes the actions of the Government. The right decision would be to reverse the cut to child benefit, but the Government has decided that children will be the victims. I understand that cuts must be made but there must be a better way to proceed in order that children, our future leaders, will not be affected. Reports indicate that the Government will break its pre-election promises and bluster around in respect of children's rights - only weeks after a referendum on that same issue - by unfairly targeting families with a cut of €10 per month in the standard rate of child benefit. The programme for Government states "We will maintain social welfare rates," and the Minister, Deputy Burton, recently reiterated her commitment to protect core rates. The definition of the word "core" obviously has no real meaning for the Government, however, particularly if it is determined to hit child benefit, which is an essential payment for hundreds of thousands of families.

Fianna Fáil supported families and mothers when in government and increased child benefit from €53.96 for the first child and €71.11 for third and subsequent children to €166 and €203, respectively, in the period from 2000 to 2010. The majority of these gains were maintained when the State's finances came under greater budgetary pressure. Our child benefit schemes are in place to encourage and support families in having children. Child benefit is a special recognition of the costs of rearing children and the universality of the payment has helped to ensure that children have been lifted out of poverty. The children's charity Barnardos has described the measures in the budget as "regressive, unfair and unsustainable" and stated that, despite the rhetoric on fairness from the Government, they disproportionately target low-income families. In the context of child benefit, the Labour Party document Labour's Manifesto for Children states:

- Despite our current economic problems, Ireland remains a very expensive place to raise a child, and child benefit is the only recognition by the State of this high cost.

- Cutting child benefit will create poverty traps, work disincentives, and will substantially increase the already high number of children in poverty.

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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Prior to the general election, many of the leading members of the parties now in government competed with each other in their negative descriptions of the economy. They knew full well the impact the global economic crisis was having on our island. Even with that knowledge, they proceeded to make election promises. It was on the basis of those promises and various other commitments that they received the mandate to which they refer so regularly. We know from what the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Rabbitte, stated in last Sunday night's edition of "The Week in Politics" that this is what parties do at election time. No wonder the public have such a cynical view of all of us in here.

I could produce for the House a copy of an e-mail sent out by the then Fine Gael spokesperson on finance and current Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, in respect of the cuts contained in the budget introduced in December 2010. I could also show Members a copy of an advertisement taken out by the Labour Party prior to the general election. However, I do not wish to waste time discussing the manifestos produced by all political parties at previous elections. Unfortunately, most of the parties - including that which I represent - promised to cut too many taxes and spend less. The best way to reduce the social welfare budget is by creating opportunities for employment.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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That is what we are doing.

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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My colleague referred to the lack of reform and he is correct in that regard. The changes to PRSI for people who earn just over €18,500 will not do much to encourage those at the lower end of the spectrum to return to employment. The jobs strategy introduced by the Government just after it entered office proved to be a disaster. More people are unemployed now than in 2011. What has the Government done about the two highest overheads with which small businesses must contend, namely, rent and rates? The answer is nothing. This is another broken promise.

Seventy percent of unemployed people would prefer to be working. They need our support to get back to work. I have been informed by experienced departmental officials based around the country that, at a conservative estimate, 10% of the departmental budget is affected by fraudulent claims. The Minister has targeted a reduction in fraud. The Minister should use the Croke Park agreement to redeploy public service staff to each social welfare office to support the good work of the Department's fraud officials. She needs to be woman enough to impose strict penalties for blatantly fraudulent social welfare claims. A more rigorous assessment system would obviate the need for such brutal cuts.

This morning the Taoiseach sought to justify these callous cuts by reminding the House that the previous Government cut the blind pension. I acknowledge that was wrong. However, what this Government is doing now is morally wrong. What happened to the Labour Party's red line issue of the cuts in child benefit? On 10 December 2010, the Minister stated that child benefit had succeeded in lifting children out of poverty because there was no means test. Barnardos has described this budget as regressive, unfair, unsustainable and disproportionately targeted. What happened to the Labour Party standing up for the less well-off in society? The people who earn a couple of hundred thousand euro and who have a couple of children get the same as people with a couple of children who earn €10,000.

What about the carers? They are the only section of society who earn the money they are paid. They earn it because they have to undergo a rigorous assessment. Under the Minister's watch they wait eight months for payment. They must prove that they provide full-time care. They are saving this State €4 billion annually - a conservative figure. They are keeping people out of long-term care in nursing homes. They do it not for the €200 a week they receive, which we introduced, nor for the respite care grant, which we also introduced, but for love of the person for whom they care. Where is the Labour Party support for those people?

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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The Deputy should conclude as he is well over time.

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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Politics is about choices. There are alternatives. The choices we make say a lot about us as a society. Let us decide that we wish to protect the most vulnerable members of society. The Government should go after the people who are fraudulently claiming social welfare. It should increase taxation for those who can afford to pay it and cut child benefit for the people who do not wish to take it. Very wealthy individuals have said they do not need child benefit payments. The Government should cut it for those people but it should protect the people it is supposed to represent in this House.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I wish to share my time with Deputy Dara Murphy. I will allow him to speak first.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Is that agreed? Agreed.

Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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I know that speaking time is very limited. The previous speakers referred to choices. I compliment the Minister on her bravery and integrity for playing her part in bringing this economy and this country back to a point where we will balance our budget. There has been much talk from a Fianna Fáil Party that is licking its lips about our children who are the next generation. No one in this country or in this House should be in any doubt that the future of our country and of our children in particular is the motivation of this Government.

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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The Government should just keep its promises.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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No interruptions, please, Deputy Troy.

Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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Fianna Fáil was in government for 14 years. It had the option and the opportunity to make choices but it made none. Not one difficult choice was made and the people are now paying the price. I have no doubt that if Fianna Fáil was still in government, the people of Greece would look over to Ireland and say, "At least we are not as bad as the Fianna Fáil-led Ireland". Fianna Fáil is a bankrupt party, bankrupt of ideas. The one fact that unites Fine Gael and Labour Party backbenchers, that drives us back together and that will drive this Government forward-----

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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Holding on to the reins of power.

Dara Murphy (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)
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-----is the certain knowledge that this country must be protected from Fianna Fáil's incompetence and from the way it has driven the country to this point. We will not be diverted, diluted or discouraged by Fianna Fáil. Its members have the neck to come into this Parliament and speak as if they had no blood on their hands for the state of the country. They are a disgrace. I cannot imagine they can look at themselves in the mirror.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Deputy Buttimer has 18 minutes in his time slot.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I congratulate the Minister on the publication of the Social Welfare Bill, for the provision of 10,000 new places on employment programmes and for the maintenance of core social welfare benefits for those who need them. This Government will spend €22 billion on social protection. It went to Europe to achieve an increase in the expenditure ceiling. The hypocrisy of the Members opposite astonishes me. For 14 years, they bankrupted our country. They led our people a merry dance and they stole the dreams and the hopes of a generation. It once again falls to a Fine Gael-Labour Party Government to rescue the country. They have some audacity-----

Robert Troy (Longford-Westmeath, Fianna Fail)
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I hope ye do a better job than ye did in 1982 to 1987.

Jack Wall (Kildare South, Labour)
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Please address the Chair, Deputy Troy.

Jerry Buttimer (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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-----to speak after what they have done. I hope their callous attitude to the Irish people will never be forgotten. The party opposite fiddled and bankrupted the country. Now, they prey on the fears of vulnerable people in a mockeyah way. Shame on them. This budget is difficult and it will, unfortunately, affect every household and every citizen. None of us on this side of the House wants a budget that has to take €3.1 billion out of the economy and which results in people losing money. However, this nation is borrowing €42 million per day in order to run the country, to fund public services. I remind the Members opposite that we are in an EU-IMF programme. It was the former Government which went to Brussels to get that bailout because we could not access money to run the country. The gentlemen opposite may have forgotten that. I wonder what world the Leader of the Opposition lives in when I hear his complaints on the Order of Business. He was the man who sat in Cabinet and who acquiesced in decisions. He was the man who cut pensions for the old, the blind and the disabled, by €16.50 per week, when he was a member of the Cabinet. Not one Member opposite voted against those cuts. They come in today, tonight and tomorrow, with sham indignation. They threaten to call for a vote through the lobbies to embarrass people. The embarrassment is in their own laps because of what happened on their watch. They failed the Irish people, politically, economically and socially.