Derek McDowell (Labour)

I agree, but that may save time later. It is inevitable that there will be some drift on the first section of the Finance Bill. With respect, it was the Minister who helped us along that road.

I do now want to go over old history, but I will quickly refer to SSIAs. It goes without saying that if one cannot afford €256 per month, one cannot take full advantage of the scheme. Those who could not afford that kind of money did not benefit from it and, by definition, they are from the less well off sections of the community. My party made that criticism and I stand over it.

It is not known, and there is no way of discovering, the extent to which these were simply displaced savings from somewhere else. My suspicion – it is no more than that because there is only anecdotal evidence – is that a lot of money was shifted by people from less productive savings schemes into SSIAs. People cannot be blamed for that and would have been daft not to do it. From their point of view, it is a perfectly attractive scheme and one which, I hope, many people will benefit from. I note that well over 1 million people hold these accounts.

That does not mean it made sense for the Exchequer to follow this course. The stated aim of SSIAs is to encourage people to save. I am not convinced that more people have been encouraged to save more money to a degree that would justify the cost of over €500 million per year, an extraordinary amount of money and one that would do a lot to keep open many of the hospital beds that will close in the near future.