Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I could do without Senator Norris's assistance.

I was elected to this House in 1981 and until 1999 served as an Independent Member. I always refrained from claiming moral superiority. I thought being independent was a valid political role and I believe being a party politician is also a valid role. Neither is in a position to claim moral superiority over another. The only difference between Independent Members and party politicians are the issues on which people compromise and the manner in which the compromise is expressed. The suggestion, from one of most eloquent points scorers the Oireachtas has seen in the past 20 years, that attacking the Government in blunt terms is an inferior form of politics called party political point scoring is more than a little ironic. The significance of the widows issue lies first in the capacity to impose extraordinary hardship on a small group of people, which is what the decision will do. Widows to whom I have spoken foresee a future in which the income for which they planned will change spectacularly for the worse.

I am quite certain the Fianna Fáil party with which I grew up would have had the political antennae and the humanity to resist such a move. I was brought up in a Fianna Fáil household where the biggest boasts were the putting together of a basic social welfare safety net and the construction of public housing. Both these aims were denounced in academic papers in the 1930s as the manifestations of Bolshevism. One would not accuse Fianna Fáil today of the slightest leaning towards Bolshevism. Perhaps the other "ism" dominant in the 1930s shows up occasionally, but Bolshevism is long gone from the influences on Fianna Fáil.

It is a tragedy to see what was the great radical party in this country taken over by the ideology of a party which has only eight Dáil seats, but 95% influence on the Government. This is all about the politics of envy by the well-off. Many people wax eloquent on the politics of envy, but few people in our society are more envious than the very well-off. I do not mean those on significant salaries, but those who fly in and out of the country on private jets, staying away long enough to avoid paying tax in Ireland while remaining in the country long enough to claim credit for their charitable activities. These are people whose entire charitable activities in a year raise only a fraction of the tax they avoid by remaining outside the country. Their politics of envy is a resentment of those whom they believe are doing too well without their personal level of achievement. The issue before us involves one aspect of the politics of envy, concerning a group seen to be slightly better off than the rest of the poor. The intention is to equalise down, and make them all the same, though I do not know in what interest.

The Minister has frequently said the Department of Finance required certain cuts. One of my Labour Party colleagues spent a good deal of the period from 1992 to 1997 in Government. He said that one of the most awesome performances during his period in Government with Fianna Fáil was the capacity of the then Fianna Fáil Minister for Social Welfare to defend his patch against the Department of Finance. He never allowed the Department to dictate to him that sums of money should be taken from social welfare. That same former Minister is reported in The Irish Times today as being one of the most eloquent critics at yesterday's Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting of this particular nasty little amendment to the social welfare code, because he knew how to defend his patch.

A collection of cuts, each of which affected only a small number of people, was cynically assembled, on the assumption that because only small groups were involved, none would have political clout. It is an eloquent commentary on the remoteness of Fianna Fáil from public opinion that it did not understand how an assault on widows would resonate with all decent people. This is not about 2,000 people, but about all those who have seen the struggles of people, women mostly, but also men in recent years, to support their families and themselves with some pride and dignity. There was a sudden, deliberate decision to target a group within that group as a means of saving money on the assumption that a couple of thousand people would not be able to make a fuss.

That is why Senator Norris is so wrong in appealing to the goodwill on the other side of the Chamber. As these calculated cuts show, the Members over there only understand where the votes are, and how things can be done without affecting their voter base. That is why this particular issue is causing them so much discomfort. It is now reverberating through the community as an assault on people in a situation we all believe is sufficiently difficult. Living on one's own, supporting a family, struggling after one has lost one's partner in life, is difficult enough without a public statement that one is an anomaly. Whether intended or not, to say to people who have experienced one of the greatest tragedies in life through losing a partner when one is still at a working age, and often still supporting children, as a statement of support, that the situation is an anomaly is effectively to tell these people that they are an anomaly.

These people are not anomalies. They are people who struggle on, the sort of heroes who make a decent society worthwhile, people whom the Progressive Democrats, which owns Fianna Fáil, would describe in its moments of eloquence as the coping class. I do not know any people who have been better described. Widows and widowers who struggle on, who work and support a family, are by definition the coping class. They are also the poor class, and because there were only 2,000 of them, it was deemed possible to single them out for this treatment.

I do not believe for a moment the Minister will change her mind today. The Government has made a profound political miscalculation. Either it will change its mind, or the Government will be changed, and if the public decides to change its mind it will do so because it has seen the decision regarding widows as symptomatic of the fact that the Government has moved away from the priorities and considerations of ordinary Irish people, and is now totally taken over by those of the sort of class that has infected Fianna Fáil in the last ten years.