Martin Mansergh (Fianna Fail)

It shows what enormous improvements were made. As for social welfare spending as a percentage of GDP, one must not lose sight of the fact that unemployment has dropped from approximately 8% to 4.5% and that will naturally reduce social welfare spending. The 1997 budget was a pre-election budget which included a package of £525 million, again it is more in euro. This year we have spending of more than €1.5 billion.

I want to get away from partisan politics. I congratulate the Minister on his three years in the Department of Social and Family Affairs. I believe I am correct in stating that in each of those years the social welfare package was larger than the income tax package. According to speculation he may not have chosen this Department. However, he has made a tremendous impact, not only in the increases in social welfare rates but also in the reform of schemes. I congratulate him on his ministerial tenure of office during the past three years.

Great improvements were made in the basic rates and the previous two budgets were warmly welcomed by the Conference of Religious of Ireland which includes leading experts on poverty. It sought the gear shift on lowest payments. The Ministers for Finance and Social and Family Affairs no longer bother to give percentage increases because they are so much larger than the rate of inflation. Inflation is no longer as closely shadowed as was the case in the past.

Undoubtedly we used our national wealth to substantially increase payments to the less well-off in society. While accepting a great deal more needs to be done, we can be proud of how much has been achieved, particularly getting through the €200 barrier for the pension payment and increasing the jobseeker's benefit to €180.

Progressive social reform is signalled to be carried out over a three-year period. I was going to use the phrase "individualisation of social welfare" which does not have the same pejorative meaning in a social welfare context and nobody contests it. People will receive pensions in their own right. I congratulate the Minister on signalling that.

There has been a ten-year moratorium on child dependant allowance which, if I recall correctly, dates from an interdepartmental report produced in 1996 or 1997 when Proinsias de Rossa was Minister for Social Welfare. I am not criticising him because at the time, it was the correct conclusion to take. There was a problem concerning the tax wedge being a disincentive for people to take up employment. The Minister is correct in saying that we have now moved far beyond that stage. It is right to have something targeted and focused at people in this category. Very few things are necessarily devised for all time. They must be adjusted and adapted as one goes along.

It is important that the fuel scheme be increased, particularly in light of the increases in fuel prices, although they are possibly a bit lower than was originally announced. Another particularly enlightened measure, which was started last year, is the income disregard for those on the old age non-contributory pension. One would certainly hear complaints from older people receiving this basic pension that income disregards applied to everyone else. In particular, teenagers, be they at school or college, were entitled to go out and earn and increase their income. The only people who were not allowed to do so were old people on the old age non-contributory pension. Clearly, the experiment undertaken last year of allowing a disregard of €100 in income earnings was successful and the Minister has now doubled that to €200.