Shane Ross (Independent)

I apologise to the Cathaoirleach. The extraordinary incongruity of a director of FÁS, the State agency which is meant to promote the interests of the unemployed and those on social welfare, wearing his IBEC hat and suggesting on air that people on social welfare should have their payments cut is completely unacceptable. Directors of FÁS get paid €14,000 per year for a part-time job and for doing very little. Their only achievement appears to be that they presided over a spendthrift waste of money over many years. It is quite unacceptable that the directors of a State agency should demand that those who they are meant to look after take cuts in this budget.

It would be appropriate if the Deputy Leader asked that this director of FÁS, who I will not name again, resigned as a director of FÁS and just wore his IBEC hat. It is totally unacceptable behaviour. I do not know from where the call for social welfare to be cut came. All manner of other cuts have been suggested in this House which can be made. These sort of antics where people can wear a FÁS hat one day and an IBEC one another day is completely and utterly hypocritical.

It is time Members of this House recognised that IBEC speaks for the big banks, as Senator O'Toole said, which are giving it most of its funding. These are not what they call "representatives of enterprise" but quite the opposite. The big funders of IBEC are the banks, AIB and Bank of Ireland, and the semi-State monopolies. It is time Members of this House recognised that and stopped paying tribute to at least one of the social partners.