Liam Twomey (Fine Gael)

When I heard Senator O'Malley lecturing Senator Buttimer on budgets, the words, "kettle", "pot" and "black" came to mind. Unfortunately, we are in the middle of one hell of a budget buster, the worst ever seen in the State's history. This has been a disastrous budget for the people. There is a need for more honesty from the Government as to what exactly will happen in the coming months. When the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Mary Hanafin, delivered her original social welfare budget in October, she could not have expected the massive and rapid increase in unemployment. It must throw the figures worked out for the budget. Will she inform us what considerations have been given to further possible large increases in the unemployment rate for this and future budgets?

How much groundwork has been prepared by the Minister with the Department of Education and Science with the early school places scheme? Will there be a smooth transition between its introduction and the phasing out of the current child care supplement? It is important people are informed exactly what these changes will entail.

The take-home pay for every single family has been slashed by this new budget. If there are to be changes to child benefit, we need to know now what they will be. Families are trying to work out how much money they have now and how much they will have in six or 12 months so they can plan their budgets. There is no point telling them child benefit might be means tested or changed completely. Families deserve to know what the Government intends in this regard because it is a major issue.

A comment was made during the budget debate that some families would only suffer a €7 change in their weekly income following the budget. The early child supplement is a significant part of the family income where there are three or four young children in a family. These are the same households that are being hit with negative equity and the biggest mortgages because they are the young who got married recently. They will also suffer the most from the changes being made to child benefit.

The Minister must be honest with these families and tell them what is coming down the tracks. There is no point hitting them over the head with a hammer next November. The Government must give the people some idea what is happening due to the changes in the economy, some of which have been radical and have had a disproportionate psychological and financial effect on individuals.

The Minister has given her reasons as to why people on social welfare will not get the Christmas bonus and the Minister's colleagues in Fianna Fáil and the Green Party are adamant they will not get it. There is a need to revisit this measure, however. Christmas is an important time of the year for families and to play Scrooge with them in these difficult times is wrong. The Government should not be so harsh on the most vulnerable in society with this sort of sledgehammer approach to making savings, which results from the dire financial circumstances the Government finds itself in.

I was disappointed Ministers did not feel the need to take on much pain in the budget but they expect the rest of the people to suffer. As someone who still does a certain amount of general practice work, I find that people are having difficulty getting their claims processed, not just social welfare claims but also with regard to medical cards and a number of other services for which they must apply. There has been no reduction in the number of civil servants working for Ministers, however, and many of the civil servants working for the Minister, Deputy Hanafin, and for other Ministers are literally doing constituency work.

Across all Departments, the Government should seek to put staff into those sectors of Government where backlogs are building up at a tremendous rate. It is amazing how long people must wait to get medical cards, which is causing serious hardship for families. I do not see a sense of urgency from any of the Departments that they must do something to transfer staff from one Department to another. There are many Departments where staff are under-utilised because of the changes in our economy. There is not the sort of radical approach and response to needs that would be the case in a normal business.

With regard to changes to the Pensions Act, there is a sense - perhaps I am wrong in this - that the Minister must do this, that she is obliged under EU legislation to make some of these changes to protect private pension funds and that she is left with no recourse but to move in the direction in which she is moving. It is important that the Minister would again make her plans for the scheme as clear as possible so we can assess its full cost and decide whether it would be the most beneficial approach for everybody involved.

The Minister has probably dealt with many of these issues during the debate on the Bill in the Lower House. What we are looking for here, more than anything else, is clarity. We want to see exactly what the Minister is doing and to know she has a plan for the future and that, if the situation gets worse, she will explain her plan for dealing with that eventuality. Most of all, we want the Minister to let the people know what she is considering so they can make changes in their own lives. People out there are reeling at present because of the massive financial hits they are taking and are about to take. There needs to be honesty and straightforwardness when dealing with the people of Ireland.