Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House. She moved from one active Department to another. Perhaps it is the place to be, given that is where all the action is with such a large welfare budget. My overarching position is I do not favour a welfare state but social justice is important and that is why I am a member of Fine Gael and why I live and work under this mantle. I am a member of the party because, on the one hand, we promote enterprise and entrepreneurship and, on the other, we recognise some people will always be vulnerable and needy and they will need the support of the State. The challenge the Minister faces is how to meet the massive social welfare bill, given 420,000 people are out of work, some of whom will always depend on welfare payments. This will always be a massive drain on resources unless entrepreneurship and job creation are promoted, and that is my criticism of the budget. The negative cost of social welfare has not been offset by a stimulus package to get people back to work.

Fine Gael accepted cutbacks amounting to €4 billion were needed but we presented a costed alternative to achieve these savings without affecting the low paid, for example, those earning less than €30,000, carers, the blind and the disabled. I wonder whether the cessation of the free glasses scheme for older and retired persons was thought out because it places people at increased risk of car accidents and falls. A statement I received on this says, "Almost every person over 50 years of age needs visual assistance due to the ageing process and other factors". While I am not over 50, I have had to invest in glasses and I am reluctant to wear them because it is such a life-changing experience, even though I just need them for reading. The Minister sports hers very well.

Recently, I dealt with a couple on social welfare with a young baby. The man had recently lost his job. The baby is now three years old but was born so prematurely that her eyesight was affected and she needs special lenses. Prior to the budget, and after six months of toing and froing with the Department of Social and Family Affairs and the HSE, I was delighted to have got the family approved for those lenses. The subsidy for the lenses was €375, and that was for a family on welfare who could not afford them but the little child could not be independent without them. Older people are equally vulnerable and the Minister should consider this.

I have a number of questions on the social welfare system. Perhaps we do not understand it properly and I seek an answer from the Minister. I and a number of others have established a job creation initiative in Oranmore and a number of great young people with entrepreneurial spirit are coming to us with business ideas. We have all of the expertise to help them get started in business with a panel of free knowledge. We have IT people to help them set up websites, marketing people, business planners and coaches, and all of these people are giving voluntarily.

Recently a young girl in her late twenties or early thirties had the idea of establishing a designer swap-shop in Galway. This is a great idea as we do not already have one. All of the expertise was available to advise her and we know there is an interest in the field. However, the girl has only been on welfare since she lost her job in August. If she begins to establish this business and registers a business name she will lose her entitlement to welfare. She explained to me that if she waits until next August, when she has been in receipt of welfare for a year, she will obtain another support. Will the Minister explain this to me? The last thing we need is to kill the entrepreneurial spirit. This girl wants to get off welfare but needs the crutch until she gets established, even for six to eight months. She has €5,000 in savings and is prepared to put it into rent, insurance and other costs. This type of anomaly puzzles me and it is not a good one to have in the system. It is proving to be a disincentive to business which will pay the taxes to fund the services we need.

I am also puzzled by the level of fairness and equity in our society. The Government is entrusted with responsibility to run the country. All taxes go to the Exchequer. The Government made a decision to support Anglo Irish Bank. All of the soundings suggest that it will seek another €4 billion to €6 billion. I do not know whether the Minister read the report in the health supplement of The Irish Times today about a woman who for years has been minding her mother, who has dementia. She spoke about what the prisoners in Mountjoy cannot do and the freedom they do not have. She stated that as a carer she is like a prisoner, as is her mother to dementia.

The real reason people care for others in their own home is love. Her carer's allowance has been cut by €8.50 a week. According to the Carers Association, Ireland has 161,000 family carers providing more than 3.7 million hours of unpaid care each week, contributing more than €2.5 billion to the economy each year. Seriously, what would the State do if every family decided to hell with it, let the State mind all of these people? The 40,883 family carers providing full-time care amount to more than the 39,000 nurses employed by the HSE. They contribute €1.6 billion to the economy. This means the average full-time carer in Ireland saves the State more than €40,000 each year. However, they have to face a bleak winter and 2010 due to the cut of €430 per annum.

I remember meeting a mother approximately six months ago whose child had become disabled. She had to give up her job to keep that child, who was 13 years of age, in a mainstream classroom at school. The amount of care he needed was huge. I remember her stating that she would shoot somebody if her carer's allowance was taken from her. It struck me forcibly. It showed the extent to which she needed to be recognised and how much she needed the allowance having given up her job to care for her young son.

I am genuinely puzzled and would love if the Minister addressed in her summing up why Anglo Irish Bank, a toxic good-for-nothing bank, is not being allowed to wind down. Having said that, I hear that it will be wound down. The Government will hurt the blind, carers, the disabled and the low paid - although I know we are not discussing them today - to save Anglo Irish Bank. I do not know how the Minister can justify this.

The PRSI dental scheme is a preventative medicine scheme which helps 2 million workers on the appropriate levels of PRSI. I worked in health promotion for a number of years and I do not know why this is being done. One check-up will be kept but wiping out the scheme apart from that check-up will build up problems for the future in dental hygiene and dental health, such as oral cancers. Eventually, the State will have to deal with those problems. One could state the problems are being built up like plaque itself. Good regular dental practice prevents major problems in the future. The scheme benefitted 2 million workers and a combination of increasing unemployment and cuts to the lower paid will drive many of these to medical cards anyway at a cost to the State in the long run.