Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)

The Bill before us is a tax on the poor, a charter for young people to emigrate and lacks fairness, imposing harsh measures on those who need our support.

Looking at a court case yesterday, I ask where are the Government's and the banks' pledges to protect mortgage holders. A couple from Waterford with a special needs son lost their home, even after promising to pay €800 per month. These two people worked in Waterford Glass, both of them lost their jobs and they find they will be on the side of the road within a couple of months. When we were discussing NAMA, these are the people this Government and the banks said they would protect. This Government has let people like that down while protecting the bankers, the bond holders and those who supported them down the years. That is wrong.

I listened to Senator Boyle saying that if we continued down the road we were going, the country faced a bleak future. I agree with him, but who led us down this road to ruin? Was it the blind person, who is having €8.80 per week taken from him? Was it carers? Was it young graduates? No, it was none of those. It was this Government and, in particular, its predecessors that imposed policies that resulted in these attacks on the most vulnerable in our community in this Bill.

I have listened to the Government say there was no alternative. That is simply not true. There is a better way. There is an alternative. Fine Gael, in its budget proposals specifically excluded those who could not work - children, pensioners, carers, the disabled and the blind. The best way to address the spiralling social welfare bill is not to take money from the vulnerable but to get people back to work. The Government's failure to tackle unemployment and put in place a job strategy penalises the most vulnerable, as we see in the Bill before us.

To exclude the blind, carers and those on various disability and invalidity payments from the 4% cut would reduce the savings to the Exchequer by €108 million. I suggest that if the Government tackled social welfare fraud, it would secure well in excess of €108 million and save the vulnerable who are being attacked in the Social Welfare and Pensions (No. 2) Bill.

Why has the Government failed in its target for fraud detection and prevention? Last year the target was €616 million and the Government failed to reach it. As we saw on "Prime Time", social welfare fraud is rife throughout the length and breadth of the country. Had the Government met its own target, it would have saved €123 million, more than enough to protect the payments to the most vulnerable, carers, people with disabilities and the visually impaired.

This Government goes soft on those who robbed the State while hitting carers, the disabled, the blind and jobseekers. According to the Carers Association, Ireland's 161,000 family carers provide more than 3.7 million hours of unpaid care each week, contributing more than €2.5 billion to the economy each year. There are 40,883 family carers providing full-time care, more than the 39,000 nurses in the HSE. They contributed €1.6 billion to the economy. The average full-time carer saves the State more than €40,000 each per year, and they face a bleak winter and 2010 with the cuts implemented by this Government in this Bill. Carers are the only social welfare recipients who must work for their payment by providing full-time care in the home to the elderly, the sick and the disabled. This Government is proposing to cut their weekly wage by €8.80 per week. It is a shame on this Government to introduce such reductions in payments. Over recent years people have been shouting in this House that Fine Gael - it was in fact Cumann na nGaedheal back in the 1920s - took one shilling off old-age pensioners. We see what this Government is taking from the blind and carers-----