John Paul Phelan (Fine Gael)

I congratulate Senator Ó Brolcháin. I was not in the Chamber for the Order of Business so I missed his introduction to the House. I wish him well.

I will continue on from where Senator Cummins concluded his remarks. He spoke about the legacy of Fianna Fáil and the Green Party and their friends in Government. It is a shameful indictment of what has happened in this country in the past 12 years. We have gone through a period of unprecedented economic success and for the first time a generation of people had the money and the leaders of the country had the money to rectify so many of our social difficulties and ensure a situation like what has arisen would not happen, but those opportunities were not availed of. We are now dealing with the most savage social welfare Bill I have seen in my seven years in the House. It is all the more galling because in last year's budget the Government, despite obvious indications from the economy that things were under severe pressure, to say the least, decided to increase social welfare payments by 2.5%. Numerous commentators and people on this side of the House warned this would be unsustainable. Despite this, 12 months later, having increased payments last year, those moneys and more besides have been hauled back in the Minister's Budget Statement last week and in this social welfare Bill.

I wish to deal with some aspects of the proposals in the Bill. I had not planned on saying much until I heard a previous speaker on the Government side say this was a visionary Bill. It does not say much for his vision if he thinks this is a visionary piece of work.

Senator Twomey referred to the cutbacks in the dental scheme. We are still led to believe that dental check-ups will be allowed as under the existing scheme but the funding has been slashed dramatically. Tooth extractions and fillings and dentures will no longer be covered under the scheme. What is the point of people paying PRSI contributions if they cannot get that coverage? Surely that is what PRSI is about. It is very short-sighted because whatever will be saved in the short term could cost a lot more in the long term.

It is very ironic that the Government which gave out about a system based on universality decided on budget day to cut child benefit across the board. I recently spoke to two women, one of whom is from a high income family. She did not want the child benefit to be touched because she intended giving it as a lump sum to little Johnny when he reaches 18. The other woman is from a very modest background and has four children. I know that the child benefit payments she receives goes to putting clothes on the backs of her children and food on the table. For the Government to decry a system based on universality and then use a universal axe to cut it right across the board does not make any sense and is completely unfair. If the Government had any guts it would have introduced a reduction in child benefit based on the income of those who receive the benefit, but it does not have any guts.

Senator Cummins made a strong argument for carers. I am involved with carers because my mother has been a carer for most of her life. A total of nearly €10 a week of a reduction in the carer's allowance is completely unacceptable considering the work they do to keep their loved ones in their family homes, thus saving the State millions week in, week out. They provide the love and care which the people would not get if they were in an institution and yet the Government sees fit to cut nearly €10 a week from the allowance. This is completely unacceptable. 8 o'clock

I refer to the cut in the jobseeker's allowance for those under 23. There is some merit in the argument that young people under 23 are often living at home and may not need the same level of payment to meet their expenses. However, there is a clear counter-argument which is that this is a direct indication to young people under 23 who are out of work to hop on the next flight or boat and get out of the country. That has happened far too much throughout Irish history; extensive numbers left the country as recently as the 1980s. It is disgusting that a Government would engage in such an obvious attack on young people. It has virtually told them to leave the country. There are no jobs for young people on leaving school or college. That is not their fault but the result of squandering on the part of the former Taoiseach, Deputy Bertie Ahern, in particular, and his then Minister for Finance, Deputy Cowen, now Taoiseach, when they knew and were warned left, right and centre that the property bubble could not be sustained but did nothing about it. Young people under 23 years of age will suffer; effectively, they are being told to leave the country, which is not acceptable.

I may be misquoting what Senator Norris said the other night but I understood him to say he was happy that an additional €56 million would be allocated to FÁS for training schemes. In the light of what we discovered about FÁS, we should not be investing more money in such schemes. During a recent debate on a Bill that dealt with reforming the board of FÁS I said we should not reform the board but get rid of it. We should break it up into its constituent parts. Local authorities should run community employment schemes; that is where they belong. Apprenticeships and other educational initiatives, at which FÁS is very good, should be administered by another organisation, not the discredited body FÁS has become. I say this, having expressed several times my regard for the work FÁS employees have done throughout the country. However, they were badly led by senior management, some members of which are still in office. Throwing another €56 million at that organisation after what has gone before is a step in the wrong direction.

To describe the Bill as a visionary document beggars belief and flies in the face of the reality which the many people who depend on social welfare will face during the coming weeks and months. It is a shocking indictment of us in post-Celtic tiger Ireland that we are discussing attacking the most vulnerable in society and taking a few bob off them when there has been such wanton waste by the Government during the past 12 years.