Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

To answer Senator Norris, I accept that people with disabilities have particular needs; there is no doubt about this. In trying to frame savings in the social welfare budget, once we decided those aged over 66 years and children in receipt of social welfare payments would be protected, we were left with a very large group under the age of 66 years. It would be very difficult to begin distinguishing within that group. Carers play a very special role, but how does one exclude carers and not exclude people with disabilities? How does one exclude people on disability benefit and not exclude those in receipt of an invalidity payment? How does one exclude all of those and tell a struggling lone parent that a carer in receipt of the slightly larger payment of €212 per week as opposed to €196 per week will not face cuts but that he or she will? It was a very delicate balancing act.

Fine Gael in its proposals suggested cutting lone parent, widows' and unemployment payments. I was not willing to distinguish between various groups.