Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael)

I appreciate that Members on the Government side are upset about the budget. I do not blame them for that. I understand where they are coming from. The first e-mail was from someone who complained that everything for children, including their activities, is expensive. They pointed out that children do not stop growing overnight and assured me that they need all the money they can get to buy clothes. The second e-mail argued that it was a disgrace that child benefit was being cut. The person in question used €120 from last month's child benefit to buy shoes with special insoles for their two boys. The third e-mail I received was from a person who used their child benefit to pay for groceries because they could not afford to live otherwise. The fourth e-mail was from a person who used their child benefit to pay for extra grinds and tuition for their son who needed extra help.

Fianna Fáil and its cohorts in government have lost sight of the fact that we are dealing with the lives of people like the four individuals who sent me those e-mails. It is easy to quote the Constitution and to speak about cherishing all the children of the nation equally, but society would be of no value today without the vision and bravery of the great men and women of 1916. All we have today is the soft touch. I remind Senator Butler, who mentioned that John Bruton tried to tax children's shoes in one of his budgets, that child benefit was not cut at that time.