Maurice Cummins (Fine Gael)

I should treat Senator Butler's comments with the contempt they deserve, but they need to be answered. He said the Fine Gael policies had not been costed or were fairytales. The Fine Gael policies advocated last Friday week were clear, had been costed and were about choices as to whether we hit the most vulnerable in the community or else taxed the wealthy. We advocated abolishing the cap on PRSI payments, not just for public sector workers but also for private sector workers who got off scot-free also. That is how we would have paid for it. I want Senator Butler to know this. If the Minister's own targets in regard to fraud were met, there would not have been a need to attack carers, those who cannot see and other people with disabilities. That is where we could have got the money. It is about choices such as choices as to whether we should hit the poor or tax the rich. Fianna Fáil has never been good at this because the policies it has advocated are like Wanderly Wagon economics. The people are fed up with that at this stage. Opinion polls will show that Fianna Fáil has never been as low because it is not listening to the people.

Senator Buttimer was right. The budget should have been about people but it was not. It was just a blunt instrument to satisfy the financial markets and that was it. Poor people were hit the worst, as well as public sector workers earning less than €30,000. They are the ones who are suffering, but the Government does not give a damn about them. It was a case of "Hit the poor people; let the rich be." The Government had choices; it made its choices and will have to live with them.

Senator Donohoe has made the good point that some have to pay an excessive amount for crèches which is supplemented by their child benefit payments. A cut of €16 a month is very severe for those who have a couple of children in a crèche. Admittedly, there are those who save their child benefit. I heard a person boasting about having €18,000 in his bank account. However, there are others who use their child benefit payments to put bread on the table and feed their children. There are many mean men who do not hand up a lot of money to the household and it is left to women to pay from their child benefit payments to put bread on the table.

The Government had choices. It could have done what we suggested. It could have decided to tax child benefit if it had wanted to, but it did not. It made the decision to bluntly and universally cut it. That was its choice. A Senator referred yesterday to the cutting of a shilling from the old age pension in the 1920s and another referred to taxing children's shoes, which never happened. What will they say in 80 years' time when they see that one of the richest countries in the world squandered the money it had available and preferred to finance bankers and bondholders and then take the money from people in receipt of child benefit? That is the legacy of the Government. That is what the people will think of at the next general election.