Paudie Coffey (Fine Gael)

I was very saddened to hear the terrible news from Waterford city, where two five year olds were found by a social worker to be scavenging the public bins in the streets. This follows on from Senator McFadden's experience last week, where she told of families on the bread line who cannot feed their children. We need to be concerned at that this is happening around the country.

Even families that are working are on the bread line and find it increasingly difficult to feed their young children. We need to be very much aware of this as parliamentarians and as an Oireachtas. I am not sure whether the recent budget was poverty-proofed because more poverty traps are being created in the measures being implemented by Government. This is the real impact of cuts on those who are most vulnerable.

I believe in enterprise and in people working their way, but when we reach these levels of destitution, we must take into account what we see before us. The initiative as regards cuts in child benefit might have been done better. Funds allocated for child benefit should have been targeted at the most vulnerable. There are people in receipt of child benefit in Ireland who are millionaires, and this is patently unfair. Then we see an example such as this in Waterford city, and it will happen in other towns and villages. It just happened to be discovered yesterday, and I am aware the HSE is investigating. However, it is time we took notice of reality on the ground and measures in the budget need to be examined very closely and poverty-proofed before being implemented.