Nicky McFadden (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister and thank him for his speech. He is probably the most in touch Minister with responsibility for social welfare there has been. It is regrettable he has not been in his position long enough to put in place the changes he wishes, as he stated in his speech. Fianna Fáil has been in Government for the past 12, however, years and successive Ministers for social welfare have done nothing to support people, especially those with disabilities.

This budget and the Social Welfare Bill, in particular, will bring families who have been seriously affected and devastated during the economic downturn into further deprivation and poverty. Children, unemployed people, the disabled and carers will feel the brunt of the €873 million cuts to the social welfare budget, which is extremely unfair. I and my party are completely opposed to it. According to Barnardos, between 2008 and 2009 the number of children living in poverty increased by 26,684 to 91,954. These children did nothing to deserve this. According to our Constitution we must cherish all children. They are the future of the country and yet these little ones will feel the pain of the budget. This Social Welfare Bill and the resulting cuts in welfare payments will hurt children who live in poverty. Barnardos stated this will mean that many of them will go without one full meal every week. I have raised this matter in the House. Once again the vulnerable of our society are hurt the most. This Bill will do nothing to protect them and will only make their situation worse.

I am strongly against this Bill because, among other matters, it cuts payments to the most vulnerable - children, the disabled, widows and widowers and carers. Cutting €10 a month from the children's benefit is an incoherent and confused approach to reducing costs. In 2010, the Government applied a flat rate cut to child benefit and increased the qualified child increase and the child component of family income supplement to counteract the impact on low income families and those on welfare. This year, no such increase has occurred which means low income families are hit disproportionately harder than high income families. Introducing new child income support would have counteracted any disproportionate hardship that will now affect low income families. Such a new support would mean that child income supports such as child benefit, family income supplement, qualified child increase and the back to school clothing and footwear allowance would be amalgamated so that while everyone would continue to get a payment, low income families and families on social welfare would be targeted much more effectively. This structural change would result not only in savings for the Government but would also ensure struggling families would not be made more vulnerable.

This budget, which targets low income families for areas of savings, will increase these families' reliance on moneylenders, something that is already evident. Merely to get through the month people will have to depend on moneylenders. The measures will ensure more children will go hungry, wait longer for crucial treatment for illnesses that demand early intervention and leave school early. More young people will become involved in drugs, according to Barnardos. It is a breakdown of our society.

With falling wages there needed to be a reduction of €8 a week in social welfare for those with the ability to work. I agree with the Minister there must be activation and encouragement for people to work. Cutting €8 a week from the welfare payments of society's most vulnerable, namely, widows, carers, the blind and the disabled, is unnecessary, however. The exclusion of these groups from the cuts would have cost the State €96 million. Fine Gael's proposal to overhaul the welfare system completely by establishing a single payments and entitlements service from the more than 20 Government bodies that currently administer entitlements would make massive savings in administration, reduce fraud and rule out mistakes.

Under this Bill €8 a week will be cut from the incomes of widows, carers, the blind and the disabled. Cutting this amount from these vulnerable groups makes no economic sense. Supporting carers should be a major concern for the Government but the Minister's Government has decided to cut their payments and abandon them. Carers are the only welfare recipients who work for their money. In the long run they save the State money. Ireland's 160,917 family carers provide 3.7 million hours of care each week, saving the State the sum of €2.5 billion each year according to the National Carers Association. They work for their money and save the State money, so the Government should support rather than punish them. If carers are not supported, they will experience physical, financial and emotional hardship and eventually will burn out. The result of this is that the cared-for person will end up in expensive hospital or nursing home care and the carer's health will deteriorate. I know this from first-hand experience, as I am sure does the Minister from meeting carers in his clinics. This benefits nobody. Fianna Fáil has once again shown zero support for carers and abandoned them as it did in the budgets for 2009 and 2010. We have witnessed the abandonment of the national carers strategy and carers' payments have again been reduced. Now carers are faced with a reduction of €8 per week and a change in the home carer tax.

This budget will have a serious impact on the disabled, who must face a cut of €8 a week in their welfare payments. This is on top of a cut of €8.30 last year and results in a cut of €16.30 per week in just two years. The Minister stated he would like long-term reform in regard to payments for people with disabilities. If he is cutting their payments again, it is not very reforming. This shows Fianna Fáil's lack of commitment to supporting society's most vulnerable. It has been shown many times that there are substantial extra costs associated with having a disability, including the costs of transport, heat, household adaptations and supports. Fianna Fáil is currently targeting the vulnerable for cuts, which I seriously oppose.

Fine Gael's proposed budget made a commitment to protect the rate paid to people with disabilities. The Minister of State responsible for services for the disabled, Deputy John Moloney, published draft policy proposals recommending a shift from existing disability service models towards a system of individual support and individualised budgeting. The Minister referred to this in his speech. This system would result in greater choice and control for people with disabilities, would help them with the cost of living and would result in savings at the same time. Fine Gael's former spokesperson on disability, Deputy David Stanton, has been calling on the Government to implement this change for years but, sadly, nothing has happened. This is a primary example of where the Government could reform and improve public services while saving money. It could have done this rather than making cuts to badly needed payments for people with disabilities.

Low-income and middle-income families are the ones who will be affected most by this Bill. These families are the ones who will bear the brunt of this seriously unfair budget. In addition to facing cuts to social welfare payments, families are faced with the prospect of massive increases in income tax. Fine Gael would not have increased income taxes for 2011. Instead, it would have saved €250 million through public service payroll reductions and reformed the tax system in other ways that generate extra revenue but that do not damage incentives to work.

One major element missing from this Bill is the Government's plan and intention to tackle social welfare fraud. Fraudulent claims cost the State between €2.2 billion and €3 billion per year according to a recent "Prime Time Investigates" programme. The programme estimated that one in every ten social welfare payments could be fraudulent.