Fidelma Healy Eames (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister to the House and wish her success in her key national brief. I also welcome the advancement of the Bill in the Seanad. As the new Seanad spokesperson on social protection for Fine Gael, I have followed the debate on the passage of the legislation through the Dáil and I have been impressed by the Minister's cogent and comprehensive rationale on each of the proposed changes.

I find the area of social protection complex. We are constantly challenged by working out what is fair and reasonable in terms of providing for fellow citizens who have a valid and legitimate requirement while avoiding the creation of welfare dependency. We must remember we are talking about the largest departmental budget in the country, more than €20 billion. Given that the intake is approximately €32 billion in income, this is a key Department and every Bill needs to be watched carefully. No brief has such a deep impact on the lives of young people, families, the sick and those of advanced years who require a helping hand - a hand up rather than a hand out, as the Minister outlined, in order to strike a dignified standard of living and ensure people are poverty-proofed. In that sense, the social protection system fulfils a social contract between the individual and the State. I wish to return to the concept of a social contract during my contribution.

In the context of the administration of Government and public services, social protection is inextricably linked to other Departments such as Education and Skills, Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, the Environment, Community and Local Government and Finance. Social protection is a bridge at one level between education and work and sometimes it is a bridge to education and work. I find social welfare complex, married with the eternal dilemma of trying to be fair. Each case tells its own story. I am reminded of the string of welfare problems that visit my constituency office on a weekly basis. I met no one who was happy on social welfare. Some were in receipt of social welfare through no fault of their own due to sudden job losses and rightly saw social welfare as a temporary measure to keep the wolf from the door while they sourced something better in terms of education or work, but others have grown hugely reliant on social welfare and live in fear of any cut. They made inquiries about further entitlements such was their mindset of dependency. We have lost the battle with those people. The mindset is wrong and needs to be tweaked. Every citizen must be asked for a contribution. It need not be a monetary one but it could be in work, civic duty or a requirement to up-skill or re-enter training.

Before considering the provisions of the Bill we must not forget the context from which the Bill has emerged. To a large extent it can be attributed to the mismanagement and negligence of the previous Government. We are discussing the Bill today in some part due to the requirement of outside entities such as the ECB and the IMF. I fundamentally disagree with what Senator Mooney said, that we should not be hung up on the bank debt. Fianna Fáil should be hung up on the bank debt. Why is the IMF in this country? The ridiculous decisions made by the previous Government on private bank debt literally made that private bank debt our sovereign debt. It is completely unforgivable. We are going to take up to 100 years to get out of the situation that Fianna Fáil has put upon us in terms of bank debt.