David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

Or €75,000. That is a separate issue and I will deal with that in a moment. For people living in poverty, €2 per week is a huge amount of money. In a previous debate today, we had a discussion about the pay and pensions of very senior civil servants and Ministers. I made all those points about difficult times, the hard decisions that had to be made and that we had to find the money somewhere, but I was dismissed. We were calling for pay to be capped at €100,000, but we were dismissed. The same people who dismissed those arguments come into this House, do not accept our amendment to poverty proof this policy on the €100 charge and tell us that we are in difficult times, that tough decisions have to be made, that we are bankrupt and so on. On the one hand, they use that excuse to hammer people who are in poverty, and on the other hand, they do not accept it when it comes to dealing with the lottery sums in pay which many politicians and people at the top of the public service have walked away with. That is why I will continue to table motions and amendments like this which deal with poverty issues.

This is a very serious amendment and although it only deals with the €100 charge, we would rather the Government moved towards poverty proofing all of its policies on health, education, taxes and so on. If we were serious about eradicating poverty, that is what we would do. Do we believe that poverty can be eradicated overnight? No. Do we believe that poverty can be eradicated completely? Maybe not. We can certainly do an awful lot better than what we are doing. What is wrong with poverty proofing policies? I fail to see what is wrong with it.