David Norris (Independent)

I think it more appropriate to extend sympathy to the Minister than to welcome her to the House, although I accept that she has fought a sterling battle in this area. The title of her Department is a misnomer. It has not acted in terms of social protection but in terms of social devastation. I am reminded of the United Nations designation of areas as "safe zones" during the Balkan war. Inside those, so called, safe zones lives were destroyed and people were killed on an extraordinary scale. I am afraid this is what is happening here. I do not blame the Minister personally for this.

The Bill must be seen in the full economic context, but that is where the problem is. Governments all over Europe, including ours, are once again putting the protection and preservation of the system above the welfare of the people, and that is the wrong way around. This will continue to be the system, as I have said many times in the last number of years.

The Minister, in her speech, said, "A core principle of sustainable social protection systems in advanced economies is that citizens receive benefits in proportion to their contributions". What happened to socialism? Is the Minister a member of the Labour Party? I understood the socialist principle was, "from each according to his capacity and to each according to his need". What the Minister said seems to reverse that principle. It is an extraordinary statement for a Labour Party Minister to make, and puts the entire thing in context.

Over many years, I have fought when there have been conflicts around different kinds of entitlements. I remember raising an Adjournment matter in the House on the issue of a very gifted blind student whose blind pension was reduced because he was receiving a university grant while doing a PhD. I thought that was Dickensian in its stinginess, but it is the kind of principle that runs right through this Bill. I sympathise with the Minister. In many ways we are lucky to have her in her position, because she has achieved quite a lot. However, the entire system is completely and utterly corrupt.

Too often, it is easy to lose sight of the human aspect of these issues due to the technical language used when dealing with this area. However, the Minister has the capacity to deal with such issues. Thank God, people such as Mary Ann O'Brien, who can speak from the heart on these issues, have been appointed to the Seanad. She is someone who has been successful in business, even in difficult times. She also understands, through her own tragic experience and through the Jack and Jill Children's Foundation, how these changes impact on families and extends that understanding to the wider community. Barnardos has pointed out that this budget will push many more children into poverty and TASC has stated that any measures that further reduce the living standards of low income groups will not only have an adverse impact on individual households, but that such measures will also reduce people's spending power in the local economy.

We cannot slash, tax and cut our way out of a recession. Every economist knows this, yet we are still doing this, at the behest of the European Union which got us into this mess. We are also repaying the French and German banks. This Bill is the human impact of the appalling mistakes that have been made. One of the people centrally involved in this is now being rewarded with a 50% increase in his salary, through being appointed in Europe against the wishes of many Irish representatives. I would like to pay tribute to that courageous woman, Nessa Childers, for pointing this out.

Demand for the services of Focus Ireland has gone up by 18% this year. What does this tell the Minister? The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has seen a similar increase in demand. The most common presenting issues between 2008 and 2011 have been requests for help with food, fuel, education and housing costs. These are basic requirements. Forget about cherishing all the children of the nation equally; allow them to survive. I found somebody who had lost employment building a tent in my basement. On the issue of access to social welfare, we hear of many cases where bogus excuses are being used locally to deprive people and I am dealing with one such case currently.

I urge the Minister to review the situation with regard to people with disabilities. It has been claimed that the People with Disabilities in Ireland budget was not fully spent, but that is a misunderstanding of the situation. I do not have time to go into detail, but I will send a submission to the Minister with the details. The organisation has done extraordinary work in rectifying injustice. It has a new website, galwaypwdi.ie, the first in Europe. I do not have time to put its document on the record, but it illustrates many cases where the organisation has assisted people.

People are feeling the pinch from these cuts and I look forward to the debate on Committee Stage of this Bill. I hope that debate will not be guillotined, because that is where we can tease out the issues. We are just establishing principles here. I have been fair and have not personally attacked or abused the Minister. However, I urge her, for God's sake, not to introduce the red herring of attacking Sinn Féin over the discrepancy between the North and the South, because we all know bloody well that these budgets are not set in Ireland at all, but in the United Kingdom. The Government is bashing a dead horse when it attacks Sinn Féin and is only doing it for party advantage and I do not like seeing it in this House. Nobody can accuse me of being a supporter of Sinn Féin or of being anything other than independent, but I do not like political point scoring when we are dealing with people who are being driven to the edge of poverty. It is a credit to the Seanad that mild and well-mannered though the questions were that came from that side, they were well targeted and were done respectfully.

I am very glad of what my colleague, the previous speaker, said. What about the self-employed? I have spoken from a socialist point of view, but it is appalling that when people who start and run businesses go bust, they get absolutely nothing, while their employees are protected. Business people who go bust are left stranded and that is not equal citizenship. The Government should strive for equal citizenship in these desperate times. We have an opportunity to do that now, because we have the European Union in a very delicate place with the current negotiations. We are part of the euro, unlike the British, and we can and should squeeze to get out of the promissory notes so that we can look after our own people.