Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail)

——and there was huge electoral pressure as to why we were not spending enough. It was claimed we were spending too little because we were greedy. Fr. Seán Healy criticised us even after he visited my colleagues in County Cork, claiming that we were not spending enough. However, according to our learned colleague, Senator Barrett, had we saved double what we actually saved in the national pension fund over the years of the boom, we probably would not find ourselves in as much difficulty. Even the Labour Party criticised the setting up of the National Pension Reserve Fund in the first place.

This thing is more complicated than it just being a result of Fianna Fáil. Our problem with the welfare system, to paraphrase a more important person than me, is that we love not wisely but too well. We looked after the people on social welfare not wisely, but too well, as it turns out, given the necessity for cuts.

It seems to me that the effect of this benefit cut is that people who have lost their index finger are just gone as a particular category. It is the wrong way to go about things.