John Whelan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Senator Hayden on her election as the new Whip of the Labour Party Seanad group. I wish her well in her endeavours.

I share Senator Darragh O?Brien?s concern about pre-budget speculation and consternation.

I thought we had ceased the leaking of pre-budget proposals so as not to upset unnecessarily families already put to the pin of their collar. I agree with Fr. Seán Healy of Social Justice Ireland who said it would be unacceptable and unjust to cut child benefit for needy families. Can anyone honestly say everyone who receives child benefit requires it? It is time we came to terms with the reality - that we need to help those who most need our help. Since I was a boy, we have been told that one cannot means-test children?s allowance because the computers in the two Departments do not talk to each other. Someone will have to start talking to someone because we need to make the best use of resources in order that those most in need benefit. We should await the decision before rushing to make rash judgments on what the outcome will be. I know families that require child benefit to pay for groceries and dress their children, but we all know families also that draw it down and give it to a boy or girl at 18 years of age to go on an around the world tour. That is not the purpose for which it was intended.

It sticks in my craw as much as anyone else?s that yesterday the State, on behalf of the taxpayer, parted with another ¤1 billion to AIB in an unsecured bond. Will the Leader ask the Minister for Finance to come to the House to tell us how we are holding the banks to account for the support we have given to them? There has been no quid pro quoin terms of support for mortgage holders, home loans and businesses. In three weeks time AIB will close 54 branches across the country, despite the supports it has received from the State. One branch is located in Portarlington which has a population of 8,000. It is not a village; rather, it is the sixth fastest growing town in the country according to the previous census. I ask the Minister for Finance to intervene, not to overturn the decision - he cannot micromanage AIB - but to ask it to defer the closures at least until January and in the interim to carry out a socio-economic analysis of the impact of the decision.

I commend the wholehearted support in a statement of Dr. Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, for the children?s rights referendum. He has always been a courageous and fair-minded man. I refer also to the efforts he is making to curb the excesses at First Holy Communion time, the ¤45 million industry that has sprung up around it and the pressures, because of the burden put on families. I welcome this because there is nothing as unseemly and unsightly as young boys and girls in their outfits running around pubs at all hours of the night on their First Holy Communion day.