Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I did not interrupt the Minister and she will have the opportunity to respond. I was very surprised by her comments in this regard.

I will not refer to the promises the Minister and her colleagues made either during the general election campaign or in the programme for Government. I will merely ask her one question. If a member of a party other than hers had introduced a Social Welfare Bill such as this two years ago, what would the Minister have said about it?

Would she have welcomed the taking of 20% off the respite care grant? Would she have said that is turning a passive system into an active one? I do not believe she would have. I acknowledge the Minister's job is tough and that in this respect she will not make everyone happy. The Seanad has a role to play, particularly today and this week. If the Seanad is to be the Chamber it is supposed to be, it should be one where we can properly review legislation and if we believe there are areas of the legislation that the Dáil has got wrong, and I firmly believe there are at least two such areas, Senators should not be afraid to vote down this Bill and send it back to the Dáil. Senators should not walk people up to the top of the hill and pronounce, with disgust and disappointment, on measures the Government is taking and not follow through on those actions, but that will be a discussion for tomorrow and Thursday. From our perspective, we will be opposing every single part of the Bill. We put forward clear alternatives and there are difficult decisions to be made.

I want to ask the Minister about the 75,000 families who receive the respite care grant. She mentioned core weekly payments being protected. They are protected if the Minister has defined what is a core payment but she has not defined that pre-budget or up to now what it is. A core payment for a family in Dublin or elsewhere in this country, whose members are doing their best to survive, is their monthly child benefit rate. Since Deputy Burton took over as Minister for Social Protection a family with three children is ¤684 worse off than when she took office.