Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As the Minister is aware, the cuts in social welfare and their cumulative effect are a difficult issue for people on both sides of this House and for people outside the House who are struggling. I accept the bona fides of people here if they vote conscientiously whether for or against the Bill. It is very difficult for people to go against the party Whip. Senator James Heffernan has displayed great courage in doing so. It is not easy. I have been in that position and it is difficult when one has allegiances to one's colleagues and one's party. As Senator Cummins said, hard decisions must be taken but within them there are choices. I oppose the choices that have been made, not just this year but in previous years. It was a major mistake for the Government parties to commit to ring-fencing almost 80% of expenditure and say they would not touch social welfare rates or public service pay.

Suicide has been debated many times in this House. People have succumbed to despair because of their financial predicament in recent years. We must not only show empathy with, and sympathy for, those families that have been bereaved but also with those many others who are seriously struggling to make ends meet and worrying about where they will get their next mortgage payment or money to put food on the table. That is the case for many. On the back of my card I have a quotation from Pedro Arrupe "Let there be men and women who will bend their energies, not to strengthen positions of privilege, but to the extent possible to reduce privilege in favour of the underprivileged." I try to live by that principle. I do not always succeed but it is an aspiration for politicians. Sometimes we need some form of idealism to guide us in the decisions we take.

The Minister says she is not cutting social welfare rates but she is. For example, she is cutting child benefit and she is cutting the respite care grant by 20%. That will have an impact on families. If she considers it from the economic point of view, which may well be driving the Government's agenda in many other areas, including social policy, it is imperative that we endeavour to place the burden where it can be carried and not place it on people who are in no position to shoulder this increased pain. This and other decisions that are being taken and have been taken will make it almost impossible for many to deal with these issues in 2013. We will see an increase in the social fallout from this economic crisis in the next 12 months or thereabouts.

The cut in the respite care grant will save ¤26 million. The cut in child benefit will save ¤136 million, making a total of ¤162 million. A 3% increase in the universal social charge for those earning above ¤100,000 would bring in approximately ¤200 million. The Labour Party was right to seek that as our party was right to include it in our budgetary provisions. One of the great imponderables is that increments in the public service have continued since 2008. Ours were stopped in 2008. All public service increments should have been stopped. That would amount to between ¤200 million and ¤250 million a year. A 1% cut in public service pay comes to ¤170 million. A 1% cut across the board in social welfare rates, which would be ¤2 a week, would bring in the guts of ¤220 million. Nobody likes doing these things. We are crucifying a small group of people who make an enormous contribution to the Exchequer. If they did not do the job they do the Minister knows, as do all of us in this House, a huge financial burden would be placed on the State which it would not be able to carry. I appeal to the Minister, who has her heart in the right place and is caring, to take whatever stand is necessary, maybe a stand such as Senator Heffernan has taken. Unless people are prepared to stand up and be counted, the underprivileged, disadvantaged and those who are really suffering will continue to be railroaded. It is time that this stopped.