Thomas Byrne (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Christmas bonus equated to a 2% cut in social welfare payments at the time while the wealthiest civil servants were subject to double digit percentage pay cuts and higher earners had to pay much more tax. There was a fairness across society. People were hurt and they had to pay more but we did not target particular groups. The Labour Party is aware of this. We heard about the loaves and fishes yesterday. That is not the case in this instance because the Government is not bereft of resources unlike our Lord who conducted the miracle of the loaves and fishes and fed all the people. This is a reference to a comment by a Labour Party Senator yesterday. I do not criticise him personally because I compliment him on the motif but in that example everybody was treated fairly. The Labour Party is not doing that. It is picking out groups to target unfairly and hoping there will not be enough people to push back against the Government. However, groups have been hit, one of which is adoptive parents. This is also related to the maternity benefit cut as well. The Labour Party seems to have a thing against young families. It is supposed to be the party that represents them. It has not done so and it has allowed the rich to get away scot free. They can do what they like. They are the entrepreneurs and go getters to whom the party aspires while everyone else gets left behind. People are struggling with their mortgages and cannot afford to pay for funerals while pregnant women are struggling with families, trying to pay the bills the Minister is imposing on them.

Everybody would understand that she has a job to do with the troika if she did it fairly but the ESRI studies have consistently said that she has decided to do the job unfairly. That is mainly because she has been unable to tackle the influence of Fine Gael, which is putting out a line that the Labour Party is buying into that the Minister is dealing with scroungers on social welfare. The benefit covered by this section is for working people who have paid into a benefit scheme and because private sector companies generally cannot provide these services, the State has done so. The same applies to maternity benefit. The recipients are not scroungers; they are contributors to society. They receive benefits in return for the payments they make to the Exchequer and the Social Insurance Fund as the insurance need arises. This is a particularly vicious cut which is related to section 5 and it deserves to be opposed. It highlights the targeting of groups by this Labour Party Minister.