Emer Currie (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the €25 billion social welfare budget. It is of a size and scale that is only right for the year it is. The Department of Social Protection responded accordingly from a supports and an efforts point of view and I want to thank the Minister, her predecessor, the former Minister, Senator Doherty, and the Department.

It is the year of Covid-19 and of Brexit and the priority is clearly the most vulnerable. I want to call out: the €2,000 increase for the widows or surviving partners grant; the living alone allowance increase from €14 per week to €19 per week; the reduction in the illness benefit waiting days from six to three; the consultation that is happening on statutory sick pay, which is outside of the Covid-19 illness benefit; the increase of €150 in the carer's supports grant; and the removal of the one-parent family payment earnings limit. These supports all affect people where I live in Dublin West.

I want to focus on one thing that is not included today which is important, that is, the hot school meals programme. The original pilot was done last year and reached 6,600 pupils. I have worked on it with the schools and visited them to see it in operation. It was fantastic. I would have been a supporter of this before the pilot and I am an even stronger supporter now. It has been extended to 35,000 students and funding has been increased by €5.5 million. It has been something that Senator Doherty has really pushed. One cannot underestimate the importance of a nutritious hot meal in a child's daily life in school, in terms of the child's learning and well-being.I commend the Minister on prioritising the families and children who need such meals most but I really hope the initiative can be rolled out to all children in the future. Would it not be fantastic for their learning and well-being if they were able to have a hot meal at school?

Let me refer to an initiative that I am not sure gets as much recognition as it deserves. Schools that participate in the school meals programme were able to transfer from school meals to food parcels during the pandemic. The parcels were given out weekly and contained food such as milk, fruit, vegetables and non-perishable goods. It made such an incredible difference in the lives of recipients. If taken up on in the way I envisage, it would benefit 250,000 children and 1,580 schools and organisations. The programme was extended for the summer. In the nine-week period of the summer, the families also got the food parcels. These initiatives make such a big difference in people's lives.

Having lived in the North, and having plenty of family members and friends there, I believe it is absurd that an all-island party should say a pension age of 65 is the least people deserve in the South but not in the North. Are the people in the North not as hard-working or deserving to Sinn Féin? Will future generations in the North not deserve the same assurances on getting a pension when they turn a certain age as the people in the South? Before people start crying out about Westminster, they should note Sinn Féin passed legislation in both 2012 and 2014 to raise the Northern Ireland state pension age to 67 by 2028 and to bring Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the UK. The pensions issue is such a serious one. The pensions commission has serious work to do and the security of pensions should be taken seriously. It deserves a bit more honesty.

To return to the issue of the Minister's work, I thank her Department. I very much appreciate everything she has done and look forward to working with her on the rest.