Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise, as I was at a meeting. I will continue the theme of the budget. We should recognise that this is the first post-pandemic budget. We have all come through a difficult 18 months and we are all grateful to everyone who helped us do that. This budget is designed to help those who need help most and tries to improve everyone's quality of life. Most importantly, it is targeted at those who need the State and the Government's support the most, those being, young people and low-income families, in everything from the improvements in and increased funding for health in terms of free GP care for six-year-olds and seven-year-olds, the reduction in prescription thresholds, the extension of the medical card to dental treatment and free contraception for young women, which is something that our party has pushed for and I am delighted to see being delivered, to halving the price of public transport for young people, which is also a good measure. The increases in pensions and welfare payments, including the living alone allowance, the fuel allowance and the working family income supplement, are welcome.

I wish to call out the disingenuous and divisive social media messaging that is being pushed out by one of the Opposition parties. I will only give one example, but it is an important one. That party has been using social media over the past 24 hours to drive division-----