Friday, 11th December 2009

Targeting Of Poor In Budget Deliberate And Calculated

Minister Mary Hannafin has failed to protect the poor. The poor are paying the price for Fianna Fail’s reckless management of the economy. The government has made it clear that it is going to force the Social Welfare Bill through the Dáil.

Counting the loss of the Christmas double payment, all social welfare recipients under 66 yrs will have to endure a 6% or about €12 per week cut in their basic income. These cuts will affect carers, widows, people with disabilities, lone parents and the unemployed. For the 90,000 families dependent on rent supplement, there will be a further 4% reduction in their rental support.

Parents will have their child benefit cut by 10% and this will lead to hardship for many low-waged families. The targeting measures will introduce yet another poverty trap into the social welfare system.

In addition, everyone, including pensioners, will be hit by a €20 per month increase in drugs charges and a prescription charge of 50 cent per item. There are also restrictions on dental and optical treatments.

In the lead up to the Budget, the Minister repeatedly said that the “last thing one would want to cut is social welfare”. Yet this Budget explicitly targets those on social welfare and at the same time, will not ask someone on €250,000 a year to pay a single extra cent in taxation.

This is all the more unfair when the €760 M raised from the social welfare cuts could have been raised by abolishing property tax reliefs (€435M) and reforming multi-million euro pension reliefs (€330M).

The truth is that Fianna Fail had choices available to it. It simply ignored these and chose to hit the poor in a most deliberate and calculated way.

For more information, contact Donie Daly (086) 8103886