Labour Attacks Plans For Benefit Cuts

The Labour Party has attacked Government plans to cut the social welfare budget in the upcoming budget.

According to the Labour party, the Government is planning to save €1.3billion by slicing social welfare, a move which would "devastate the social welfare system, lead to greater inequality in Irish life and plunge those who are already on the lowest of incomes into an even deeper well of poverty", according to the opposition party.

Labour Spokesperson on Social and Family Affairs, Roisin Shortall, said: "The Labour Party acknowledges the burden on the national finances created by the increase in the social welfare budget over recent years, but the most effective way to reduce the bill is to get people back to work.

"Those who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own and those who have worked all their lives and are now on pension, should not be required to pay the price for the recklessness of banker and for Fianna Fail’s mismanagement of the economy over the past twelve years."

"The cost of social welfare payments (excluding secondary benefits) for the 270,000 who have been added to the live register since the 2007 general election amounts to almost €3bn per annum – or three-quarters of the gap the government is seeking to close in the budget. When the loss of tax revenue is taken into account, the cost to the Exchequer is about €5.6bn. Despite this Fianna Fail has devoted little or no attention to job creation or job retention."

The news comes in the wake of a report on social welfare fraud by an Oireachtas committee on Child benefit payments to foreign nationals whose children are living outside the State.

The report, published yesterday afternoon, said that due to differences in living costs between Ireland and most other EU countries, the payment should be reduced accordingly.

Around 11,000 children who live abroad are in receipt of child benefit in this State, at a cost of around €20 million to the Exchequer.

It is one 14 cost-saving recommendations in a report by the Oireachtas Committee on Social and Family Affairs.

(DW/BMcC)