I move:
‘That Dáil Éireann condemns the halving of the subsidies on bread, butter and milk at this time because of the serious and widespread hardship caused to the poorer and weaker sections of the community and calls on the Government to restore the subsidies immediately to their previous levels.'
It will be difficult at this stage to recreate the atmosphere that prevailed during the first few days of August when the House had gone into recess, and we were told that things were relatively on target, that plans were going right and that the national plan would be produced before the end of September. We understood that we would be debating whatever was in the national plan when the House met in October.
The poorest sections of this community will long remember 2 August 1984 as one of the harshest days in our history. It was on that day that the Government turned the screw on social welfare recipients and the poorer sections of the community. These cuts were said to be part of the national plan which had been brought forward for various reasons, among them the position of the US dollar. That position prevailed a few weeks earlier, on 5 July, when the House adjourned but the Taoiseach did not refer to it in his closing speech on the Estimates.
As well as the cuts in the food subsidies the Land Commission was abolished and the malicious injuries scheme was abandoned. People will now have to pay for malicious damage to their property, but tonight I am primarily concerned with the cuts in food subsidies and the effect they will have on the poorest sections of the community.
One of the main complaints about the cut in these subsidies was the way they were announced. It has been argued that different Governments made such announcements in the same way but in my view this is completely wrong and should never happen no matter who is in power. Last week many loyal civil servants were ridiculed by members of this Government when we were discussing the national plan but in August they were sent out to explain what could not be explained. I admit that people are entitled to their annual leave but it was very wrong to leave it to four civil servants to explain the position to the country. That should never have happened, and it should never happen again.
The decisions of that day added 2p to the pint of milk, 8p to the pound of butter and 8p to a loaf of bread, giving a saving of £20 million out of billions of pounds that are spent on public and other types of expenditure. We were told last week that cutting food subsidies had been discussed at the Cabinet meeting and that the decision was made on that day. These cuts hit particularly social welfare recipients and the less privileged in our community and they had a dramatic impact on those people.
It has been argued that these cuts have not affected certain sectors of the community as badly as Fianna Fáil and others, including Government backbenchers, said at the time. Deputy O'Hanlon asked a question about the effects these cuts would have on the health boards. The Minister said that it cost the Eastern Health Board £80,000, the Midland Health Board £23,000, the Mid-Western Health Board £30,000, the North-Eastern Health Board £30,000, the North-Western Health Board £49,000, the South-Eastern Health Board £50,000, the Southern Health Board £87,000, and the Western Health Board £73,000. At the end of that question the Minister said there were no funds at his disposal which would enable him to provide a special extra allocation for health boards to meet the extra charge. He went on to say that health boards were informed in December 1983 that their 1984 approved allocations were intended to cover all price movements in 1984. That seemed to infer that the people who drafted the budget were to be inspired that a decision would be made nine months later and that they should take account of that in their budgets. Does this mean that in future health boards, when submitting their budgets, should take into account that disastrous decisions such as cutting food subsidies may be made by the Government? Is the Minister saying that the health boards should have known in 1983 that the Government intended to halve food subsidies in August 1984? Because of these cuts the health boards are short of approximately £500,000.
Late in August statistics dealing with household budgets showed income bracket by income bracket how much everybody spent on almost everything. The poorer people — social welfare recipients and the less well-off members of out society — spent 20 per cent of their total disposable income on bread, butter and milk. The Government's figure of .5 per cent was totally inaccurate, but I will cover their figures in a few moments.
I would like to put on the record comments made by various Deputies, not just Fianna Fáil Deputies but Government backbenchers and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle. These cuts were denounced as scandalous. Senior members of the Labour Party said that these cuts were callous because they would seriously damage the most disadvantaged people in the community. They said these cuts were a savage attack on the working classes and poorer larger families would have to bear the brunt, and the measures were enough to cause a tremor in society. Now, a few months later, all this seems to be forgotten.
Bread, butter and milk are the staple diet of the poor but the Government did not take that into account. They are the major source of nourishment for children, but again the Government did not take that into account. At a time when there is mass unemployment of 200,000, and the take-home pay means that almost one million people are on the breadline, the Government saw fit to chop 20 per cent off their spending. This was totally unreasonable and callous. This measure was not thought out. These cuts were announced when people were going on holidays when the easiest thing for the Government to do was to hit an area which did not have a pressure group.
It is our job as an Opposition to put forward the case for those who cannot do so on their own. It is our job to prevent the Government from continuing to hit at the poorer sections. Last year members of the Government parties voted against them. The Government have imposed huge increases in the price of coal and they introduced VAT on clothes. All of this was done to balance the books, to satisfy the economists and to make people in the Central Bank, the Bank of Ireland and the World Bank happy. We are back to 5 per cent inflation, foreign debts seems to be in line and manufacturing exports are good, but how has all this been achieved? Before the summer the Taoiseach in a statement to the House referred to all of these things but he did not say it would be done on the backs of the under-privileged, the workers and the deprived people.
The national plan spells out how savings will be made. There will be a cut in respect of maintenance to houses and many jobs in the area of health will go. The attitude is to hit the defenceless people. It is a callous and disgraceful way of doing business. Before the summer recess this House voted millions of pounds to various semi-State bodies. These amount were voted through almost on the nod because it was essential that this be done before the recess. The way the ordinary working-class people are being treated by this Government is disgraceful, all the more so when part of that Government are members of a party who are supposed to be concerned about such people. They have turned their backs on the workers and they can be considered traitors. They continue to implement Government policies that have caused hardship to many under-privileged and last week they spelled it out again in the national plan.
The Government may say that the family income supplement which will affect 35,000 people out of 1 million families will change things but the people will not be fooled. The sad thing is that all of this is being done by a so-called caring and liberal Government who said they would bring in policies to help the less well-off and the deprived people. Their policies have meant cutbacks and savings and all of this has been achieved on the backs of the working classes. The Labour Party have reneged totally on all they ever stood for. This is very clear from the national plan and the trade union movement have told them so. Their back-bench Deputies have an opportunity now to vote with Fianna Fáil on this issue. Unfortunately it will not bring down the Government but they will have an opportunity to register their protest and to put their money where their mouth is, if all those statements that were made in the hazy, sunny days of August meant anything. I ask them to support this motion, to reject the policy of the Government in this matter and thus prevent this disgraceful situation occurring again which will happen if the national plan is followed.
When the cuts were announced the question was asked how social welfare recipients and the less well-off would survive. The answer from the four civil servants who braved the media and the country that night was that the 7 per cent or the 8 per cent given to social welfare recipients would help them to keep in line with inflation and would also cushion the effect of the cut in food subsidies. That was not the case. Even in the better years of 1977 and 1978 when unemployment was about 70,000, Fianna Fáil kept the food subsidies but at a time when unemployment is in the region of 220,000 the Government have removed part of the subsidies.
It is obvious that the removal of the food subsidies has not had the same effect on all sectors of society. Poor people gain substantially more out of food subsidies than do the rich and until an alternative system is found it was morally wrong and callous to remove them. While people in the top 14 per cent income bracket spend over 1 per cent on bread, butter and milk the poorer people spend from 5 to 7 per cent of their income on those commodities. The figure given of 0.5 per cent may have been correct for the top 14 per cent, although I do not think it was, but in respect of other sections it was wildly inaccurate. An effort was made to pretend it would have only a negligible effect but that was totally wrong. That was probably the reason that people who should have explained their action were long gone and could not be found for several weeks.
This Government love to come forward with good news and they delight in their public relations but on that night they ran away. The average urban householder spends 1.84 each week of their disposable income on bread and those at the lower level spend 7.53 per cent of the little they have on that item. How can that be reconciled with the Government's figure of 0.5 per cent? For the less well off the effect of the reduction in bread subsidy meant an increase of 1.28 per cent in their shopping for that single item. The average household spends 2.29 per cent of their disposable income on milk but the lowest group spends 8.39 per cent. On the other hand, the rich have been affected only to the extent of 1.33 per cent. These figures were taken from the household budget survey. The increases have hit the less well-off to a much greater extent. The family income supplement which is meant to cushion them has been a total failure because it ignores the many people who should be included.
The Government must also be criticised for their proposals with regard to children's allowances. Last week I argued against abolishing the various schemes that put money into the mother's hand which is the important thing. The Government may say that the money is still going into the household but one of the important benefits of the scheme for children's allowance was that it gave the mother money to buy essential foodstuffs.
The Minister of Health has said there will be no extra money in the Exchequer when all the schemes are taken together. While some of the less well-off may benefit, many of the 1 million people on the breadline will not benefit. We will wait and see what the budget proposes. I have no doubt that those in the lower and middle income brackets will suffer. When the Minister was in the House last week I asked him to clearly state the position and to state if the Minister for Health had given wrong information.
In their two years of office this Government have followed plan after plan and scheme after scheme. They have hit those in the category whom the Labour Party traditionally helped. Deputy McLoughlin condemned the cuts. He said they were immoral, wrong and callous and were hitting at the deprived and the under-privileged. What has he got to say about the national plan? What has he to say about the cuts? The family income supplement will not help the less well-off. Help towards the maintenance of houses is now gone and this is a further cutback on those who cannot afford it. All of these issues show clearly that the Government have now found a soft way of balancing their books, a way to satisfy the economists, to control the various interests they want to impress, the people who say that you judge how well you are doing by inflation being low and unemployment high, social welfare recipients being taxed, bringing children's allowances into the net, as if every person who is unemployed is some type of a gangster and as if they were parasites on the Irish nation. Those are the people who are out there suffering.
Are Fine Gael Deputies and Labour Deputies in particular unaware of the hardship which exists at present? Are they aware of the huge poverty problems in society? Are they aware that people are on the breadline, that the queues in hospitals are growing day by day? Are they aware that several hospitals have closed wards and others have extended their waiting lists, that outpatient services have been curtailed? Are they aware that a substantial section of the community have to carry the burden? Do they not care about these people? Have they no policies to take those people out of the terrible predicament they are in? Do they wish to keep on taxing and squeezing them and taking away whatever benefits they have? There is a cut in medical cards. More people are being taken out of the health services as if those services were overstaffed and as if because we are spending a good deal of money on the health services they no longer need staff. Anyone involved would tell you otherwise.
I quoted figures today from the health boards. Other schemes in the health boards are also affecting under-privileged and deprived people, people suffering hardship. I will be very interested to hear the Minister for Finance explain how he made those decisions and how £26 million out of the billions that are spent could not be found elsewhere. I will be interested to hear what input the Labour Ministers had, how hard they argued for the less well off and what they will do in the next budget to supplement family incomes in a real way.
Will the members of the Labour Party come through the lobby tomorrow night with Fianna Fáil to reject a bad decision by a bad Government and show the Irish people that this House and their party in particular have some credibility? If they do that, the Labour Party will have a future. If not, they will be seen to be falling into the trap of the monetarist, Reaganite, Thatcherite policies which are being pursued.
