I am grateful for this opportunity to speak on the budget. I understand that most of what anybody could say about it has already been said. I am taking this opportunity to refer to the problems of An Post. I tried to get in on the Private Notice Question but was unable to do so. I want a message to be delivered, loud and clear, to the management of An Post. Whatever way they balance their books — and I assume it has to be done for economic reasons — I do not expect rural Ireland to be asked to carry the can in an uneven and unfair way. The services at present available to elderly people in remote areas must continue to be made available, although perhaps in a different context. Let nobody go away with the idea that a green postbox positioned at the head of any townland or village road will suffice as a service in rural Ireland. There is no reason any person should have to travel two or three miles to find out if somebody has written to him, and that is what is proposed. I hope this gets back to the chairman of An Post.
I was listening to the Taoiseach today indulging himself and praising himself to the high heavens in relation to the budget. He seemed to be extremely pleased with it. Whatever problems we had the day before the budget we still have them a week later. The economic outlook is not rosy. Growth in the economy is slowing down and there are no real signs that interest rates will decrease. Why are interest rates so high when our inflation rate is so low? High interest rates hugely diminish our competitive position in the market and new projects are particularly vulnerable.
In his euphoria in informing the world of progress to date, the Minister for Finance last week did not significantly draw attention to the fact that we still owe just over £25 billion and the budget has increased that figure. Unemployment figures are rising rapidly. The sharp rise of over 8,000 persons signing at employment exchanges last month is likely to continue, particularly over the next few months. Departments of Social Welfare and Labour officials around the country tell me that out of every ten persons being interviewed for a place on a FÁS training scheme or unemployment assistance, at least four or five had been in the United Kingdom or other countries before Christmas and did not go back. The news coming from the building sites in the United States and the United Kingdom is equally depressing, with very little work this month and no great sign of any lift-off in the building industry for this year. Figures from regional airports around the country confirm the assertion that many of our emigrants have returned. Many passengers purchased a one-way homeward-bound ticket this Christmas. There is a grave under-estimation in the social welfare provision for 1991 and nobody will be surprised if a hefty Supplementary Estimate is introduced later this year.
The aspirations in the Programme for Economic and Social Progress, an inter-grated approach, planned development of the economy, industrial peace and input by the social partners are all laudable objectives. However, three major groupings — the unemployed, low-paid workers and farmers — came out very poorly from the negotiations on the programme. The budget highlighted this fact. A point which seems to have been missed is that between the date of publication of the Estimates and before the budget was announced there was a reduction in the subhead for FÁS training schemes in the Department of Labour Estimate. This reduction amounted to £3 million. I consider this to be most unusual and regrettable. I am informed by officials in FÁS and the Department of Labour that because of this cutback there will be fewer places for FÁS participants this year than last year. I have always been an advocate of the concept of the social employment scheme, which was started some years ago by the then Coalition Government and continued by this Government. To have a job on a week-on week-off basis is the nearest thing many people will get to work in the strict sense, especialy for a person who may not have been working for perhaps eight or ten years. I am baffled at a time when we talk about job creation that this should have happened.
The other area in which there was supposed to be job creation potential was the integrated rural development sector; so we were told by the Minister for Agriculture and Food. The Estimate provided for £11 million as opposed to £1 million last year, but that Estimate was raided a few days before the budget and £5 million was taken out. I know that Governments do not really create jobs, they create the environment for others to create jobs, but the area within the direct remit of the Government seems to have been raided. I hope that the unemployed and the low-paid will understand what is happening. The poor and the underprivileged will always be at the bottom of the pile, irrespective of what Government are in office.
Quoting figures from the total social welfare budget can hide great human suffering. The short term unemployed have a weekly income of £45. Any person who has to live for a week on that sum is not in a great position and those seven days must be very long. I know some people who would have no difficulty in paying £45 for one meal. A married couple with three children in receipt of supplementary welfare allowance get £109 per week. It would be very difficult for that family to become excited about this budget or the previous budget. There are no credits, no hidden extras, no opportunities to indulge in spending sprees or play the stock market when a family of five have to live on £105 per week. The relative well being of the economy, the competitiveness of industry, the effects of GATT on agriculture, educational opportunities and the debate on Irish neutrality all seem a pale shade of yellow when you have little money and less hope. Human nature and sheer economics will dictate that the unemployed and the poor will be at the bottom of the pile.
There are many more people at work than on the dole and we must make progress in that direction. However, workers are over-taxed and the budget did absolutely nothing to reform the tax system, a matter which has been debated at length. Many workers at all levels ruefully look at the tax deductions from their pay packets and they genuinely believe that they are carrying social welfare recipients on their backs. This is the general perception. I have to accept that there are some dole spongers, people who play the system, some recipients draw the dole and work at the same time. I have heard the Minister for Social Welfare criticise rogue employers who do not make their PRSI contributions. However, I understand amending legislation is to be introduced. All these factors make unnecessary demands on social welfare funding. There is always a need to clamp down on those individuals to ensure that deserving cases are targeted properly.
Taxpayers bitterly complain about their tax deductions but this is a relative matter. The man who believed he could not be poorer when he did not have shoes to wear changed his mind when he saw a man without legs. So-called Christian societies must make adequate provision for the very young, the unemployed, the low-paid, the deserted, the handicapped and the elderly. The emphasis the Government put on their caring responsibilities is sometimes a mirror image of the attitude a nation has to those dependent on social welfare. A family on long term social welfare finds it difficult to see this caring approach by the Government or by vast numbers of the population. The Government are quick to state that their contribution to the less well off keeps pace with inflation or surpasses it. This is a relative judgment also. A 4 per cent increase on a salary of £20,000 is £800, while a 4 per cent increase on a social welfare payment of £52 is just over £100 a year.
The effort by the Minister for Social Welfare to help the carers of the elderly is nothing short of pathetic. There were problems with the prescribed relative's allowance, the forerunner of the carer's allowance. Of course the decision to pay the carer direct was a good one. What was not good was the impression given by the Minister that all people caring for the aged could expect to get financial assistance. Let me outline to the House those who will not get such assistance — a carer with more than £2 a week income and spouses who have a joint income which is above £90. There are some slight changes in the budget but those are the basic figures. This scheme is a farce and the few changes made in the budget will do little to extend the scheme to deserving cases. Just imagine the chaos that would arise if even a small fraction of the elderly now looked after at home were placed in health board geriatric homes around the country. Besides the fact that each bed costs £300 or more per week there are just no spaces available. However, people, particularly women, who dedicate their lives or give their already over-burdened time to looking after the elderly, are now snubbed by the constraints of the carer allowance eligibility rules.
The glib answer to such families is that the services of the district nurse or home help are there. That is not good enough. We had a bit of that at Question Time on health today. It appears that the health boards are so strapped for money and place such low mileage barriers on the travel of district nurses that this service is greatly curtailed. It is the same with the home help. The services are excellent but the home help is only around for a very short period. It is no harm to dwell for a short moment in this House on all the other hours, the 23 hours per day, the seven days per week, 52 weeks a year that the carers of elderly and sick people have to put in. Because of the love and affection they have for family members they are prepared to go to the ends of the earth, to deny themselves everything to ensure that the people in their care are well looked after.
I know it is a competition for available funds. There is no point in my coming in here today and saying that every single person in the country who looks after their aged parents should be paid to do so. I am not suggesting that at all, but there is huge leeway to be made up on this. It will be very important in the next year to have a new set of guidelines so that if people find themselves in a position that is beyond them the State is prepared to lend a helping hand, and that it is not a handout but hand up. It would cost £300 or £400 of the State's money to keep a person in a geriatric home. There seems nothing wrong with ensuring that most people would get at least £48 or £50 to look after them at home. It makes reasonable sense.
The family income supplement is a concept everybody likes. I believe it is an important concept in that it is there to help people on low wages. I have not time to go into the anomalies that even the latest increases in the budget have produced but it is something we will go into when the Social Welfare Bill comes into the House.
There are a few other things that this House and the Government will have to look into very carefully because of changing times in rural Ireland. If the MacSharry proposals get through, and even if they do not, with the downturn in world prices we will hear a lot more about rural poverty. At the moment there are about 14,000 smallholders drawing unemployment assistance. Unfortunately the figures from all the agencies in the agricultural arena suggest that that number will double if not treble inside the next few years.
This brings me to an important point about the family income supplement. As I said, I like the concept of it but it will obviously have to be honed so that it can help genuine cases of families caught in the poverty trap. What I cannot understand is why people who are self employed, who run into hard times and have no trouble in convincing the Revenue Commissioners that they have almost no income to live on — I am talking about the self employed and small farmers — should not be entitled to the family income supplement just as is any other low paid worker. It is something that will have to be looked at. We may believe in the oft quoted concept of keeping the greatest number of farming families in rural Ireland on the land but obviously they will not stay there in dire poverty.
The Minister said that £1 million was being made available specifically for low income farmers. Despite my best efforts over the last week I cannot get anybody to tell me where that will come from, who it will be paid to and under what criteria it will be distributed. Anyhow, at £1 million, it must be very restrictive.
In the few moments at my disposal I want to refer briefly to the agricultural scene. Obviously the Minister for Agriculture has lost his bearings altogether because in a most embarrassing outburst last week, he had to accept that the decrease in farm incomes last year was not as he said, 6 per cent or 7 per cent, but more like 15 per cent. I would have thought it was 20 per cent; there are many farmers who certainly had their income reduced by at least 25 per cent. There was nothing in the budget to help them and, worse, the influence we used to have in Brussels in agricultural matters seems to have scattered to the four corners of the earth. Now we are told what will happen and can only react to it.
Finally, all I can say is God help the 40,000 or 50,000 Irish farmers if there is no more help for them than what we have seen on the Floor of this House on budget day. I fully understand that budget day in Ireland may not have all the answers for the farming community because of the Brussels extension but, believe me, there are many people who are genuinely concerned at the lack of consideration, sympathy and, above all else, a plan of action to try to overcome the horrendous problems besetting agriculture at the moment.
