Working poor, carers and the sick will 'take the hit'

POVERTY:MANY PEOPLE will be driven into poverty, and those already in poverty will see their situation deepen as a result of the Budget, the director of Social Justice Ireland said yesterday.

Fr Seán Healy said the claim by Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan that the Budget was progressive and had distributed the burden fairly “was patently untrue”. The Budget was “unjust, unfair and inequitable”.

The working poor, low-income families, carers, the sick, people with disabilities, children and the unemployed would “take the hit”.

And senior bondholders, the corporate sector and those who benefit from tax breaks that had not been removed would “escape”.

Fr Healy said many people would be driven into poverty by this Government’s choices and others would be in much deeper poverty. “Ireland’s poorest have been condemned to penury by this Government’s choices.”

He said a smaller adjustment of €4 billion to €4.5 billion would have been in the longer-term interests of the economy. All bondholders should share the burden of bank debt, and there was a significantly greater potential for tax reform.

The Children’s Rights Alliance criticised the Government for failing to protect poor families from the cuts in child benefit of between €10 and €20.

Chief executive Jillian van Turnhout said the cuts were a “blunt instrument” that would have a disproportionately negative impact on children in poorest families.

He said in last year’s budget, when child benefit was cut by €16, the Government protected the poor. It increased either their family income supplement or their qualified child increase to compensate for the loss. It would only have cost €56 million to introduce the same measures again.