Minister signals cuts to child benefit

CHILD INCOME-SUPPORT payments will inevitably be affected if the State is to reach a more balanced budget, Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton told the Dáil.

The Minister was “not at liberty to discuss the detailed measures in the budget” but stressed she maintained her commitment to child benefits. “I have been having those conversations with my colleagues in Government . . . But it will unfortunately be necessary to achieve cutbacks, just as it has been necessary” for Sinn Féin in the North to commit to cutbacks of €4 billion.

Ms Burton was speaking at a Sinn Féin Private Members’ debate in which the party’s social protection spokesman, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, called on the Government to maintain current child benefit and other social welfare rates.

Mr Ó Snodaigh highlighted Labour claims in 2009 that “child benefit is keeping many families afloat”. The Dublin South Central TD said €10 cuts in benefit “might sound like nothing” to high earners. “But to a low- or middle-income family with three children that’s an annual cut of €360. Consider that against the minimum cost of sending one 12-year-old to school, which is €815.”

He said it was also unnecessary to cut child benefit to save about €150 million. A third rate of tax of 48 per cent on incomes in excess of €100,000 would raise €410 million, he said, and a wealth tax on assets of more than €1 million would raise €800 million.

Ms Burton stressed “the transition to a more balanced budgetary position simply cannot be made without affecting social welfare spending, including child income-support payments”.

She criticised Sinn Féin’s motion when the party’s education minister in the North was overseeing education cuts that could result in 4,000 job losses and which the North’s teachers’ union described as “financial Armageddon”.

Ms Burton said the Government was determined to protect families “from the worst consequences of this very deep recession”.

The social welfare system was in “urgent need of both reform and transformation”, she said, and she wanted to target the more than €20 billion spent on social welfare in the best and fairest way, including the €3 billion of that budget spent on child income supports.

Earlier Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin asked Taoiseach Enda Kenny if he agreed it would be an act of “treachery” if tax rates for fuel-efficient cars were reversed. Mr Kenny said even with increases, taxes on environmentally friendly vehicles would be lower than on other cars.