The racing industry had benefited at the expense of social welfare recipients in last week's Estimates, the Labour leader claimed in heated exchanges with the Taoiseach. Michael O'Regan reports.
Mr Pat Rabbitte asked how Mr Ahern could justify "cuts of €58 million for the weakest in our society when €67 million will be made available, most of it in prize-money, for the diversion of tax exiles in the racing industry".
Mr Ahern said that the Department of Social and Family Affairs' estimate was €10.65 billion, an increase of €355 million over last year.
"It is almost double what it was just a few years ago, in spite of unemployment figures falling to 4.4 per cent, half the European Union average. This does not take into account increases that will be announced on Budget day."
Mr Rabbitte asked: "How can the Taoiseach justify the attack on lone parents contained in the cuts of €58 million? How can he justify the situation in community employment in circumstances where we have the most expensive community employment scheme, costing €67 million, for the delectation of those who will not even pay their taxes in this society?
"I do not include in that €67 million the 100 per cent gift of €15 million arranged by the Punchestown duo, Ministers McCreevy and Walsh for a facility that we now find is not large enough for the purposes for which it was constructed."
Mr Ahern said that social welfare spending represented year-on-year increases from only a few years ago when the figure was only €7.8 billion.
"The increases over the period have been largely directed into improving the rates of payment in line with the Government commitments. An estimated 970,000 people on average are expected to claim social welfare payments. The Government has reduced the poverty levels across all areas and categories of social welfare."
He added that there were five measures directed mainly to ensuring that rent supplements were paid in appropriate circumstances in accordance with established policy.
Mr Rabbitte also raised the case of a senior citizen who had visited his clinic on Saturday. He was, he said, a retired man living on a modest pension. "He is a coeliac and he explained that his cost of living will increase three- and-a-half times its present level when the dietary allowance was phased out".
Mr Ahern said the diet supplement was being phased out over a number of years. "The supplement has become outdated in the context of real increases in social welfare payments in the past number of years." He added that a person in exceptional need could put his or her case to community welfare officers. As the exchanges continued, Mr Ahern said: "The social welfare system is not there just to be abused."
Mr Rabbitte said he hoped the Taoiseach was not suggesting that the dietary allowance was a means of abuse. "The gentleman I mentioned, who is 67- or 68-years-old, explained to me that it is not just bread and the essentials of life he has to order from his chemist, but even cornflakes. He tells me the cost per week will be three-and-a-half times what it was."