The budget will hit children, families and the poor worst according to several agencies that work with them.
Barnardos said it fears for thousands of children whose families will be pushed deeper into deprivation and poverty.
“The budget not only front loaded the cuts we are to expect for the
next five years, it also loaded them onto the backs of those least able
to take the weight; children and families already living in poverty or
standing on the knife edge,” said Fergus Finlay, CEO, Barnardos.
He suggested that the number of children living in consistent poverty
increased by 26,684 between 2008 and 2009.
That means that now 91,954
childhoods are now blighted by poverty.
Referring politician’s pay cut he said, “TDs will never have to show
forbearance in the face of decisions now facing these families: heating
the house in minus temperatures instead of bringing a child to the
doctor or feeding their children instead of buying school books.”
Barnardos calculate that the 4% cut to adult social welfare payments
and €5.30 cut to the Qualified Adult payment on top of last year’s €8
cut will mean that many children will go without one full meal every
week.
Added to this, the €10 and €20 cut to Child Benefit will make
fundamentals like heat and electricity difficult to pay for many
families.
Child Benefit was the Government’s own tool of choice for tackling child poverty over the past ten years.
Meanwhile, Social Justice Ireland (SJI) has prepared a full critique on the budget (www.socialjustice.ie)
stating, “Budget 2011 is unjust, unfair and unacceptable. The choices
made will rob the poor to protect people and institutions who caused
many of Ireland’s problems through their reckless gambling with banks.
It will seriously damage Ireland’s economy, social services and
infrastructure.”
SJI gave a vision for a different Ireland suggesting that four core
values should underpin it including human dignity, sustainability,
equality/human rights and the common good. They rejected the claim of
the Minister for Finance that Ireland is continuing, “to work off the
excesses of the boom,” because only some people availed of such excesses
and the poorest are paying.
Likewise, it is misleading for the Minister to point to the increases
in welfare rates in recent years to justify their reduction in Budget
2011 according to SJI.
SJI’s analysis of the past quarter century shows that the better off
have benefitted far more than the working poor or those depending on
welfare payments. For example the net, take-home, income of a
Government Minister in 2011 (after the current budget changes are
implemented) will be €1,034 a week higher than it was in 1986.
On the other hand the take-home income of a person in receipt of job-seekers benefit will have risen by only €136.
Apart from the very obvious cuts to income there will also be cuts in
health services and everything ranging from rural transport to adult
literacy, from meals on wheels to school transport.
SIC: CIN/IE