A plea for greater financial support for the diminishing number of thalidomide victims won cross-party support during the debate on the Finance Bill.
Ms Avril Doyle (FG) said she believed the number was now 200 at most. The payments made to them should be increased generously, given the current state of the economy compared with when the rates had been struck. These people had been born with severe disabilities through no fault of their own or of their mothers.
Mr Michael Finneran (FF) described Ms Doyle's suggestion as laudable. These people had suffered a great human loss of some or all limbs and their lives had been impacted on in a desperate way.
The level of financial support for them did not equate with their needs in today's terms. The Minister for Finance should take steps to assist them in the lead-up to the next Finance Bill, to provide a large increase for people who had been victims of what could be termed a breakdown of the pharmaceutical industry.
Mr Joe Costello (Lab) added his support for what was being urged. The Minister of State, Mr Wil- lie O'Dea, pointed out that the Finance Bill dealt only with the tax treatment of such payments and noted that that regime was being made more generous. "What you say I fully appreciate. It's a matter for the Minister for Health and Children. I do take your point that the numbers have gone down. The economy is improving, so I'll pass on your comments to the relevant minister."
Britain and the US were going to attack Serbia in the most cowardly way, Mr Michael Lanigan (FF) declared angrily. Both these countries, the biggest two arms suppliers in the world, were the driving forces behind the invasion of Kosovo, he said.
An urgent message should be sent by the House to the Berlin EU summit to press European ministers to see if a last-minute change of plan could be achieved, he added. Clearly, this would be an invasion of a sovereign country in Europe by certain Europeans and the US.
"We were told here year after year that the United Nations could not come into the North of Ireland because it could not interfere in the affairs of a sovereign nation. Europe is fiddling while another country in Europe is being burned or possibly will be burned.
"It is going to be done in the most cowardly way, because the Americans and the British have said they will not put ground troops in. There is no way they will get a resolution of the solution in the Balkans by flying high over the area and bombing. They will kill innocents on the ground. They are the only ones who will suffer."
Mr Brendan Ryan (Lab) said that Turkey, one of the NATO countries which would be participating in the bombing of Serbia, would not permit the international media to observe its treatment of the Kurdish minority. That ought to concern our Minister for Foreign Affairs before he led us into a Partnership for Peace.
Mr Paul Coghlan (FG) said he disagreed with Mr Lanigan over Kosovo. "I think the West must collectively stand up to the bully Milosevic."
Gay couples should have the same inheritance rights as married people, Mr Joe Costello (Lab) maintained. Cohabiting couples and family members living together should also be afforded such treatment, he argued.
At present, if a member of a cohabiting couple died and left a property to their partner, substantial capital gains tax was due on the inherited property, but in the case of a married couple no CGT was paid on inheritance.
It was absurd that in this day and age cohabiting couples were not recognised in our legal system, Mr Costello said in the debate on the Finance Bill. Over the past number of years significant changes had taken place in Irish society which were reflected in changing relationships and living patterns.
Labour was proposing an amendment to the Bill to provide that a couple, whether they were cohabiting partners, a gay couple or family relations, who had been living under the same roof for four years or more, would be exempt from capital gains tax if they inherited property from their deceased partner. "In my view, this amendment would eliminate inequalities in our system at present."
The Minister of State, Mr Willie O'Dea, said an interdepartmental working group was examining the treatment of married, cohabiting and one-parent households under the tax and social welfare codes. Consideration of tax measures in these areas would await the group's report, which was expected to be completed very shortly.