MINISTER FOR Social Protection Eamon Ó Cuív has confirmed there will be cuts in the budget in rates of social welfare payments.
At a regional Fianna Fáil conference in Ennis at the weekend, Mr Ó Cuív warned that the type of cuts he is confronted with “will look literally tiny compared to the adjustments or cutbacks that we would be faced with if we couldn’t get out to the markets and borrow the money”.
“If we avoid making the necessary cutbacks and adjustments to our expenditure as a people, I think the money available to us to borrow would dry up very fast,” Mr Ó Cuív said.
Mr Ó Cuív’s Department’s budget this year accounts for €21 billion, or 38 per cent, of current Government expenditure, with two million people including children – or about one out of every two people – receiving payments.
“It is not possible to skip over my Department and exclude it from the cutbacks.”
The Department was currently spending about €200,000 a minute, with €7 billion of its annual €21 billion budget being borrowed.
In an interview at the conference, Mr Ó Cuív said: “There will have to be rates cuts. I have no doubt about that.”
Asked in what categories such cuts would be made, he said he could not say at this stage.
The Minister said the Department paid out money through 50 schemes. “They are all there for a very, very good reason. Therefore, I don’t think anybody would accept us eliminating a broad category of payments. Therefore, the only other way, having done all your controlled savings, is to cut rates.”
Asked about any cuts to old age pensioners’ social welfare entitlements, he said: “The simple problem about pensioners is that they are an increasing number and they are a third of all adult recipients.
“ What I do think we have to recognise is not all pensioners, who receive a contributory old age pension, are poor. How do those who are better off make their fair share of contribution? I don’t think that a means test would be a practical way to do it, but I do think as a general principle that those who have most have to contribute most.”
The Minister ruled out – for now at least – a means test as a way of reducing the child benefit bill. Such a move would create huge bureaucracy, he said.
Asked should Government Ministers take a cut in salary as they propose cuts to people on social welfare, he said: “I think everything has to be on the table.”
Also at the conference, Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey said Dublin’s Metro North project remains in the Government’s capital programme. “I am confident that it is in the programme. I have to be careful, it is a budgetary matter at the end of the day.”
