Free travel throughout the island will be introduced for pensioners early next year, Minister for Social Affairs Séamus Brennan confirmed.
Pensioners from the Republic would be able to travel free in the North while Northern pensioners would have a similar concession in the South.
Speaking during the Budget debate, Mr Brennan also said that women would be allowed "move beyond the occupational cul-de-sac of indefinite part-time employment with earnings kept below €100 per week". Both partners would be able to claim jobseekers' allowance in their own right, though subject to certain conditions.
Olwyn Enright (FG, Laois-Offaly) said she would begin where the last minister for finance, Charlie McCreevy, left off three years ago when he was banished to Brussels.
"Yesterday, we reached the three-year deadline for his promise to decentralise 10,000 civil servants. When he made his promise, he said the Government would be judged on the delivery of that commitment, and so it will. The Government subsequently announced that the original timeframe was overly ambitious and it extended the deadline by an extra year.
"However, when asked about what has happened to that second deadline, the Government claims that decentralising departments and offices will have a presence in a total of 29 new locations around the country by the end of 2007. It is anyone's guess, however, how presence is defined.
"In my home town of Birr, the presence consists of two Fás staff, enticingly described as an advance party. We have been promised that the presence in Birr will be increased in the new year to 20 in an office the responsible Minister hailed as having capacity for 30 people. The site-purchase arrangements are unclear, with the owner having returned Fás its deposit in order to sell the site to another developer. We have been told the latter developer will sell the site to Fás but we do not know whether that is a contractual obligation. Long after we were promised that the entire headquarters of 400 staff would be moved to Birr, staff numbers have reached 5 per cent of the target."
Dr Jerry Cowley (Independent, Mayo) said he knew there were some good things in this Budget, but it lacked other things.
"I am very concerned about older people in my constituency who must borrow money, maybe several hundred euro, to go to a basic hospital appointment. It might be an older person who has nothing except a pension, yet he or she must borrow possibly €110 each way to go from Achill to Galway to have a pacemaker checked, which is absolutely ludicrous. It does not make sense.
". . . I asked a question in this House as to why this was happening. I was told by the Minister for Health and Children that this was the responsibility of the HSE. "After questioning the HSE and receiving information from it, it was very clear it is not getting enough money to be able to provide the necessary transport."
