A Government backbencher has fiercely defended cuts to the lone parent’s allowance and the legislation to enforce payment from “won’t pay” debtors.

Fine Gael TD Catherine Byrne praised Tánaiste Joan Burton and said that "for the first time we have a Minister who has the guts to make tough decisions".

She said that young people were being given the opportunity to “step back into the world of reality and to step back into education”.

In an emotional address to the Dáil, the Dublin South-Central TD also spoke of her own children and said that “when other people in this country wouldn’t work in McDonald’s my kids worked in it and my neighbours’ kids worked in it and that’s what’s called fairness and balance”.

She hit out at the Opposition, telling them they needed to “wake up” and “you need to realise that for the first time these young people are getting a new experience and a new beginning.

“And less of this farce and more living in the real world where young people should be encouraged instead of you standing over there giving out.”

She also criticised people who put all their rubbish in street bins while their elderly neighbours paid their bin charges.

And she said that for a couple with two children with water charges capped at €260 and the €100 conservation grant, their water could cost €3.07 a week “to have clear water, to take your showers, to wash your vegetables, to wash your babies, to fill up your babies’ bottles”.

And yet, she said, “I see people going into the supermarkets and weekends and stacking their trolleys with beer and everything else and water and there’s no need for it”.

And she saw people queueing up in shops and “buying 60 or 80 smokes at €10 a package”.

Civil Debt Bill

Ms Byrne was speaking during the six-hour debate today on the Civil Debt Bill which ends imprisonment for non-payment of debt, but provides for attachment of earnings and social welfare deductions, if a court agrees.

Ms Byrne said the Bill “is about people taking responsibility for being a civic person living in this society”.

She told the House that “if I’m a single parent with one child and I decide to go back to work for 19 hours a week I come out with €400 a week. That’s a fact.”

She said she had a young daughter at home “who works in a shop and she’s on minimum wage of €8.65 and she comes home with far less than €400 a week.

“And she gets out of bed at 7am in the morning and she makes her way on the Luas and on the bus out to Blanchardstown and she works hard for her few bob.

“I see somebody who’s made a life-changing decision. She didn’t sit at home, she didn’t have children, she went out, she got her education and then she went to work”, and took whatever job she could when the country was in deep recession.

Ms Byrne also highlighted an incident three weeks ago when she stopped a man filling every bin on Bulfin Road in her constituency with his rubbish. She said what he told her was “unrepeatable” but he was doing this while all his elderly neighbours were paying their bin charges.

“I requested the city council to take out every bin on Bulfin Road because there’s a line of people travelling along” doing the same thing.

The former lord mayor of Dublin said “for the first time in society, for the first time, we have a Minister in Joan Burton who is prepared to change the way we have treated the social welfare system in this country”.

Lone parents

She said she was not against lone parents. “I have many friends and many of my children’s friends have young children, but [it’s] to give them an opportunity to step back into the world of reality and to step back into education and to become a person for themselves.

“Whatever reason why they had to have their children at a young age, they did and I don’t hold that against them but we’ve opened up an opportunity and a door to allow them to get back into an education system which many of them didn’t have the opportunity of because they had to stay at home and mind their babies.”

She said that when she did her weekend shopping she added extra things in her trolley for her children who were all in negative equity like many other parents.

“And I see people stacking up their trolleys with drink and wine and I can guarantee you some of them shouldn’t be stacking up their trolleys with drink and wine.”

She said there were protesters on every street outside the Dáil, violating a civic society, throwing cones and throwing missiles at people trying to uphold the law.

She reminded the House of politicians telling people “don’t pay” their bin charges, they were going to be scrapped. Those people she said ended up in court and had to pay €1,700.

She wanted “fairness and balance and this [Bill] is a step in the right direction”.