The benefits of the most progressive Social Welfare Act in the history of the State began to take effect as of last Friday. In advancing the measures contained in the Act, together with the other measures first outlined in Budget 2001, we have sought to bring social inclusion centre-stage.
The passage of the Social Welfare Bill through the Oireachtas, however, has provoked an outpouring of political insecurity on the part of the Opposition. In fairness, their reaction is as understandable as their position is unenviable.
While striving to present a caring, socially progressive facade, they have voted against unprecedented rises in old-age pensions, child benefit and social welfare payments.
In doing so, they have proffered a mixed message to the electorate. The rhetoric of social justice does not sit easily with persistent opposition to the policies and measures of social inclusion.
Today's unprecedented £10 increase in the old-age pension is, perversely, anathema to some in opposition. It sits uneasily with the lazy mindset which views the Republican Party, Fianna Fail, in an unfair, illiberal light.
In ignoring the policy, the record and the empirical reality, they advance a series of simplistic mantra-like dichotomies: Berlin versus Boston, left versus right, Fianna Fail versus the rest - any of Dick Walsh's weekly invectives this past four years will suffice for an example.
This Boston versus Berlin argument is, at best, spurious. As I have asserted here before, Fianna Fail, unlike Fine Gael and Labour, remains committed to reducing the tax burden on the lower-paid.
As of today, we will have taken over 300,000 people out of the tax net altogether and reduced the standard tax rate by 6 per cent in four years. We consider it imperative that workers and the low-paid are not unduly taxed.
It is plainly untrue, however, that a lower degree of social provision is a concomitant of lower taxation.
To illustrate the point, while the Rainbow government undertook to spend £525 million on social inclusion measures over the three years of Partnership 2000, the specific social inclusion package in our most recent Budget was £2.11 billion, hardly Bostonian.
The left versus right idea is equally inapplicable to Ireland, or indeed much of Europe. Across our continent, political parties, in variations of Blair's and Schroder's Third Way, are falling in on the traditional Fianna Fail centrist position.
FOR 75 years now, Fianna Fail has existed to create a society where all citizens receive an equal opportunity to realise their full potential. Our aim is an Ireland where gender, race, creed, economic or social background are no impediment to advancement.
It has been so since 1926. Social partnership and social inclusion remain core policy and ideals for us.
Just as Fianna Fail fought its first elections on a mainly social agenda, we will fight Election 2002 on the same basis.
In the late 1920s and early 1930s we opposed a Cumann na nGaedhal and Labour establishment which had effected little social progress since the foundation of the State.
In 2002 we face Fine Gael and Labour, whose record and present policies indicate a similar neglect. Back in the 1932 general election, the bulk of the Fianna Fail election programme concerned social issues. By contrast, the Cumann na nGaedhal programme contained only one paragraph relating to the social front.
From Heil O'Duffy to Hail the Snail, Fine Gael has neglected social policy. Their current spokesman on social affairs wants to deploy the "ultimate sanction" - his words, not mine - against the unfortunate parents of delinquent children by making them homeless! Where now the Just Society?
Another Fine Gael spokesman argues that we must seriously consider increasing the pension age, depriving our older people of their hard-earned pension rights. How's that for an anti-social contract?
In the late 1980s, during a period of financial crisis, Fine Gael was ready to place the economy first, through their brave Tallaght Strategy.
It is time for them now to take society and community as seriously as the economy and advance a new Tallaght strategy on the social front. Not a vacuous, amorphous and unenforceable social contract, but real, substantial action.
Fine Gael's and Labour's rhetoric of social justice does not sit easily with their governmental record, particularly that of the last Rainbow government. This reality has led the Labour Party's general secretary, Mike Allen, to make the stark admission that Labour in government made decisions which would make a social democrat shudder.
These decisions include the meagre £1.80 per week rise in old-age pensions, the plans to cut teacher numbers and the cuts in funding towards reducing waiting lists, all at a time when the State coffers were relatively flush.
Indeed, Ruairi Quinn has recently admitted that much of the problems we now encounter in our health services emanate from his decision, as Minister for Finance in that Rainbow government, not to listen to concerns expressed at the time regarding the nursing profession.
Today, his party plans to raid the pension fund, set up by this Government to guarantee future pensions. And, at the same time, it plans to "stabilise" tax, in other words it refuses to cut taxes so that people can keep more of their hard-earned money. Hardly socially just.
Modern Ireland needs progressive and radical social policies to grapple with inequality and social exclusion. Fianna Fail is delivering those policies. The Labour Party and Fine Gael are standing fast together in Rainbow opposition to this approach.
Dermot Ahern is Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs