It is the utmost in humbug, Scrooge, to come in here and make any pretence that yesterday's budget was fair. We all know it represented a betrayal of a range of promises the Government collectively, but the Labour Party in particular, made to the electorate before the last election. That is the Government's problem. More to the point, it represented an all-out attack on older people, families, women and children. I could raise a range of issues, including the cut to child benefit, which is an obvious one, the taxation of maternity benefit and the mean cut to the back-to-school allowance for footwear and clothing for children. I find it shocking and indefensible.

I want to raise one of the bad decisions made by the Government and it concerns the decision on the respite care grant. The Government has cut €325 from 77,000 families, 20,000 of whom receive no other State payment. All of the families care for people, many of whom have severe disabilities, including children. The Minister needs to reverse this decision. Fairness was breached in the budget comprehensively but this cut is not even about fairness but about decency. Making this kind of cut breaches decency. The backbenchers will make much noise while indulging in amateur dramatics and theatrics on a range of issues. On this cut to respite for families who give care to people, the Minister and his Cabinet colleagues must back down.

I call the Minister without interruption.

My backbenchers cannot compete in making noise with Deputy McDonald. She makes less sense economically than the flaky stuntmen in the Technical Group and she refused-----

The Minister should answer the question about respite care.

Deputy Finian McGrath is all right with his €40,000 allowance.

I ask Deputy Finian McGrath to sit down please.

The Minister is a disgrace.

This is serious.

Deputy McGrath should sit down. You were at this the other day. You are trying to get yourself thrown out again but I am not going to satisfy you. Sit down and do not be making a show of yourself.

That is stuntman No. 1.

What about the Minister?

The Deputy will not be thrown out.

It was interesting during the budget that the only squealing from the Technical Group was when it was made to account for its leaders' allowances.

That is rubbish.

That is the real respite Deputy McGrath is concerned about.

Answer Deputy McDonald's question, please.

What does the Labour Party do with its leader's allowance?

This is impossible and I am getting fed up with it. Minister, please answer the question and let us get on with the business. Deputies, please stay quiet.

With regard to women, families and social welfare, the budget has protected core social welfare rates. It has maintained in existence the qualified child allowance and family income supplement. It has maintained child benefit as a universal payment.

Answer the question.

Stay quiet.

He is paying millionaires children's allowance.

It has protected lower and middle income families from tax increases. Contributions from the better off in our society have contributed more than half a billion euro.

He cannot answer it.

The difference between the task confronting the Government and that confronting Sinn Féin is that we have to bring in a budget that is workable, and 40% of current spending goes towards the social welfare budget. It is not possible to make the savings we are mandatorily required to make and not impact on social welfare. The question was how to do it best. The decisions that have been made-----

Is the Minister saying it is fair?

Compare the rates to those that apply up the road in Newry-----

The Minister was not elected in Newry.

-----and that have been approved by Deputy Ellis's party.

The Minister should read up on the range of provisions available in Newry.

That is another country entirely.

Compare the fact that property tax is between £800 and £1,100 in Newry.

Does the Minister know the difference between the parliaments on both sides of the Border?

Sinn Féin seems to have no difficulty with that, but it has a partitionist mentality when it comes to dealing with the budget down here.

We have gone out of our way to ensure those who can pay most have done so in this budget-----

Carers?

-----and that those who need to be protected are protected.

I am not interested in Minister's outpourings and attacks on Sinn Féin. That is par for the course. I asked a direct question about respite care. He should not try to worm his way out of this. He knows this cut is wrong. He has to know. He cannot talk about protecting the vulnerable and then launch an attack on carers, who care, in many instances, for people with profound disabilities.

Does Pat Rabbitte get that? I heard his colleague, Joan Burton, saying to parents who rely on the back-to-school allowance to shop around. How out of touch is she? She clearly does not know how much it costs to get a child back to school these days. Is he now telling carers to shop around? Is he actually that cheap and that glib?

This is not a moment for comedy. This cut of €325 is wrong, indefensible, unfair and indecent. If he has any decency left in him, he should revise this matter and tell the carers he will roll back on it. He must do that. If he does not, there will be sufficient public outcry to force him to reverse it. Do the decent thing, Pat Rabbitte.

There is a tradition in the House that we address Members by their title. I ask people to do that.

You should tell Deputy Rabbitte to do so, given the reference he made earlier.

I have been reminded that it is, in fact, a Standing Order.

A very serious objective of the Government was to ensure the caring profession was protected. Confronted with the situation that faced us, we had a choice of protecting the carer's allowance or the half carer's allowance and dealing with a modest cut in the respite allowance.

Modest?

The people who do the caring will get exactly the same allowance as before the budget. The people who are entitled to claim the half carer's allowance will get it, just like the day before the budget. We have gone to great care to ensure those people's payments are ring-fenced.

In terms of throwing in rhetorical flourishes about the back-to-school allowance and various other things-----

It was not a rhetorical flourish. It is a statement of reality and is shocking.

-----the Ministers for Social Protection and Education and Skills will bring forward proposals later showing, for example, additional investment in the provision of hot meals for children in certain socioeconomc areas where that has been especially successful up to now.

We have protected the core rates of social welfare and maintained the benefits for the people who are doing the caring. This is a respite grant. Do we take a modest decrease in that-----

It is not modest.

-----or do we cut the provision for caring? It was not possible to bring in a budget, which is the sixth in a row of budgets that have made cut upon cut because of the crisis in which the country finds itself, unless savings were made across the board.

You could have raised tax on higher incomes.

You could have taxed the rich.

A wealth tax.

Everyone had to contribute something. Otherwise it would not have been possible to comply with the targets imposed on us.

The Minister still did not answer the question.