Cowen refuses to say if report on cost-savings will be published

TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen has refused to say whether the report by the group informally known as An Bord Snip will be published. Mr Cowen told the Dáil the report on public sector cost-saving measures has yet to be presented to the Minister for Finance though it was due yesterday.

He said: “I don’t anticipate any Government discussion as to how we wish to proceed regarding its recommendations before the report is presented.”

He stressed “the group’s function is to make recommendations as has been agreed and it is a matter for the Government to decide whether to accept recommendations”.

Mr Cowen did, however, indicate the €21 billion social welfare budget would have to be looked at because the Government was borrowing €70 million daily and the total tax take for this year based on current estimates, would be between €32 billion and €35 billion.

Asked by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore to give an assurance that basic social welfare rates including State pensions would not be cut, the Taoiseach said the budgetary process for December was just beginning and it would be “unfair” of him to decide that “expenditure of that order should not be considered in any way”.

Mr Gilmore had asked if Mr Cowen considered it “reasonable that persons on €204 a week or less than €11,000 a year should have their level of payment reduced”.

The Taoiseach said it would be unfair for him to decide “in a situation where the Minister for Finance is only beginning an estimates and budgetary process, that expenditure of that order should not be considered in any way”.

Mr Gilmore had said that based on a previous response from the Taoiseach he could only consider it a “coded confirmation” that there would be cuts.

But Mr Cowen reminded the Labour leader that “there was no cut in social welfare rates last year. The reason we avoided such cuts was in order to ensure that we protected people to the greatest extent possible”.

Mr Gilmore had earlier raised the issue of the lack of a community welfare officer in the Dún Laoghaire and Loughlinstown areas for people waiting for social welfare claims to be processed. He said nothing had been done about it. “This service operates for people who have no money. Does anybody in the Government understand what it is like to have no money?”

He added that in the meantime the message people were getting through the “orchestrated leaking” of the report by An Bord Snip is that social welfare would be reduced by €1.5 billion, the equivalent of a 7 per cent cut on basic social welfare rates.

Mr Cowen said there was genuine regret on behalf of the HSE that the difficulties with community welfare officers had arisen. It was an industrial relations problem “that need not and should not be repeated”.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny and Sinn Féin’s Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin asked if the Opposition would be given copies of the Bord Snip report. The Taoiseach said the Government would decide “how to proceed” after it had received the report.