The former Taoiseach Mr John Bruton has strongly criticised the Government's planned restrictions on the social welfare entitlements of other Europeans, saying they are an attack on the EU's single market for work.
In a statement yesterday, Mr Bruton said he believed the proposal that EU citizens would have to have lived in Ireland or the UK for two years before being entitled to social assistance, child benefit and other welfare payments attacked one of the fundamental benefits of EU membership.
He said the changes, to be passed into law through the introduction of amendments to the Social Welfare Bill next week, should be found to be contrary to the European Union treaties.
He also believed the new rule would affect Irish people returning from abroad. Whatever about the Government's intention that returning Irish emigrants will be exempt from the new requirement, "they will be forced to adopt this position by EU law because the EU will not allow us to discriminate on racial and ethnic grounds in favour of people who have Irish ethnicity rather than French or Czech ethnicity."
Mr Bruton said the reality of those seeking jobs was that very few actually had a guaranteed job in another country before going there to work.
"After all, most young Irish people going to other countries for summer work have not got a job in advance of departure, but expect to find one when they get there."
Mr Bruton said the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Ms Coughlan, expects people from other EU countries, whose first language is not English, to have a job and a house lined up in Ireland before they ever come here for work. "Few will take the risk of coming here to seek a job on that basis."
He noted that Ms Coughlan has said that other EU countries have residency restrictions on social assistance. "Perhaps that is why so few EU citizens work in other EU countries and why unemployment remains so high on the continent."
He said it would have been better for the Government to avail of the seven-year derogation allowing it to prevent opening Ireland's labour market to the citizens of the accession states for seven years.
"At least that would have ended after seven years and would have been legal", he said.
"Ireland has been part of such a free market for work since 1973, and now that we are ourselves at last enjoying some prosperity thanks to that market, we intend to close it off to others. This is not about asylum-seekers. It is aimed at EU citizens seeking work in the EU."
He said such measures sour the atmosphere of the EU, "especially when put beside the mean approach taken to structural funds for these countries and the patronising attitude of some big EU states to the new members".