Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At the time of the 1913 Lockout, the centenary of which we mark this year, there was no such thing as social welfare or social protection. If people had no work or no private wealth they starved and their families starved. The only form of State assistance, if it could be called that, was the poor house, and to go there was to be condemned to a prison-like existence and the breaking up of your family. Even if people had work they lived in fear of illness because illness meant loss of a job. Over the following decades working people in Ireland and throughout the world fought and struggled for better pay and conditions and for health and social services that offered them protection. Through those efforts the resources of the State were built up in order to care for the children, the aged, the sick and the disabled.

Make no mistake, the austerity regimes that are being imposed across Europe, and not least in this country, are rolling back those social protections and public services that were so hard won by generations of working people. There are those in politics and big business who would roll them back even further to pauperise working people once again in the interests of profit for a tiny elite.

Budget 2014 and this Social Welfare and Pensions Bill arise out of that austerity agenda and that austerity mind-set. In advance of budget 2014, and despite the fact that last year, it cut child benefit, jobseeker's allowance and other basic payments, the coalition was claiming it was protecting core social welfare rates. It was a lie then and it is an even bigger lie now in the wake of budget 2014.

As Sinn Féin spokesperson on children I deplore this Bill because it is an anti-children Bill. The cut to maternity benefit is anti-children and anti-women. With this Bill the coalition wants to impose, for the majority of maternity benefit recipients, a cut of €832 over their six months of leave, or €32 per week. Mothers who have maternity benefit supplemented by their employers will lose out significantly from the cumulative effect of this cut and of tax measures. This will undoubtedly increase the financial pressure on mothers and young families, forcing mothers to return to work earlier than is appropriate for the best care of the child in infancy and her own health.

Although not in this Bill because they were imposed in last year's budget and held over, a nasty surprise is waiting in January 2014 when the child benefit cuts for the fourth and subsequent children kick in. This is how the Labour Party continues to protect child benefit as it promised before the 2011 general election.

The illness benefit and injury benefit cuts are cynical, especially at a time when workers' terms and conditions of employment are worsening with the likes of punitive zero-hour contracts where, as in 1913, working hours are determined week to week or even day to day entirely at the discretion of the employer and with no minimum period of employment guaranteed. This means that a significant and growing minority of workers do not get sick pay from their employers but must rely on direct payment of illness benefit and injury benefit. This Bill doubles the number of days without payment of those benefits from three to six, representing a cut of €112.80.

The debate on the Bill comes in the week when the Department of Social Protection has confirmed that it is sending out letters to jobseekers with offers of work in Canada. The landlords in this country once hired coffin ships to Canada to clear their estates of excess tenants. There are whole areas of Canada where my county constitutes the largest historic connection between Ireland and Canada. Now we have a native Government encouraging emigration to Canada and Australia and to places all over the globe. Of course it is not just letters from the Department that are encouraging emigration. Quite shamefully in this Bill the Government targets the already meagre jobseeker's allowance payment for young people and reduces it even further. This is based on the spurious assumption that somehow vast numbers of young people are shirking work, education or training. I refute that. It is an insult to the talented young people of this country. The jobs are simply not here. There are not nearly enough training places and for many young people further education is inaccessible and unaffordable.

It has been estimated that the cuts to jobseeker's allowance and supplementary welfare allowance will hit over 20,000 young people in 2014. This is a charter for emigration, without question, but it is also a charter for employers to drive down wages and conditions even further. The JobBridge scheme is basically a free labour scam for employers. The paltry dole for young people, which is down to €100 per week for under 25s, is topped up with a €50 JobBridge payment for which people are expected to do a week's work in a so-called internship scheme. I applaud the Irish National Teachers Organisation for instructing its members not to participate in this cheap labour scheme dressed up as training. Several schools have offered such places to qualified primary teachers. While it is claimed these positions cannot displace existing staff or fill a current vacancy, the reality of short-staffing in schools means that participants would effectively be filling gaps created by cutbacks. At the end of the term of cheap labour there is no guarantee of a job.

Cutting pay and welfare payments to subsistence levels is punishing for families and individuals, as well as disastrous for struggling local economies in communities throughout this country. It means less money is being spent in local shops and on local services. The impact of dole cuts on young people in the poorest families is of huge concern. It is predicted that it will lead to increased homelessness among young people at a time when in budget 2014 the Government has once again slashed funding for housing and homeless services.

Children, young people and our older citizens are penalised in this Bill. Social Justice Ireland estimates that 88% of those over 65 years of age would be at risk of poverty were it not for social security payments. Attacking older citizens is attacking the vulnerable. Disgracefully, the telephone allowance, which forms part of the household benefits package, is being abolished in this Bill in order to reduce spending by €44 million. This follows cuts of €84 million in the household package in budget 2013. This is a loss of €19 per week for older people.

The cut to the invalidity pension for 65 year olds is another nasty measure in this Bill that will cost 65 year old disabled pensioners €36.80 per week. This cut is disguised as the discontinuation of the higher rate of invalidity pension for people who turn 65. Those who had that expectation will now have to wait another year. Older people are also hit with the increased prescription charges and the cuts to medical cards. The scrapping of the bereavement grant is a lousy measure, showing that the Government is prepared to take money out of people's pockets from the cot to the coffin. Let us remember, there is a very significant cumulative effect for older citizens over several budgets because in recent years we have seen reductions in the fuel allowance, the abolition of the Christmas bonus and cuts to home help services.

The cumulative effect of successive budgets is felt across all social welfare recipients. I have no doubt we will see this when we are back on the ground and rooted in our respective constituencies. They now face the family home tax, or the so-called local property tax, with a full year payment in 2014 and the imposition of water charges after that. Local authority tenants face the prospect of increased rents under the promised new State wide rental scheme. A significant element of this rent increase will be based on the local authority's liability for the family home tax on its residential properties which, if Minister Hogan gets his way, will be passed on to tenants.

Regardless of how the Minister for Social Protection and her colleagues try to dress up this Bill, it is a mean and nasty austerity Bill that penalises the least well off in society. They are being made to suffer yet again because this Government has set its face against taking more from those who can afford to pay more and against the real alternative economic strategies that have been set out by Sinn Féin and others.

I reject this Bill.

See this speech in context