Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Chairman well in chairing this committee. This is our first opportunity to meet formally.

The upcoming meeting of the Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council, EPSCO, will be in Luxembourg on 4 October. I wish to brief the committee on my priorities during the forthcoming EU Presidency. As the members are probably aware, the EPSCO Council covers a wide range of issues, spanning the responsibilities of a number of Ministries, including those responsible for social protection; jobs enterprise and innovation; justice, equality and defence; health; and, more recently, children and youth affairs.

I will concentrate on the issues in respect of which my Department will have lead responsibility. Some of the matters are technical and I will present them in the order of the agenda. No. 4 concerns association agreements. As the first social protection item, it is a relatively technical one. No. 4 is an agreement on the Council position to be adopted in regard to the social security aspects of association agreements the European Union has with Albania, Montenegro, San Marino and Turkey. These agreements cover a wide range of matters dealing with the relationship between the countries in question and the European Union. Generally, they include a clause on social security co-ordination. The purpose of these Council decisions is to set out the manner in which the European Union sees the social security clauses being implemented and they are subject to agreement with the individual countries. Ireland has no issue with these decisions as they mainly involve equality for nationals of the countries involved in their dealings with social welfare and the export of contributory pensions. These requirements are already covered under our domestic legislation.

However, an issue arises with the Turkey agreement in respect of the legal base for the decision. The base being used is Article 48 of the treaty, which deals with free movement and which Ireland and the United Kingdom contend relates to EU citizens. As this agreement relates to a third country, the base should be Article 79, which deals with rights of third country nationals. The effect of using Article 48 is that it deprives us and the United Kingdom of the right to opt in or out of the decision under Protocol 21 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union.

A similar issue has arisen in regard to agreements with Switzerland and the EEA countries, and the United Kingdom has already taken cases to the European Court of Justice to have the matter clarified in regard to the agreements. Ireland is, on the advice of the Attorney General, supporting the United Kingdom's submissions. The concern is that the use of Article 15 may set a precedent that would have implications for our national interest in areas other than social securities. In these circumstances, Ireland will record its disagreement with the decision on Turkey by way of the joint minute statement with the United Kingdom. It is understood that this decision may not be accepted pending the outcome of the Swiss and EEA cases.

Agenda item No. 6, Europe 2020 and the New EU Governance, concerns the evaluation of the second European semester and thematic surveillance in employment and social policies, and endorsement of the contributions of the social protection committee. This item relates to an opinion of the social protection committee on the European semester process. It is one of a number of committees that has produced an opinion on the process. The social protection committee offers opinions and produces reports for the Council in the areas of social protection, health care and pensions and is competent to do so under the treaty.

The key political message in the opinion is that social policy issues are increasingly relevant in the semester and that EPSCO has a key role in ensuring that the positive contribution of social protection to inclusive growth is properly reflected in all relevant Council recommendations. This reflects the view that the ECOFIN and banking issues have tended, for understandable reasons, to dominate the agenda. The opinion was agreed by all member states and the Commission at a meeting of the social protection committee on 20 September 2012 and should be endorsed by the Council without difficulty.

Paragraph (c), on the social protection performance monitor, refers to the endorsement of the SPC's introductory report. Under this item, the Council has been asked to endorse a report submitted thereto on the social protection performance monitor. The monitor is currently being developed by the social protection committee and the Commission services. It is in response to the European Council conclusions of December last year which called for complementing reinforced economic governance with improved monitoring of employment and social policies. The output of the monitor will form part of future social protection committee annual reports on the social dimension of Europe 2020 for the Council. EPSCO has already endorsed the employment performance monitor through which it follows the employment policies. The social protection performance monitor will enhance the Council's ability to gain a deeper understanding of developments occurring regarding social policies across the Union, to monitor them closely and regularly and to identify social trends common to a number of EU states. The new tool covers the three strands of the social open method of co-ordination, social protection, pensions and health, as reconfirmed by the Council in June 2011.

No. 7, Towards a Job-Rich Recovery and Giving a Better Chance to Europe's Youth, is important. One of the challenges faced by the European Union and Ireland is tackling unemployment, with particular emphasis placed on the experience of young people, whose rate of unemployment across the Union is twice the average. There has been much activity at both national and EU levels in attempting to face this challenge. The Commission's employment package and the Council's Compact for Growth and Jobs, published earlier this year, request member states to engage in economic and social policies to boost employment rates, particularly for the long-term unemployed and young people. The Youth on the Move flagship initiative is currently under way. It focuses on supporting young people in the transition from education to work. The Council's conclusions will be adopted on 4 October. They are a response to the employment package and are a further development on work done thus far, including strengthening employment policy measures at both national and EU levels.

The conclusions call on the member states and Commission to take action on a number of fronts designed to step up job creation and labour demand. These conclusions will be followed up later in the year with a youth transitions package. I will be prioritising work on this during our Presidency. I will return to this later.

Child poverty has been a concern at EU level for at least a decade. In 2012, the social protection committee presented an advisory report to the European Commission on preventing and tackling child poverty and social exclusion and promoting children's well-being. Drawing on the social protection committee's advisory report and main messages, draft Council conclusions have been prepared under the Cypriot Presidency. The conclusions recognise that income-support measures will not, on their own, address child poverty, and that without broader consideration of children's well-being, child poverty can and will have some effect on all children's outcomes. It is for this reason that access to services and children's participation are important.

These conclusions invite the member states, European Commission and social protection committee, taking account of the specific circumstances in each member state, to take action along specified lines.

They are to aim to ensure adequate and sustainable investment in child and family supports, mitigating negative impacts on the most vulnerable while maintaining an adequate balance between universal and targeted policies, to incorporate child poverty and social exclusion, as well as child well-being, as key issues in the European Union 2020 strategy and the integrated social open method of co-ordination and to make full use of existing tools to improve the monitoring of and reporting on child poverty, social exclusion and child well-being, as well as the evaluation of policies. Member states are asked to consider, when designing and implementing policies, that investing in children is a long-term investment, that they make full use of financial opportunities provided through the EU including Structural Funds and that they promote the engagement of all key actors, including local authorities and NGOs. I strongly endorse the holistic approach envisaged in the conclusions. It is my view that, working closely with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, these Council conclusions, together with the new child poverty subtarget under the national social target - as the revised national poverty target is now known - provide a unique opportunity to tackle child poverty and in so doing to promote child well-being within the Europe 2020 strategy to the betterment of all children. I understand these conclusions will be followed up by a European Union recommendation on child poverty, which will be included in an overall social package that will be published by the European Commission in March. At this stage, it is not clear what will be contained in that package but if time allows after publication, it will be my intention, in consultation with the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, to ascertain what progress can be made in this area during the Irish Presidency.

As for the priorities for the Presidency, although my role here primarily is to brief members on the Council, as Ireland’s Presidency of the EU rapidly approaches, I will take this opportunity to apprise members of my key priorities for social affairs for the Presidency. As I already stated, the EU agenda in the social protection area covers a wide range of issues, including activation and employment, pensions, social security and social inclusion. Tackling unemployment and addressing the social consequences of the crisis effectively, pursuing reforms to improve employment levels, in particular of young people, as well as developing, implementing and mainstreaming effective policies to combat poverty and support vulnerable groups all are areas in which the EU is highly active in developing policy and actions. Accordingly, it is appropriate that priorities for the Irish Presidency should reflect the emphasis the EU places on these important issues. One of the highlights of the Presidency will be to bring Ministers of employment and social affairs to Dublin in February 2013 for an informal ministerial meeting. The general theme for the meeting will be “Supporting People into Employment”, with a particular emphasis on youth unemployment.

The youth unemployment element will be particularly timely. In December 2012, the European Commission will publish a youth transitions package, the main element of which will be a proposal for a so-called youth guarantee aiming to ensure targeted young people are either working or in appropriate training or work experience within a specified time after becoming unemployed. The objective of the proposal is to intensify actions at EU and member state level aimed at addressing the high level of youth unemployment across Europe. The European Commission is anxious to see significant progress in this area during the Irish Presidency and hopes that Council recommendations can be adopted. The informal meeting will seek to advance the issues raised in the Commission proposal with a view to adopting Council conclusions on the Commission package at a formal Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs, EPSCO, Council during our Presidency. The informal meeting will also include meetings with the social partners and with the social platform at a European level. This informal meeting will be jointly run by my Department and the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, with input from the Department of Education and Skills. An interdepartmental group of officials is currently working to put together a comprehensive set of policy papers to address the wide range of issues that come under the theme of getting people back to work.

As for other social protection measures during the Irish Presidency in addition to the youth guarantee, it is my intention to make progress on two key legislative measures, namely, the pensions portability directive and a regulation to amend the social security co-ordination regulations. The portability directive proposes minimum requirements for enhancing worker mobility by improving the acquisition and preservation of supplementary pension rights. It is important in the context of increasing worker mobility and in particular, mobility within self-employment. At present, there is no common framework in the EU regulating the acquisition and preservation of supplementary pension rights. The fact that pension rights may not be preserved in a supplementary pension when a person leaves employment is considered to be a serious obstacle to the free movement of workers within the EU. Accordingly, it is acknowledged there is a need for Union action to improve and support the mobility of workers across the European Union. It is expected that the Commission will introduce the proposal late in the Cypriot Presidency. Co-ordination of social security systems is perceived by the EU as an important element in the measures that are in place to encourage and facilitate the free movement of workers and EU citizens in general. Accordingly, it is important to ensure the regulations are updated on a regular basis. These regulations require amendment to take account of changes to the social security systems of the individual member states and judgments of the European Court of Justice, as well as to deal with issues identified in the operation of the regulations. Changes are made on an annual basis and it is expected that the Commission will publish the proposal for the latest round of amendments in December 2012. There are a number of small amendments and technical changes which are unlikely to be opposed by any of the member states and, in the circumstances, I expect it will be possible to reach an agreed approach at Council and possibly a first reading agreement with the European Parliament. I am looking forward to a successful EU Presidency, which I hope will make a significant contribution to advancing the EU agenda on a range of issues and in particular, as I stated, in addressing on an European Union-wide basis the issue of unemployment with particular emphasis on the problems experienced by young people.