Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will reply first to Deputies Willie O'Dea and Aengus Ó Snodaigh.

On the issue of landlords and rent allowance, I share the concerns of Deputy Willie O'Dea. Everybody who represents constituencies where there is a great deal of rented accommodation available has experience of the same problems. As a result of this, when I entered the Department I changed the legislation in very important ways to give social welfare officials and inspectors more powers of investigation with regard to landlords. This was before the Deputy became his party's spokesperson. From May 2012, social welfare inspectors and higher executive officers, HEOs, have been given powers of inquiry to ensure rent supplement is being paid correctly. The types of inquiries to landlords that are considered necessary include confirmation that the person to whom rent supplement is being paid is the actual tenant. The Deputy made a very polite allusion to a phenomenon I know well. An individual receives rent supplement for himself or herself and, perhaps, his or her children. That person is fine, but he or she might have a hidden or undeclared partner and that person might not be so nice. In fact, it might be a problem for the first person. We are all familiar with this. Officials now have powers of inquiry which they did not have previously to find out if the person concerned is actually the person who is the tenant. Then there is a statement confirming that the person to whom rent supplement is or has been payable is or has been residing at that address for the period for which the rent supplement is or has been paid; confirmation of the duration or period of the tenancy; and any other relevant details that the landlord may have which may be relevant to the payment of rent supplement. A landlord who fails to comply with a request made by the relevant designated person or social welfare inspector shall be guilty of an offence. We took these powers in May because I share the concerns expressed. Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh and I have discussed this issue on previous occasions. It is a significant social problem.

The reason I would like responsibility for the payment of rent supplement to be transferred to the local authorities is very simple. The local authorities have housing departments. Since I came into the Department I have been working in conjunction with the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government and the Minister of State with responsibility for housing. A group of officials from both Departments is working together to develop a new payment which will be called the housing assistance payment. What are the difficulties and challenges in doing this? There are a couple which I have enunciated previously, but I will go through them for Deputy Willie O'Dea's benefit. The first is that local authorities have approximately 88 separate differential rent schemes and ways of charging for different types of accommodation, individuals and family circumstances. There has been very positive work ongoing for some time by officials in the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to have a more coherent and reduced number of schemes. That work appears to be progressing well from the regular updates I have received on it.

The second issue is that local authorities have a significant problem where there is a rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and ordinary traditional tenancies. In some cases people on social welfare may build up arrears by not paying the rent.

I am working with the Attorney General to develop legally the scheme people are familiar with, the household budgeting system, which is used in post offices. It was originally developed to prevent people getting into arrears on electricity and gas. When someone signs in after getting a tenancy, they cannot sign themselves off even though, under the legislation, they may do so. The consequence is that Dublin City Council, which operates in Deputy Ó Snodaigh's constituency, has a particular problem. There may also be a problem with a build-up of arrears in Limerick, with which Deputy O'Dea is familiar. We are working to change it because it is important that local authorities can have confidence in receiving rent and that people with a social welfare income commit to it. For women, it is the worst thing that can happen to a mother as it puts great pressure on the family. Getting out of arrears, which build up relatively quickly, can be very difficult.

I share the concerns of Deputy O'Dea in respect of rent supplement. I do not agree with the comments of Deputy Ó Snodaigh about rent allowance for landlords and the mortgage interest supplement. As the Minister for Social Protection, I am not in the business of seeking to enhance the income of landlords and banks. I want to make the two systems as efficient and effective as possible, with the best value for money. We carried out an exhaustive survey of rent around the country based on the data available within the Department and from external sources. We found that rents paid were in excess of average rents. I published this material before Deputy O'Dea became spokesperson and a member of this committee. That may have been a historical matter but we sought to achieve rents that reflected commercial rents. It is being done on a case-by-case basis.

Community welfare officers, who deal with rent supplement, were transferred to my Department in October. We are currently working with them to enhance their work in a range of areas. There is much debate in the public domain about the Croke Park agreement but the Department of Social Protection, enabled by the Croke Park agreement, is undergoing the largest transformation in its history. Some 1,700 staff transferred from the HSE, including 1,000 community welfare officers and 700 staff from the FÁS employment offices and community employment schemes. The integration of these staff members is a major job. Issues have arisen involving the industrial relations procedures under the Croke Park agreement.

That partially answers another of the questions posed. The Deputy asked how long this process will take. We had to take in the staff first. We launched Pathways to Work earlier and it is now operating on a pilot basis. The number of people interviewed so far this year, the activation referrals, amounts to 100,000, an increase of 37%. I can make available the table to which I am referring. People are called to an interview, a group interview in some cases, followed by a one-to-one interview. Some of this depends on the configuration of the local social welfare office. The number of interviews scheduled is 75,000, an increase of 50%. The attendance rate for the first scheduled engagement is approximately 75%. When we invite people to an engagement, a group interview or a subsequent one-on-one interview, about 10% of referred clients leave the register prior to the first engagement and another 10% leave the register by the date of the second session. These statistics were reviewed in June and July.

We are operating a two strikes system in terms of our approach to fraud. People are invited to meet officials in a group engagement or in a one-to-one engagement. Of the 20% of people who sign off before the first or before the second engagement, many of them may have found a job that week. In other cases, we are not quite so clear but there is a turnover on the register. The vast majority of people welcome the engagement, while others do not have time in their busy schedules to engage. The problematic element is the remaining 5%. Some 3% of referred clients are still scheduled to attend the second engagement and 2% fail to do so. We are particularly concerned about the latter 2% and they become liable for penalty rates in respect of reductions in social welfare payments. Since the introduction of the penalty rates in May 2011, some 1,374 customers have had penalty rates applied. With the two strikes approach, a number of people sign off and we have a core consideration about why the remaining people, who are liable for penalty rates, are not responding. It is a lengthy process because we want to give people the opportunity to respond. I stress that most people respond and in some cases they have recently signed off anyway. In other cases, for their own good reasons they may leave the register.

This is a new approach and is important when one thinks about pensioners and the Deputy's comments about our social insurance fund. We want to ensure our pensioners can look forward to an adequate pension, whether it is the contributory pension or the non-contributory, means tested pension. We must ensure the resources in Department of Social Protection are used as well as possible. The vast majority of people interacting with the Department are as honest as the day is long but a percentage of people have a difficulty. Through the approach of Pathways to Work, we want them to come in so that we can help them.

I launched the Tús scheme shortly after I came into office. It has 5,000 people and is operated by local community partnerships and local development groups and networks. It exclusively targets, on a basis selected by the Department, people who have been unemployed for more than one year. In its deliberations in respect of social welfare, the IMF was anxious to examine some of the people who were long-term on the register. Through the local employment services and local partnerships, there is a great amount of valuable work being done around the country. I thank the local partnerships, the local development companies and the Leader companies that have used Tús and built it up to 5,000 people. It involves people who are on the register for more than one year. Many positive and encouraging developments are taking place for people on the live register. They are desperately anxious to contribute and to go back to education or to work. Some €84 million was provided for Tús, which amounted to an increase in expenditure in order to provide opportunities.

Our spend on JobBridge, which again is an activation opportunity, was in excess of €65 million - almost €67 million this year. That expenditure represents the increase in the expenditure on labour support mechanisms. It is a very important spend and I am very grateful to the Departments of Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform for making extra resources available.

The Deputy asked about the scale of the adjustment. I remind him that in November 2010 his Government set out a four year national recovery plan and Fianna Fáil's targets for social welfare were even more daunting. In 2013, Fianna Fáil wanted a reduction in the four year plan - I am sure the Deputy has it and is very familiar with it - of €1.4 billion. In 2014, it wanted a reduction of €1.9 billion. That would have meant a reduction of €800 million in 2013 and further reduction of €500 million in 2014, so his Government, in calling in the IMF, had a series of situations to grapple with in terms of social welfare expenditure. That was its suggestion.