Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all the organisations, many of which we met during the year when they came in to give presentations. As many of them mentioned in their submissions, it is really a question of choices. We are faced with a choice in this budget, perhaps to a greater extent than in any of the previous budgets with which we have dealt so far in this Government.

I ask the witnesses to comment briefly on some of the emerging data, such as what today's OECD report stated about Ireland. It would be useful for the committee if the panel responded to some of the points that have been made in that report. I will start with ICTU. It is difficult to disagree with anything ICTU states in its pre-budget submission. There is a commonality in many of the positions that we as a committee had presented to us yesterday and many of the positions that are being presented today, to the point that we are really seeing two sides of the coin. One side of the coin is that the Government should not do anything that will reduce spending in areas of vulnerability, and the other is that it should not do anything that will increase taxation, as we heard yesterday from the Small Firms Association, IBEC and some of the other organisations dealing with employment creation. I am trying to square the circle between the two perspectives. I note that the OECD in its report today urged the Government to persevere with the conditions and targets of the EU-IMF programme and to continue to reduce the budget deficit to below 3% of GDP for 2015 - in other words, that the Government should stay on track. They suggest that if we do so, in the next budget the Government will have available to it somewhere between €600 million and €700 million to ease back next year. In other words, they seem to be suggesting that the Government stay on track and restore international confidence, after which it will be in a position to ease back on the deficits next year. I ask ICTU to comment on that. First, is it a choice? What is ICTU's view of the OECD analysis? If there is a choice for the Government to take the pain now and have more to give back next year, is that what we should do, or is it ICTU's continued belief that austerity has gone so far that the OECD analysis is wrong and we need to start injecting demand back into the economy at this stage?

I was particularly struck by one of the comments the OECD made in its report, because it is an analysis I have seen previously. I wonder whether the INOU has any comment on it. In its wider criticism of the welfare and labour market system in Ireland, the OECD noted that we have the highest proportion of jobless households in the European Union, but what is more stark is the fact that prior to the recession we had the second highest proportion. They are saying - forget the recession and forget what has happened since 2007-2008 - that prior to 2007, we had a real structural problem in this country relating to employment. How can we factor that into our analysis? Specifically, in its analysis of some of our programmes, the OECD is deeply critical of the community employment, CE, scheme and states that it should be reserved for those who are most marginal and have the least possible access to the labour market. I wonder whether the panel would have any comment to make on that. The OECD states we have spent far too much time on income supports and not enough time on labour market activation, and I doubt anyone on the panel will disagree with that perspective.

On the National Youth Council of Ireland, it has certainly struck me that over the past number of budgets - not only those of this Government - our definition of a young person has risen from 18 years to 25 years when it comes to income supports. It is offensive to young people in Ireland that those over the age of 18 are deemed to be different from others who are unemployed in the labour market. Does Mr. Doorley have any comment on that? It is also of great concern that in other areas, such as rent supplement and local authority social housing, it is being suggested, for example, that young people can share and are not entitled to live independently if they happen to be under the age of 25. In fact, that ceiling is rising to 35 in the United Kingdom. Is this a trend for which we should be watching here?

I have been struck by the extent to which the youth budget has suffered disproportionately in comparison with the rest of the budget for children and youth affairs. The youth affairs section of that budget has taken a massive hit. Perhaps that reflects the priorities of Government with regard to the referendum on children, etc., but is there a case to be made for splitting that Department and ring-fencing the budget for youth affairs to protect it from being further eroded? One does not like to drive a wedge between children and youth affairs as issues, but there is such a case to be made.