Ms Yvonne O'Sullivan:

I thank the Chairman and committee members for inviting us to talk about the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, pre-budget submission for 2014. One of FLAC's key priority areas is reform of social welfare law, especially concentrating on ensuring the State complies with its international human rights obligations. There are three main points that FLAC wishes to communicate today. First, budgeting choices should be based on Ireland's commitments to human rights law. Second, budgets should ensure the right to an adequate standard of living. Third, the social welfare appeals office should be reformed.

Austerity budgets have affected the Department of Social Protection's budget mainly since 2010. Meanwhile more people are relying on social welfare payments in a time of consistently high unemployment. Some 2.3 million people benefit from a social welfare payment in this State. How do we ensure the Government respects these people's rights with limited resources? FLAC argues the Government should put human rights at the core of its budgeting considerations. Such human rights budgeting has not been carried out by the Government to date but FLAC believes it would help to avoid disproportionately impacting on the most vulnerable people in our society and ensure fair and open budgeting decisions. For example, social impact assessments should be done pre-budget to evaluate the potential impact of any proposed cuts on different groups in society before any damage could be done.

While once-off consultations, such as the social inclusion forum, allow organisations to feed into policies affecting the most marginalised groups in society once a year, FLAC considers it would be of better use to have regular inputs from people working directly with these groups and the wider public to ensure the budget decisions are well-informed, realistic and effective. Another useful measure FLAC, along with the Council of Europe Commissioner for Human Rights, recommends is for governments to refer budgetary proposals to the national human rights structures as another way of meeting our human rights obligations.

Second, FLAC calls on the Government to guarantee the right to an adequate standard of living, so that every person has the right to live in dignity. Earlier this year the UN passed a resolution on the key role of social protection systems establishing a minimum standard of living, which can tackle poverty and social exclusion. As an example of guidelines on minimum income which a person needs to live in basic dignity, one could examine the recent reasonable living expenses now used by the Insolvency Service of Ireland to set social welfare standards. FLAC calls on the Government to ensure nobody is reduced to destitution through an action by the State.

Third, at a time when more and more people are depending on social welfare payments, FLAC is singling out the social welfare appeals office as a body for reform. In a report published by FLAC last year we found the appeals system lacked transparency, independence and fairness. FLAC's experience is that many people need help when making social welfare appeals because the system is too complex and very confusing. For example, FLAC assisted one woman who had waited two years for the outcome of a social welfare appeal. This led to her resorting to eating out of bins, and this after eventually getting her payment, and she suffered greatly in the meantime. She got her payment, but she had always been entitled to it, even at the beginning of two years.

We acknowledge that the social welfare appeals office is under much pressure with limited resources and increased workloads, but FLAC's basic and practical proposals would be to improve the appeals office's effectiveness and ensure we meet our human rights duties. Ultimately, our line is that the Government cannot plead limited resources as a way of not honouring the State's human rights commitments in its budgetary decisions. I thank the members of their attention.