Ms Alice-Mary Higgins:

Thank you, Chairman. I also thank the committee for this opportunity which we appreciate. I represent the National Women’s Council of Ireland, NWCI, which is the leading national women's membership organisation in Ireland. We represent 175 member groups across a diversity of backgrounds that have different interests in this area. We also represent a growing and committed individual membership. Economic independence for women, which is key to the discussion, is a core priority of our work.

The NWCI has long argued, most recently in the Careless to Careful Activation Report, produced by Dr. Mary Murphy who is present, that the limited focus on the live register on jobseeker payments cannot reflect or address the full picture of joblessness in Ireland or the levels of unemployment or underemployment among women of working age. While the live register may illustrate some important trends in terms of gender - men, for example leave the register at four times the rate for women, a large number of women who are jobless fall outside its scope. This is a useful opportunity to move the public and political debate on unemployment beyond the rise and fall of the live register and on to the question of joblessness.

We hoped to contribute perspectives on two aspects of context and then to make a couple of specific recommendations for the committee. The first important context is that wider access to activation will be needed in order for Ireland to meet its obligations and commitments on the increased economic participation of women. Increased economic participation of women is a core objective of Ireland’s national women’s strategy. It is also a key requirement within the Europe 2020 strategy. Earlier this month, the first country specific recommendations, CSRs, for Ireland delivered under the EU semester process strongly emphasised the need for new measures to support women’s economic participation. The CSRs noted that "Ireland has one of the highest proportions of people living in households with low work intensity in the EU." The rate moved from 14.% in 2007 to 24.% in 2011. The CSR also highlighted "the unequal labour market participation of women at 67.2% in 2013, as compared with 83.4% for men." It is worth noting that participation rates fall to 55% for married women.

The ESRI also noted a reversal in the long-term rise in female participation rates during recent years. Child care and access to child care must be tackled in order to ensure that Ireland’s targets for participation are to be achieved. That can be seen when we look at the Central Statistics Office's annual Women and Men in Ireland 2011 report. It is an important report that must be maintained on an annual basis. I am aware the matter is currently under discussion. In 2011, labour market participation for men and women aged 20 to 44 was equal at 85% for those without children. However, for those with a youngest child aged under three, women’s participation rate plummets to 57%, and even after the youngest child has reached the age of six, women’s participation still remains at only 58%. Clearly, that is a point at which women are falling out of the labour market and remaining out. The NWCI would strongly recommend that child care, and access to child care support such as the extension of child care supports currently available to those accessing various jobseekers schemes and projects, including afterschool care, should be considered as an essential as part of non-income activation support within the committee’s proposals.

Women also face significant obstacles to re-entering the labour market after any period of absence, as described by Bríd O’Brien. Those who have been out of the labour market for a period find avenues of activation have been closed to them. One of the few initiatives that was previously available was the spousal swap. The focus on the INOU’s presentation was on activation supports through means testing or due to their partner's employment. That has a strong gender dimension and particularly impacts on women and household insecurity. Given the increasingly precarious nature of much employment, including much employment available to women, for example, who may be offered precarious employment, there can be a reluctance to take it up if it inhibits the access that others in the family, including a partner, might have to activation. It is worth noting that by limiting activation in that way one is pushing families into a situation of relying on one partner to work which might be precarious and households can easily may slip into joblessness. We support the extension of training supports so that households have resilience and that they are job ready, and that one is looking at two job-ready individuals within a household.

Voluntary access to certain activation supports would also be welcomed by many women on disability payments. An option to seek out training or career planning supports could prove important to many women on one-parent family allowance to ensure they feel job ready after a period of absence. That should be a resource that is made available around career planning and training programme access.

Those are some of the issues of importance but in the limited time available I wish to focus on the specific question of qualified adults. In many ways they are a legacy of the social protection system’s origins in the idea of a single, usually male, breadwinner who is also the financial decision maker. Under the arrangement, recipients of social welfare payment such as a contributory pension or jobseeker’s allowance may receive an increase in their payment in respect of a qualified adult, previously known as an adult dependant, usually their spouse or partner.

There is a strong gendered dimension to this arrangement. More than 90% of qualified adults are women and, although in certain circumstances direct payment to the qualified adult is facilitated, the overall arrangement of payment to the usually male claimant for both partners contributes to an imbalance in the power and decision-making dynamics within families and households, including the decision to return to work. Those concerns were highlighted by women themselves in recent research by Creegan and Murphy. One quote is: "Sure I can hardly go to the shops without him wanting to know where I am, never mind working".

That power dynamic needs to be addressed, and extending access to activation supports is a way to ensure that women do not have to move through a filter.

Given that women are not in the system in their own right, very little is known about qualified adults. The National Women's Council has long called for a comprehensive data survey on the numbers of qualified adults and their circumstances. We strongly support the policy recommendations made by the Department of Social Protection, in its 2006 report, which suggested administrative individualisation as an important step towards an individualised social welfare system and concluded that "each person will have access in their own right to our system". Such administrative individualisation could be introduced. I am aware Dr. Murphy has a number of proposals as to how administrative individualisation could be incrementally and practically introduced, and we might address those during questions. These non-income activation proposals are a positive step in the right direction.

Currently, almost no activation schemes are open to qualified adults. Previously, the spousal swap was a very limited scheme that allowed a jobseeker claimant to transfer their entitlement to accessing community employment, CE, or back-to-education allowance to a partner. That was concluded in January of this year and the scheme has ended. Even though that scheme was flawed in that the decision rested with the usually male partner claimant, it allowed some families to negotiate a transfer between the breadwinner or carer roles in a family and to examine how those were allocated. Are we running out of time?