Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank all our guests for attending today. The topic for discussion is the impact of social protection payments on income distribution.

Before we commence, for the information of our guests, I must read a note on privilege, although many of them will probably be familiar with it. I draw to their attention that by virtue of section 17(2)(l) of the Defamation Act 2009, witnesses are protected by absolute privilege in respect of their evidence to the joint committee. If, however, they are directed by it to cease giving evidence on a particular matter and continue to so do, they are entitled thereafter only to qualified privilege in respect of their evidence. They are directed that only evidence connected with the subject matter of these proceedings is to be given and are asked to respect the parliamentary practice to the effect that, where possible, they should not criticise or make charges against any person or an entity by name or in such a way as to make him, her or it identifiable. The opening statements submitted to the committee will be published on its website after the meeting. Members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice to the effect that I have just outlined.

At the request of the broadcasting services, everybody, including myself, must, for the duration of the meeting, turn off their mobile phones or switch them to flight or safe mode, as otherwise they will interfere with the broadcasting equipment. I am switching my mobile phone to flight mode and I ask that everybody does the same.

The topic of today's meeting relates to the issue of social protection payments and their impact on income distribution. The purpose of social transfers, which is an issue our committee would examine as part of our brief, is to alleviate poverty, support well-being and reduce inequalities in society by redistributing income. We know from many studies that the level of personal household income has a major bearing on issues related to people's health, welfare and opportunities that are available to individuals and, in particular, to children. Another very current issue is that income equality in itself is an objective for society because there is considerable evidence that societies with more income equality do better in many respects, including life expectancy. Considerable analysis on that has been done during the course of the recession. Many studies have been done on the issue of income distribution and the impact of budgetary measures on that, including social protection. We are having this meeting to examine that issue further.

Our committee has been examining the issue of equality budgeting. Since this committee was established a few years ago, we started to examine the issue of equality budgeting in the context of when we had our pre-budget hearing. We have had the Think-tank for Action and Social Change, TASC and Social Justice Ireland in previously on that matter. I, a few other members, including Deputy Ó Snodaigh, and the Clerk to the Committee went to Scotland to examine how they do equality budgeting there. They do it in the sense of taking account of the grounds for discrimination, which includes gender, disabilities and so on, but we have also examined it in terms of income inequality and equality. This is an ongoing topic that the committee has been examining.

To assist the committee on this we have with us delegates from the Economic and Social Research Institution, ESRI, which is represented by Professor Tim Callan and Professor Dorothy Watson, and from TASC, which is represented by Mr. Cormac Staunton. We also have Dr. Donal de Buitléir and Mr. Cormac O'Sullivan from PublicPolicy.ie, while Professor John FitzGerald is here in his own personal capacity. To commence the discussion, I invite Professor Callan to make his presentation.