Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I identify with Deputy Bailey regarding the fanfare. I have not been involved in a fanfare; I have always been clear that the priority of this budget was to be prudent. It was not a giveaway budget either in terms of welfare increases or tax cuts. It was a prudent budget designed to reduce the deficit and make sure the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Any changes will be modest. On previous occasions, when the Christmas bonus was paid, there were press briefings, photo calls and so on. I have not done any of that. I do not wish to criticise my predecessor but she had a big photo call and all the rest of it. I deliberately decided not to do any of that for obvious reasons. I do not wish to make out that this is a giveaway; it is nothing of the sort.

The issue of people retiring aged 65 and not receiving the State pension until they are 66 is taxing my mind at the moment. Deputy O'Dea mentioned it and he will be interested to know that while I was walking around the milk market in Limerick the other day, I met somebody who was required to retire at 65 but did not want to. She still has lots to offer but she is on the jobseeker's allowance until she receives her pension. She does not particularly want her pension at 66. She is a young 65 and still wants to work. Why should she not? We need to do something about this. It should have been joined up at the time but it was not. That was a mistake made by the previous Government, of which I was a member. When the State pension age was increased, we should have introduced the other measures at the same time but that was not done. It is important though to remember that there is no compulsory retirement age in Ireland. Nobody is required to retire at 65 and, therefore, they are not forced to sign on. They can take a new job. Many people in their 70s are working. It is not that anyone is forced to sign on or is required by law to retire but many people, particularly public servants, are required to retire at 65 under the terms of their contracts. An interdepartmental group looked into this.

It reported before the summer but it did not come up with enough. It was one of these interdepartmental groups where the report indicated what we needed to consider, whereas I would usually think a group would come up with solutions. I have a particular interest in this, as does the Minister of State, Deputy McEntee, who has responsibility for older people. I have written to the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Donohoe, about this, particularly with regard to public servants. When it comes to our own staff, surely we should be in a position to say that if they do not want to retire at 65, they can wait until they are 66 or 67. In areas like the health service it would be useful as it is quite hard to replace consultants and others who retire at 65 and before they want to.

I had a very interesting meeting with representatives of the Unite trade union during the week who told me about the law in Northern Ireland. It might not be true but I am checking it; this is where I will say something good about Northern Ireland for a change. Apparently the law in Northern Ireland means that if somebody is required to retire by a contract before the state retirement age, that person must be informed six months in advance and the onus is on the employer to prove why that person must retire at 65 rather than the state retirement age of 66 or 67. That approach might provide a solution for us. I need to check that and it might be something we could do in the spring Bill. As far as I am concerned we need to increase the State pension age. In the 1970s, when many of us here were born, the State pension age was 70 and people lived until they were 72 or 73. The State pension age is now 66 and people live until their 80s. One does not need a masters degree in maths to understand why we have a problem funding pensions. We need to raise the State retirement age but we also need to facilitate people in working longer, particularly if they want to. I hope we can sort that out in the first half of next year.

If we brought payment of the pension increase forward to 1 January, the additional cost would have been €23 million and for all payments it would have been closer to €70 million. The rent supplement increase is €9 million and we will come back with the figures for the discretionary payments element. We know that since rent supplement limits were increased, the number of discretionary payments required fell off dramatically, although they are starting to tick up again. The reason the increase is not as big as one might think is because of the transfer to the housing assistance payment, HAP. When we move from rent supplement to HAP, the budget moves from our Department to the Department of Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. There are also fewer people on rent supplement because more people are back working.

Deputy Carey raised disability and carers' payments, particularly the delays in processing carers' payments. That has improved substantially, coming down from approximately 19 weeks to approximately 13 or 14 weeks now. We need to keep bringing that down. I have been to Longford, where staff are based, and met them. Additional staff are being provided but it is quite a specialised area so those staff will need to be trained for a while. The longer they are working there, the more quickly they will make decisions. It is something we are working on. There was a big increase in the spending for the carer support grant because we publicised the fact that one does not need to be in receipt of carer's allowance to get the carer support grant. Many people did not know that and thought if they did not qualify for the carer's allowance, they could not get the carer support grant. They can and we publicised that fact a bit this year, getting a flood of additional applications to Longford, which was good.

We are wondering about the increase in the number of people on disability and carer payments and we are trying to examine it in more detail. Demographics is a major factor and there are more people and particularly older people in the country. If there are more people and older people, there will be more people with disabilities and who need care. It is partly about demographics but it is not all about them. We are a bit concerned that there may be a drift in people from the jobseeker's allowance to carer's or disability allowance. I would come across that in my constituency work. There are people on jobseeker's allowance who probably should be on disability allowance because they are unable to work, which is fine, but there are people who certainly come into my office who are under pressure to take up employment. I am surprised when they say to my face "I am thinking of going on the sick, what do you reckon?" We believe there is a drift of people who are benefit shopping and moving from a payment with conditionality and activation attached to one that does not. We have that concern but we do not yet have figures to back it up. We must be very much aware of that.

The outturn in the farm assist programme this year was €79 million and the estimated expenditure next year is €82.8 million. These are guesses, or intelligent estimates, as Deputies know the way in which farm incomes work. They are very dependent on the price of milk or beef. Given that we are fully reversing the cuts made in the past couple of years, the number of families benefitting might increase from approximately 8,000 to 10,000. We should bear in mind that any family, even those currently in receipt of it, will get more. This will be affected by the rural social scheme, RSS, as there are 500 more spaces on that. Those who move from farm assist to RSS come off one budget and on to another despite being the same people.

There is an underspend on community employment, CE, this year. Many people have speculated on this, as we have seen today, but the main reason is obvious. There are half as many unemployed as there were four years ago. Unemployment has gone down from 15% to 7.5% and in that time, the number of schemes has increased by over 50%. There used to be a certain number of people applying for a certain number of schemes but now we have fewer people applying to more schemes. The overriding reason there are fewer people on the schemes is that there are half as many people unemployed as there have been. The number of schemes increased significantly during the recession but we have not pared them back all that much. I know many CE supervisors around the country are blaming it on JobPath but that bothers me because it fundamentally misunderstands what JobPath does. It is not another scheme, like CE, Tús, or Gateway. JobPath is the process of somebody being worked with intensively for a year, essentially being recruited into employment. If somebody goes on CE or Tús, he or she is still a cost to the Exchequer. Somebody who gets a job through JobPath moves from being somebody dependent on a State payment to somebody who is not receiving a State payment and is working and paying tax. One can think of the benefit for the individual and society. If after a year that person does not get a job, once again he or she becomes eligible for CE and Tús. I get really bothered when I get letters from CE supervisors and others suggesting that in some way, JobPath is competing with them or taking their people. That is akin to saying a person has a job in a factory or a restaurant and cannot be kept on welfare. It is a totally wrong approach and I get worried about CE supervisors who think that way and who see real and gainful employment paid for by someone else, with taxes being paid into the system, as something that is in competition with them.