Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

If Senator Butler does not mind, I will respond to the questions in reverse order. I will also talk about self-employed people in the context of what Senator Butler raised, if Deputy Carey does not mind, starting with the Christmas bonus. As I think I said to other Deputies, that will be discussed in the context of the overall budget. Those deliberations will not be concluded for the next couple of weeks but we have an ambition in that regard. As I said yesterday, regarding the social contract that exists between the State and people who need support at various stages in their lives, I very much recognise how difficult it is to live on a fixed income, so anything the State can do, it is our responsibility to make sure we do it.

I will tell Deputy Carey about paternity leave. I hear the points he makes, and we have struggled with this because there has been a lower uptake than we would like. To that end, we ran a national advertising campaign in August of this year because it was the first anniversary of the introduction of the payment. We did radio, online, social media and we even had the ad in which Mary talked to Johnny. We did everything we could on that anniversary to highlight paternity leave. I fear there are probably other fundamental reasons behind our male colleagues in Ireland not taking it up in the same numbers as our ladies do, but we will look at it again. Sometimes I wonder: there are so many positive benefits that come out of this Department, yet one still meets people who say they did not know about this or about that. It is a constant struggle and we are very much aware of it. We are trying to make it as easy as possible to deal with the people whom we are here to serve.

I echo what Deputy Carey said in his opening remarks. I worked in the Taoiseach's Department earlier this year, and the people there are absolutely deadly; they are great. I have never come across such a bunch of people - both the people sitting around me and the wider range of people I have met - as those with whom I have had the privilege to work in the past couple of months in the Department of Social Protection. I have genuinely never seen the ethos, the energy, the passion, the commitment, the enthusiasm and the particular grá for looking after people who are more vulnerable than others in society that exist in this Department. It is a real honour for me to be able to work with them and I totally echo the remarks Deputy Carey made about the Department.

The 13 staff have already moved over. The transition was absolutely seamless. They have been integrated into the organisational structure for a number of weeks at this stage. Their remit and authority regarding specific items of legislation have not necessarily changed but their structure has been very much welcomed into Áras Mhic Dhiarmada, Store Street, they are now part of a larger and wider team and, as I said, they are very welcome. The budget, which is just €1.6 million, has been transferred and, as I said earlier to Senator Higgins, the first legislation we will publish will be the employment rights Bill. I am absolutely adamant not only that it will be published before Christmas but also that, with the good help of all members, we will get it into the House and get it started to make sure we enshrine those people's rights in legislation.

Apart from what came in the budget last year, there have been welcome changes in the Department, and I acknowledge Senator Butler's acknowledgement of the fact that we have increased by €10 million the back-to-school allowance. It has helped 137,000 families. Therefore, it is not small change; it is a significant increase of 25%. One would hope to be able to bring it back to the same levels at which it was before the recession took place and the country fell off a cliff. The size and amount of reductions that have had to take place over the past number of years have struck me. People felt those reductions; they were real and again, from our perspective, our social contract is to try to return whatever fruits the growing economy brings to those who need it the most. The increase in the back-to-school allowance is particularly welcome. We are now spending just over €47 million on it. I wish to acknowledge the fuel allowance changes that Deputy Carey welcomed. When one considers the fact that 57,000 people are availing of it, the changes made common sense, were easy to do and were the right thing to do, and I acknowledge that.

Regarding self-employed people, we are exceptional in this country in that Irish people have a much higher rate of entrepreneurial genes in our bodies than other countries' populations have. There are thousands and thousands of enterprising self-starters in this country. Senator Butler is right in this regard, and Deputy Carey alluded to it too. They are some of the most hard-working people who had the initiative not only to set up and create their own jobs, but also to employ other people in this country over the years. They were one of the groups of people hardest affected during the recession because not only did they lose their jobs, they also did not get access to the same support services that were available to all other groups unfortunate enough to lose their jobs, as they did in their tens of thousands over the past ten years. Thankfully, that has changed now and that corner has been turned. We welcome that a survey done of more than 20,000 self-employed people suggested they would be willing to pay a higher percentage of social insurance. We are doing an actuarial review and that will be taken into consideration. The review will be issued to us in the coming weeks. We will use it to form part of a much larger deliberation as to how we improve the Social Insurance Fund over the coming years but, more importantly, what it delivers for the people. I think the committee is well aware that the Taoiseach wants to improve the delivery of that social insurance contract with Irish people and it is my job to make sure that extends to people with self-employed status. Personally, I do not favour having to ask self-employed people to pay any more but I am only one voice at that table. However, it is acknowledged, and it is welcome, that the survey of self-employed people has found they would be willing to pay up to 5.5% more. The difficulty, as the Senator Butler knows, is that it is all in or all out; it cannot just be the people who want to pay in. It is all or nothing. There are industry difficulties in this regard and some self-employed people do not want to pay in, but my determination, as well as that of the Department and the Taoiseach is to make sure we extend the same benefits to people who are brave enough to provide their own jobs for themselves and for others as those for people who go to work in other employment scenarios.

Senator Butler acknowledged the Mangan report. That was a very large body of work. It did not just recommend the 5.5% increase; all the other recommendations will form part of whatever the new social contract, which will be arrived at over the course of the coming months based on our deliberations, will be. The Senator's suggestion about putting one's entitlements on one's P60 is interesting. I think An Post would be delighted if we did that because there would probably be about 20 pages in every envelope.

A huge amount of information is available to everyone on our website, and I am not saying this just because I am in company, but it is a really easy website to navigate. There is a huge amount of pictorial elements to it. It is not a difficult website to find or navigate, but our challenge is probably to get people to go to the website in the first place. I have had a similar issue with our Twitter account over the past couple of weeks. My Twitter account has more followers than does the Department's account and that is a bit odd, given we deal with millions of people weekly and monthly, so there is a challenge. We need to make sure the information we have is exceptionally easy to get and to navigate. It is just a matter of trying to bridge that gap between people not knowing what their entitlements are to when they are entitled to them and when those entitlements kick in or start to wane. That is a challenge but it is one I am aware of and one we will look at. Again, I acknowledge Senator Butler's keen expressed interest that we would continue to give the Christmas bonus to people, and he is right. People spend it in their local communities and on things they need. I was at the launch of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, INOU, booklet yesterday that the Department funds. It is an exceptionally valuable resource and outlines in a really simple way every single scheme that exists within the Department, how one gets on to each and one's entitlements. It is a deadly booklet. I was very struck yesterday by something a lady said to me. Someone asked why we are wasting money printing the booklet and said we should just put it on our website. The lady said to me that in order to access broadband, she needs €50 a month to be able to give to Sky, Eir or whoever else provides broadband, and not everyone on a fixed income has that €50 a month. Another lady mentioned the fact that even an ink cartridge costs €80. When people make sweeping statements about people on fixed incomes, these are things they do not acknowledge or recognise, namely, that there are additional expenses to being able to access information. That is why we fund a booklet as valuable as Working for Work that was published yesterday by the INOU and we will continue to fund it. I acknowledge the Senator's wish for the Christmas bonus to be paid this year and acknowledge the increase he welcomed in the back-to-school allowance.