Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of the committee, I thank the Minister for the changes she has made to the carer's allowance and, in particular, the reforms in the CE schemes. The committee has directly raised these issues with her. There are a significant number of vacancies, up to 2,000, on the schemes. It is important we try to get the participation rates up. A small bit of flexibility will make a big difference there. Overall, the Minister is now spending one in four euro of every euro allocated by Government. A significant tranche of funding is going directly through her Department. Some €58,000 is being spent every minute by the Department, which is a substantial sum. That leaves significant responsibility on this committee to monitor the spending of that money.

Members earlier raised questions about trying to get people back to work. It is imperative we deal with some of the barriers forcing people to remain in low-paid employment or to remain on the live register and not take up employment. There are issues relating to tax and PRSI, in that if people work additional hours, they are financially worse off as a result of it. These issues have to be eradicated from the system.

Our housing income thresholds have not increased in a decade, while house prices have more than doubled in the same period. The cut-offs are black and white. People go €1 over the income threshold and end up losing their housing support and being removed from the housing list. That is completely unacceptable. The objective of all our Covid supports should be about trying to keep the connection with work and keep people in work.

I am not just saying this now. I said this in advance of the PUP coming in. We should have resourced the EWSS more and given it priority. The decision was made to introduce the PUP and that is the payment in place at the moment. Seeing as we are talking on 1 December, I will focus on the EWSS, as the Minister knows the rates are being reduced from today.

She also knows first hand, as a former Minister for Business, Enterprise and Innovation, how vital that support has been to small local businesses over the pandemic to date. It has been a vital support to them to keep their doors open, employees on their books and it is hoped, be able to trade out of this pandemic. They are the backbone of the economy. In my constituency in counties Roscommon and Galway and in her constituency, they are the bulk of the driving force behind our local economies.

However, some of these sectors are being crucified. Hospitality is one, but there are others. The Minister is correct in that they are being allowed, under the Government restrictions, to remain open and continue to trade.

At the same time we have the Government openly advising people not to go into these businesses, not to trade with them, and to stay away from the businesses. On the one hand, the doors remain open and we are not closing them, but we are issuing advice to them to minimise the engagement with those particular businesses. What alternative supports are being put in place for those specific businesses where the Chief Medical Office and the Government are advising people to stay away from them while keeping the doors open? It is putting a huge financial strain on those businesses.

Has consideration been given to including the Christmas bonus in the ordinary Estimates for the Department rather than going through this charade every year where we bring in the Christmas bonus on the run into Christmas? It would lead to more transparent Estimates and provide reassurance to the public in the early part of the year, rather than having to wait for the bonus to come on the eve of Christmas.

On the Social Insurance Fund requirements, will the Minister give the committee an indication of what the Department has anticipated for the running in the near future of the fund, based on where we are with Covid-19 and the projections that she has on that? The past 18 months have proven the volatility that can be there in the fund, especially with working age payments. As the Minister will be aware, the pensions commission has made a recommendation that the State pension element of the Social Insurance Fund should be accounted for separately. The Minister will know that it is far more predictable in terms of the demands it has put on the pension element of the fund, and to provide that element of transparency, and that the pension element of fund should be accounted for separately. Are measures are being taken in the Department to implement that in the short term?

Finally, there is an issue that I know we will return to in the new year. As we are dealing with the Estimates, I want to raise the issue of departmental performance targets. Those targets are set by the management board of the Department. We as a committee feel that we should have a role in engaging with the management board on those particular targets. For example, instead of control measures measuring the target savings and the percentage of repayments that are made, that should be about the number of reviews that are being performed, which would negate the need to recover money in the first instance. It should not be about recovering money; it should be about minimising the overpayments, which is far cheaper for the Department and creates far less hardship for recipients. The target measurements for appeals and Pathways to Work had been removed from those performance measurements. We believe that this should be reintroduced and that there should be a mechanism to measure those gaining in sustainable employment within the performance targets set by the Department. This would negate the need for the Department to provide top-up payments such as the working family payment. Tweaking some of the performance targets could bring about far better deliverables for the Department, and provide a greater level of transparency for the public, especially when this Department is spending in excess of €1 in every €4 that is being allocated by the Government. I thank the Minister.