Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the witnesses very much for their presentations this morning. They have been very helpful.

We heard earlier, and this is something we all know, that the social protection system is Ireland is ad hoc. There have been loads of bolt-ons as it has developed. It is broadly changing from one type of social protection system to another. I am not sure that is necessarily being driven by some sort of an ideological top-down approach. It is difficult to identify across the political system in Ireland whether there is any real coherent vision for what we would like our social protection system to look like in ten, 15 or 20 years from now, which is an issue. Because we have had all these various bolt-ons to solve a particular problem or fill a hole, however, we have a very fragmented system, particularly when it comes to means-testing. I very much take on board the point made by Mr. O'Connor that above one fifth of the payments made by social protection are means-tested in Ireland, which is very much an outlier. Only Denmark has more and they have a very different system.

It is often the role of a TD to act as a customer relationship management, CRM, system. The meat and drink of our constituency clinics are actually people who come in because they do not know what they are entitled to. Very often, we are trying to link people who come into our constituency offices to something to which they are entitled. I do not know if that is necessarily the most common issue, but it is certainly what most constituency clinics and offices do. However, the onus should be on the State rather than on the elected representatives to reach citizens and explain to them exactly what it is they are entitled to. The witnesses made the point very strongly that we need to stop moving the goalposts quite so much that people might be entitled to something this week and not be entitled next week. If we are making broad scale changes to our rates of social protection, we need the different parts to speak to one another, not only because we need to avoid cliff edges but to make sure we are not pushing people off the cliff as well, which is something that very often happens. The message coming across very strongly is that we need to do something about the consolidation of means-testing so that it is happening in one place and the different parts of the apparatus are speaking to one another.

The committee has been strong in calling for benchmarking. The witnesses made reference to the roadmap of social inclusion and commitments therein. The idea is that it should be something people are hanging on the budget on a yearly basis to plan out their fixed income against the background of inflation whereas it is, unfortunately, very clear to people that they should wait around on budget day to find out whether they have €5, €10 or €12 extra in the week to try to help them get across the line.

The complexity leads to a level of stigmatisation. If somebody comes into my office and I tell them I think they could be eligible for something and we should have a look at it, it almost feels like we are trying to pull a fast one on the system whereas we are not at all. This is an entitlement somebody has. The stigmatisation should not, therefore, be there.

I am not sure anything I have said yet amounts to a question. I do have a couple of questions, however. I want the witnesses to comment on the taxation of universal benefits a little more. There is merit in it and it has to be examined. I also would not make any bones about it being controversial, however. If we talk about a taxation on child benefit, for example, which is the best known universal payment, that will not be without pushback. We would have to consider very carefully what the cost-benefit analysis on that would be because it is one of the very few universal payments we have about which people do not feel in any way stigmatised. They actually feel that is something the State provides by way of thanks as part of the social contract.

I also want the witnesses to take the opportunity to explore this idea of credited social insurance and investigate it in light of issues such as participation income, which we hear about a lot, and how they might see that working in practice.