Eoin Hayes (Dublin Bay South, Social Democrats)

I move amendment No. 7:

In page 7, between lines 29 and 30, to insert the following:

“(3) The Minister shall carry out a review on the rate increases that would be required in order to move towards social welfare rates which meet a Minimum Essential Standard of Living (MESL) and shall commission a departmental study on the effect that adequacy of social welfare rates could have on addressing poverty levels and the findings shall be presented to the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social Protection within 6 months of the passing of this Act.”.

I welcome and thank the Minister and his Department for funding this kind of research into the minimum essential standard of living, which I think is important in terms of deprivation and how we think about poverty more generally. This idea that there is a minimum essential standard of living that every person should be entitled to and that every person should have access to is important. How we index our social welfare rates is going to be one of the big questions over the coming decade or so. Specifically, when we think about deprivation and poverty levels, one of the things that has come to my attention from a lot of my constituency work is that there are people who may be on what we would call decent incomes but actually may still be experiencing a lot of deprivation, often because of housing costs or something else of that nature. This question of minimum essential standard of living and how we actually index social welfare rates and how we make sure those things are pegged so that deprivation is not something that is affecting a lot of people or a disproportionate number of people is a worthy cause. I hope that he accepts this amendment.