Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I move amendment No. 13:

In page 14, between lines 11 and 12, to insert the following:"(1A) The Minister shall produce regulations governing the method by which the requirement in paragraph (a) of subsection (1) to remain habitually resident in order for any entitlement to subsist may be controlled or verified by the Department and these regulations must ensure that any such control method or review procedure adopted results in consistent decision-making and is not overly burdensome on those affected.",".

The provision in section 10 regarding the habitual residence condition represents a welcome change in this area and a helpful clarification. It is an issue that has caused a great deal of confusion and is something I encounter regularly in my constituency office. However, in its submission on the Bill, the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC, point out that the wording of the provision is unnecessarily opaque and may actually lead to further confusion and misinterpretation by decision makers. The submission highlights a lack of clarity as to whether the provisions refer only to persons and their family members who have been less than 12 months in their host countries or to all workers. This is clearly a complex area of policy and we should, as in all legislation, be seeking to simplify the language, if at all possible, without undermining the intention.
The Department should have the ability to take action to ensure social welfare payments are only made to those persons who are entitled to them. We are all agreed on that and it is something I have consistently encouraged. We have some concern, however, regarding the eventual outworking of these provisions and whether additional safeguards might be necessary. We must avoid a scenario where an unfair burden is placed on people by requiring them repeatedly to jump through hoops to prove their habitual residence. Once a person has proved that status, he or she should not have to keep doing so every few months, with all of the bureaucracy that entails. People should not be reluctant to leave the State to visit relatives, for example, for fear their payments will be cut off.
The provisions in section 10 seem at first reading to address concerns that have been raised in this regard over the years. I welcome these changes in the main. This is a complicated area of policy, as I said, which is further complicated by our EU membership and the implications of the common travel area. The phrase "social welfare tourism" often comes up in discussions of this issue. Certainly, we should not facilitate people who would come here to avail of a beneficial social welfare system, but that must be set against our responsibilities as a developed state to ensure that people who come here to work and who pay taxes in this State also benefit from our social protection provision. In fairness, the change to the existing regime set out in this section will address some of the difficulties in this regard. We must ensure, however, that the provisions are enforced properly across the board. One of the problems heretofore is that there has been a variety of interpretations by deciding officers in different parts of the country, with those interpretations being subsequently overturned by the social welfare appeals office in some cases.
My amendment proposes that the Minister would produce regulations governing the method by which the requirement in regard to habitual residence will be controlled or verified. It is a simple amendment and I am interested in the Minister's view of whether I have put the right construction on it. If the issue I am raising is already captured in law and I have read the provision incorrectly, I look forward to her clarification.