Ms Michelle Murphy:

The challenge is that the one thing that the past period has done is it has taken away the attention from income adequacy because we have had the pandemic unemployment payment. Now there is the potential for a very large number of people moving from that to the jobseeker's allowance and then, after six months, to a means-tested payment at a rate of between €200 and €300, which is significantly lower than the top level of the pandemic unemployment payment, and that is why the benchmarking issue is key. Benchmarking the core social welfare rates to 27.5% of average earnings is one of the key means of reaching our own national poverty targets. There is a gap there of approximately €20 and we will be looking for a €10 increase in core social welfare rates in budget 2022 and another €9 to €10 in budget 2023, which is vital. If welfare rates had been benchmarked in 2016 at that rate, an extra 12,000 adults of working age would have been lifted out of poverty. If the benchmark was raised by 1% to 28.5%, 28,000 adults would be lifted out of poverty. That is going a very significant way to meeting our poverty targets.

One other issue on the point of anger is youth unemployment and older workers who were in vulnerable positions and training. We have to look back to the learnings from the previous crash with, for example, the youth guarantee. The pilot was very good. Insufficient resources, however, were put into the guarantee itself and the outcomes from that. This time around we need a task force, and to be completely sure that we have new training in place for those new jobs that are going to come on scheme. These have to be well-paid jobs and we have to keep these young people connected to the labour market. There has to be an outcome for them. This caused significant problems in other European countries in the levels of youth unemployment during the crisis and the lack of prospects for young people.

As to older workers, one certainly has to look at a county and regional level at what is there, how these workers traineeships are offered, and how they are transitioned. People have to be given opportunities. If not, then that anger will come. It is vital that we get our training, skills and our industrial strategy right. Some €22 billion is available from the European Commission in funds for youth unemployment. We have to ensure that whatever proportion of that we get is used very well.