Dr. Ciara Fitzpatrick:

I thank the Cathaoirleach for the invitation to articulate an ambition that I share with colleagues across this island, that a new social security system in a unified state is one that is built on the tenets of dignity, respect and the provision of a replacement income which will ensure that all people can afford a minimum standard of living. To this point, the social security and pensions systems North and South have not received extensive attention in the increasing discord on the future of this island, despite the provision of social protection accounting for one of the largest areas of public expenditure in both jurisdictions. As such, we very much welcome the opportunity to emphasise how important it is to provide this area of social policy with forensic consideration in ongoing constitutional debate.

I am pleased to report that Dr. Boland and I are involved in a new group, the All-Island Social Security Network, AISSN, which brings together a group of academics who are researching the social security system North and South to think through some of many complexities of unifying or co-ordinating two huge wheels of government administration into an effective system that delivers for those who require economic protection. Our first official meeting will be in May and we are keen to maintain contact with this committee and others across political and civil society who are imagining a new Ireland.

I will first address social security in the North. The British social security system, with which Northern Ireland largely maintains parity, and the social security system in the Republic of Ireland have more in common than which divides them, as both systems mirrored the development of the British welfare state following partition. Yet, in the last ten years, we have witnessed increasing divergence in the generosity of both systems, particularly for those of working age and in respect of the levels of conditionality applied to claimants. Current benefit levels in the North can be considered to be at an all-time low since their introduction in the 1948. At that time, unemployment benefit was equivalent to 20% of average weekly earnings. Today’s equivalent, the universal credit standard allowance, has fallen to 12.5%. The most recent uprating means that working-age social protection is being maintained at the greatly diminished level of adequacy it had reached in the late 2010s.

The trend of providing support outside the social security system, through a series of one-off payments to those in receipt of some social security benefits and through a web of discretionary payments provided by the Department for Communities, the Housing Executive and some larger local councils, continues. One-off payments provide some temporary relief from immediate pressures but no long-term protection against poverty. Those at pension age have been protected to a greater extent due to the Conservative Party’s commitment to maintain the triple lock, which denotes that pensions will rise by the highest of three measures, namely, inflation, wage growth or a figure of 2.5%.

The benefit cap, which caps the income a household can receive from the social security system and is mitigated in Northern Ireland until 2025, and the two-child limit, which limits protection to the first two children born after April 2017, break a long-standing, Beveridgean link between benefit awards and need, measured according to family size and housing costs, in favour of an unjustified retrogression of rights under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The British social security system is at a conditionality precipice where the post-war aim of developing a centralised system to provide some semblance of economic security has become secondary to ensuring the unemployed claimant and, more recently, the low-paid claimant can secure complete financial independence from the state. Over the past ten years, the government has substantially sharpened the stick for those claiming social security benefits to beat them into any form of work, despite its own evidence suggesting that such punitive approaches have limited value and yield far from optimum results, with those sanctioned more likely to be forced into low paid and precarious employment.

What about social security in a new Ireland?In our paper for the Analysing and Researching Ireland North and South, ARINS, project, Charles O’Sullivan and I assert that a constitutional reunification process provides an exciting opportunity to build a new welfare state from the ground up, prioritising the social, economic and cultural rights of contemporary society. The complexity of co-ordinating the administration of both systems cannot be underestimated, particularly as the administration of tax and benefits in the North remains split across the Department for Communities in Northern Ireland and His Majesty's Revenue and Customs, HMRC, in England. We consider the current co-ordination efforts on matters of social security contained in the common travel area and while we recognise what works well, and indeed what does not, we also acknowledge the considerable gap between co-ordination of two distinct systems and the formation of a whole-island approach in the case of reunification. This will necessitate difficult conversations on the shape of a new system.

In respect of pensions, it is important to note the existing agreement between the British and Irish Governments in which Britain agrees to honour historical national insurance records of Northern workers and existing pension entitlements of those retiring in the South. As Tomlinson underlines, this is ultimately a political matter but for planning purposes the assumption should be that the law is honoured.

Ultimately, to answer all the crucial and difficult questions posed by creating a unified social security system will require going back to basics and revisiting normative questions such as “What is the purpose of social security?” If we do not get that right, and if we underestimate the value of comprehensive social protection in the creation of economic prosperity, the utopian vision of a new Ireland could be greatly compromised.