Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein)
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I want to start off by referring to the broad one-off payments the Minister mentioned. They do not reduce poverty but give a nice boost in the run-up to Christmas. There is relief more than a boost, in that people are relieved that they will have an extra payment, be it before Christmas or before the children go back to school. These payments are really important to people and do make a difference. They take the pressure off people. However, according to Social Justice Ireland and the Combat Poverty Agency, hundreds of thousands of children are in consistent poverty. In a society with a surplus of billions of euro, we are not tackling this. This does not seem to be changing for the affected families. We need to consider this and ensure the one-off payments made through the budget in a given year are not taken away the following year or in the years thereafter, thus ensuring people are lifted out of poverty. Fundamentally, this needs to happen.

Are there people who were in poverty one year, two years or three years ago who have been lifted out of it? Of course, there are, because so many people are now in work. People are lifted out of poverty through work but those with disabilities who cannot work and rely exclusively on social welfare payments, whom I mentioned last night, can be in consistent poverty. Many people who become unemployed will have a safety net, such as some sort of payment, savings or the capacity to generate some income. Over a period, this depletes to nothing, leaving the person with basic payments. Particularly in the case of those with disabilities, we have to be really careful to ensure payments are enough to give a quality standard of living. If I were to single out one group of people as being absolutely in need of a consistent payment to give them a proper standard of living, it would be those with disabilities. I was talking to a member of a disability group in Dublin 15, BCIL, and they said there are many incidental payments that are taken for granted. They said there are tasks that able-bodied people do not have to pay for because they do them themselves and that if you are able-bodied, you can do an awful lot of work in your home. They outlined the difficulties if you do not have the payments.

It could be something as simple as cutting the grass, which costs maybe €20, cleaning the windows or cleaning your house. We had representations from carers. The vast majority of the carer's role is not about cleaning your house, it is about the shower, medication and food, but there are no supports in place for people with disabilities for cleaning their homes. There are some but provision is very limited, as they admitted themselves. The vast majority of carers do not provide that type of home care. If the State is saying that the best place for people to be is in their home and we will support them to be in their home, then we need to ensure that they can be sustained in their home. It starts at a very basic level of what a person's income is. It needs to be looked at more consistently.

I will just run through a couple of the issues that we raised, which I also raised with the Minister last night. We put in a number of submissions to establish a pay-related social insurance rebate scheme. Could we have a comment on that? On the pay-related carer's benefit, which prevents those who have to give up work for care from seeing their income fall off a cliff edge, we are saying the maximum payment could be something like €450, tapering down to a payment every six months. When something happens and a person has to go and care, sometimes it just happens overnight. People have to stop work overnight. There needs to be something in place to ensure that their income does not fall off a cliff edge. They are already dealing with some really serious issues themselves and caring for people. We can support them so that their income does not fall off a cliff edge. It is one less worry they would have to think about.

On making carers wait, I raised this yesterday evening. The Minister said that it is not straightforward and would take time. We have a note here from Family Carers Ireland who understand from their engagement with the Department that systems have been updated and the new disregards can be easily integrated. It is not clear why carers must wait ten months for the new disregards to take effect. Maybe the Minister would make some comment on that.

I agree with Deputy Ó Cuív on the abolition of the means test for carers. It needs to be done and we need to move forward with it as quickly as possible. We all come across instances where people are excluded from it for very small amounts of money, or are given very small payments. I raise this case because it puzzles me. A woman in my constituency had to give up work for her mother and faced that cliff-edge. She had to travel over to the far side of the city. She was awarded €10 per week. What would that cover? It would not cover petrol for two days, going across. It absolutely needs to be looked at. The job she is doing, if the State had to step in and do it, would pay far more than what we would give in terms of a carer's allowance.

The introduction of a leave scheme for parental bereavement was included in Sinn Féin's alternative budget. We would make a statutory provision for two weeks' paid leave for parents following the loss of a child. I find it really strange that we do not have something like that in place. On energy costs, we are looking at extending fuel allowance eligibility to recipients of the working family payment. The last issue is a report on the social welfare rates to protect those who rely on them from poverty. Going back to my first point, a minimum essential standard of living is needed to protect people from poverty and provide rate adequacy across the social welfare system. Social Justice Ireland and the combat poverty agency are also calling for that.