Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

As a member of a party with six Members in this House, I have the invidious role of responding to both the budget speech of the Minister for Finance and to the Social Welfare Bill. It is often thought the budget day speech is the hardest to make given it is a more theatrical event, but it is probably harder for a member of the Opposition to address the Social Welfare Bill as it involves criticising what invariably turn out to be the giveaway provisions of the budget. There are probably two approaches that can be adopted in this regard: one can be peevish and say the increases are not enough, or one can be more considered and say policy opportunities have been missed. My natural inclination is to adopt the latter approach but, given our position in the electoral cycle, I will try to adopt a mixture of both. I will give qualified credit to the Government where I feel it is necessary but I will also point out remaining gaps in social welfare provision in the Bill and in the Government's social welfare policy in general.

The Government has, for a change, honoured a number of commitments from social partnership agreements in terms of arriving at where we are expected to be at this time. The €17 increase in the lowest rates of social welfare has set the scene nicely for a similar increase in what we expect will be the last budget of this Dáil. It could be said the very modest target of 30% of average household income will have been reached by the Government. Likewise, the commitment to have a maternity benefit of 80% of reckonable earnings is already a Government guarantee under the most recent social partnership agreements. However, credit must be given in respect of meeting either or both of these targets because the Government has missed certain deadlines in the past.

The most obvious of these missed deadlines concerns child benefit. The Ministers for Social and Family Affairs and Finance would claim their commitment in this regard has finally been honoured but it has not as the rate has fallen marginally short. If one considers the increase committed to in 2001, which was to be achieved by 2003, index-links the relevant payment and determines what the figure should be for 2005-06, one will note the two rates of payment are approximately €5 per month short of what they should be. I do not know whether this was a mistake with the calculator or whether a conscious decision was made to go this far but no further. The Government is still marginally short of its key commitment regarding child benefit payments. Perhaps the final budget of next year will afford an opportunity to bridge that gap.

The missed opportunities in this Bill and those that remain for the Government concern important questions of social welfare policy. Previous speakers have alluded to these. I will also contribute in this regard for the benefit of the record. The central question we as political representatives need to address is not so much that of social welfare rates, important as they are in a very costly society, but that of equity in the social welfare system. We should, in the shortest time span possible, have collective agreement on addressing this question and the continued existence of dependant allowances into the 21st century.

The Government continues to boast about its policy of individualisation regarding taxation. This has had a negative social consequence in that it has forced people to work outside the home. Individualisation in taxation is meaningless in itself if it is not accompanied by individualisation in respect of social welfare. Until the two codes are aligned and every person is treated equally in respect of entitlements and rights in both areas, the poverty gaps and traps in both areas will continue to exist.

I give credit to the Minister on his commitment to overcome these poverty traps but in this regard his Cabinet colleagues need to be convinced. I refer not so much to his colleague in the Department of Finance but his other political bedfellows. That is the cross he and the country must bear. It is also fair to record that, according to the analysis produced by the ESRI, of the nine budgets this Government has produced since 1997 the first five were grossly disproportionate with regard to the less well-off, the sixth was neutral and the seventh was marginally in favour of the better-off. It is to the credit of the Government that the budgets of this year and last year were the only two in the series of nine where the gap, which was widening, began to be redressed. It is a poor Government record that in a nine-year period only two and a half of the budgets it produced were in any way aimed towards the less well-off in our society.

Deputy Penrose referred to tabloid press stories with regard to how it is better to live on the dole than to work. We should encourage some of those who work in such media to do just that. All of us, particularly those of my generation who grew up in the 1980s, knew that experience and it is not one we would wish on this generation or those who went before us, whose experience was a lot worse. The reality is that social welfare is or should be a safety net. It only covers the bare minimum, if that, in terms of people's expectations and living needs. To insinuate that the social welfare system is a pot of gold that can be dipped into and that a segment of society is living at the expense of the better-off is a myth we need to put to bed once and for all. If that was the case, there would not be homelessness, high levels of child poverty or the poverty and welfare traps to which Deputy Penrose referred.

However much the Bill is welcomed, it is salutary that yesterday saw the release of the Central Statistics Office's statistics on disadvantage in Ireland, which were compared with other sets of statistics in the European Union, the EU SILC survey. With regard to relative poverty, which relates to those living at 60% of average income and below, there was marginal or no movement between 2003 and 2004. Some 20% of the population are living in or at risk of poverty, and while I suspect some improvement from the 2004 statistics will arise as a result of budget 2005 and 2006, the movement prior to 2004 was painfully slow. Moreover, if one considers a deeper breakdown of the statistics, those referring to one-parent families show that 48% of people in that category live at the level of 60% of average income or below. That was a damning and shaming indictment of the nature of Irish society in 2004 and I am not confident the situation has changed significantly since then.

The Minister has a major task to convince his Cabinet colleagues that we need to move towards establishing a fairer, more equal society. It is welcome that most social welfare payments will be paid as of 1 January given that the old system meant they were paid in April, June or even October. However, a degree of slippage remains, with some payments being made in April and June. If possible, the Social Welfare Bill next year should ensure that all payments are made as of 1 January each year.

I am disappointed with the increase in the fuel allowance, although I realise the Minister must have debated the issue in Cabinet. A €5 increase, while significant in its own right with regard to the initial figure, which itself was frozen from 2002 on, does not represent the cost of fuel increases for those on social welfare. The only way in which the gap could have been bridged, as it should have been, was through a doubling of the allowance. Far from it being a non-statutory measure, as the allowance is now at the behest of the Minister and within his budgetary control, I would like to have it included as an index linked measure that would be measured in terms of the future problems of fuel poverty and fuel need that will be encountered due to problems such as global warming. If this is an initiative the Minister is prepared to include in next year's budget, regardless of the election and whatever criticism I, as a spokesperson, will give the Government, I would be prepared to welcome it.

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