Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein)

I join other Opposition speakers in expressing my disappointment that this Bill is being rushed through the House. We are not being given adequate time to respond to the detail of the legislation. That said, I thank the Minister and his officials for the briefing they provided earlier today.

l welcome some aspects of the Bill. For instance, the increase in the child benefit monthly rates to €150 for the first two children and €185 for the third and subsequent children is welcome. The Government must proceed to increase child benefit progressively and in line with inflation. I also commend the progress in regard to child care in sections 5 and 6, which provide that income earned by a self-employed home childminder will be liable for a social insurance contribution of €253 per annum. Thankfully, the Government has listened to the urgings of the National Women's Council of Ireland in this regard.

This State is presided over by a Government awash with taxpayers' money but it is one of the most unequal countries in the so-called developed world. Inequality seeps through all areas. In health care we see a gross two-tier system where people are treated according to their ability to pay rather than need. In education, students from disadvantaged schools are less likely to make it through the unfair system into well paid employment. The careers of lawyers and doctors remain very much the reserve of the wealthy. A recent NESC report pointed out that the richest 20% of the working age population earn 12 times as much as the poorest 20%. Shamefully, this is one of the highest levels of market inequality among OECD countries.

The Minister describes the Bill as reforming social welfare policy but it does not achieve this end. While I welcome the increased supports that lift 34,000 pensioners onto higher pensions and the other increased entitlements, particularly the early child care supplement, the reality is that the Government still does not have an adequate child care strategy.

There have been major increases in electricity and gas prices. Fuel vouchers were already only a small contribution to these costs. This month, households across the State face substantially increased fuel bills that will eat into the promised social welfare increases. In addition, the Minister has not addressed the inefficiency of the social welfare appeals office, with some appeals taking more than three months to be resolved while vulnerable citizens wait in financial limbo. In a time of unprecedented wealth, this Government has failed the needy. To modernise the social welfare system, the Minister must do significantly more than change the titles of benefits. To modernise society, he should ensure the most vulnerable are looked after, most notably children, the disabled and the elderly.

It is right that the guardian's payment has been renamed but when will the Minister move to recognise that many guardians are the grandparents, aunts and uncles of children whose parents have succumbed to drug addiction and the accompanying misery and disease? Such children exist in a limbo where grandparents and extended families, often living on limited resources and low incomes, take up their care while the State refuses to trigger payment of allowances due because of unworkable criteria regarding parental abandonment. I raised the issue of grandparents caring for children with the Minister in October 2004 and I have encountered many such cases in the meantime. The reality of grandparents being forced to care for their children's children with little or no resources available to them is shameful.

Another area of concern is pensions. The crux of the matter is whether a rich, so-called developed country should look after its citizens in old age. Some 50% of the existing workforce of 2 million are without a personal pension. Most young people in our rip-off Republic are more concerned with living in the present and using their money to pay for exorbitant mortgages and to maintain the general high cost of living. Many are living beyond their means. While pension savings have been boosted as higher paid employed and self-employed people take advantage of generous tax incentives to provide themselves with a tax-friendly stream of income in retirement, social inequality has simultaneously increased. Many workers have no second pillar coverage and will face old age relying solely on their social welfare pensions.

Further fuelling inequality is the fact that pension coverage is highest amongst top income earners. Those without second pillar cover are the marginalised and vulnerable — the unemployed, the lower paid and women. PRSAs were designed to increase pension coverage among a significant segment of the workforce but few employers and workers have made contributions to date. Employees are unlikely to contribute when employers are not obliged to do so.

Latest Central Statistics Office figures indicate pension cover is at a mere 51.5%. There are considerable tax incentives for pensions savings but not for the unemployed, those changing jobs or the many women who opt out of paid work during their child-rearing years. Pension tax relief is worthless for many of these people. The most efficient and cost-effective way of increasing income for those without pension cover is to increase social welfare provisions, reduce tax relief and redistribute State expenditure currently devoted to tax reliefs. That would result in greater fairness, ensuring that the well-off do not benefit disproportionately from pension tax reliefs.

Sadly, the Bill does not address the problem of not enough people choosing PRSAs. Rather than the Minister introducing some form of mandatory provision to ensure people make adequate provision for their retirement, the Government should simply use the social welfare pension, the existing mandatory pension. With a growing percentage of the population reaching retirement age in the next two to three decades, this problem is set to get worse, yet there is no urgency to the Government response to any of these pensions issues. Time is literally running out.

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