Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

The main difficulty the Labour Party has with the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2008 is what is absent from it. When it comes to protecting the incomes and living standard of pensioners, lone parents, home carers and those seeking work, the omissions from this Bill are a catalogue of missed opportunities.

A functioning social welfare system should protect the most vulnerable in society, supporting their search for employment where appropriate and ensuring a decent standard of living. Our social welfare system, even after a decade of phenomenal growth, fails on both counts. Among our European peers, we have one of the lowest rates of social investment. As a consequence, we have one of the highest at-risk-of-poverty rates in Europe. Our social welfare system is dysfunctional.

Another dysfunctional element of our social welfare system is the treatment of unmarried, cohabiting couples with children. The system seems designed to encourage them to live apart. Deputy Shortall cited the example of a mother whose income is taken into account in determining the social welfare entitlement of her partner. If he decides to stay at home to look after their child, he is not entitled to use his tax credits because they are not married. They are treated like a married couple for social welfare purposes and as single people for taxation purposes, but not as single people when it comes to claiming single-parent credit.

This anomaly is grossly unfair and the Bill does not address it. Our system, as Deputy Shortall pointed out, penalises lone parents who decide to work while also penalising cohabiting couples for living together and rearing their children. Individualisation in the tax code sits uneasily with our social welfare system, to the detriment of families and children. These issues need to be addressed with the utmost urgency.

For the past decade, employment has been at tremendous levels by historical standards. Many economists would describe it as a decade of full employment. Full employment is a myth, however; unemployment is concentrated in pockets of deep deprivation. Even at the height of our booming economy, many were left behind, caught in the poverty trap and unable to move from welfare to work. These for the most part were people who wanted desperately to work, to take up a job that was on offer, but who were prevented from doing so because of how the system was designed.

This problem has not gone away. Deputy Shortall cited one of her constituents as an example, but it is a case that is played out in many forms across the country. What is the point in taking a job if an individual and his family are going to end up worse off?

Moving from welfare to work is important for financial independence. This, however, does not hold true if taking up employment means rent allowances are slashed or medical cards withdrawn. This is the crux of our social welfare crisis. Small increases in benefits may be welcome for a time, but a new, imaginative approach to designing the system is really needed. Until we see a paradigm shift, the poverty trap will remain the cold, hard reality for thousands of people who want to work towards a better standard of living for themselves and their families.

With the housing crisis, I have encountered many people on rent supplement who are in the dilemma that if they go to work, they lose most of the supplement and the rents become unaffordable. It is a catch-22 for them.

Under the new scheme for carers, one can keep certain social welfare payments and half the carer's allowance. The Minister claims up to 7,000 people have benefited from this arrangement. I am concerned that many people, particularly those not on the carer's payment but another, may not know of this new arrangement. Has the Minister figures for the number of people who may qualify for this new arrangement? As with other welfare payments, such as family income supplement, many people eligible for it do not claim it.

More needs to be done for carers because the majority of them are slipping through the net. Many have to struggle to make ends meet, working long hours both inside and outside the home with no recognition from the State.

There are small increases contained in the Bill for pensions with scant reward for all those years of work. Pensioners, and particularly retired women who statistically live longer and would have earned less than their male counterparts during their working lives, are particularly at risk from poverty.

The medical card income guidelines have not been raised since 2005 and are not in keeping with social welfare increases. I accept people on social welfare, with the discretion of the Health Service Executive, will qualify for a medical card. It is important, however, that each year the guidelines are increased in line with pension increases. Many people will believe they are over the income limit for a medical card and will not apply. Many social welfare increases are not in line with the medical card guidelines. The Minister for Health and Children, Deputy Harney, made announcements about the new GP cards in June 2006, but since 2005 she has not increased the income limits for the full medical card. It is important the Department of Social and Family Affairs makes this known to the Department of Health and Children.

While the Labour Party welcomes the improvements in social welfare payments in the Bill, our problem is with what is absent from it. Deputy Shortall will table amendments, some of which I hope the Minister will be open to accepting.

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