Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I do not welcome the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2008. Fine Gael will vote against it and table many amendments on Committee Stage to address what it sees as an attack on some of the most vulnerable in our society.

The Government has tried to make a virtue of taking tough decisions and sought the patriotic support of the public to do this. The reality is that it has made harsh decisions which will not solve the economic problems and will hurt those least able to cope with them. People must remember that the Government shoulders a large portion of the blame for where the country finds itself today. It will not be forgotten.

Everyone knows the elderly received several knocks in the budget. The withdrawal and then the partial re-instating of the medical card for the over 70s will never be forgotten. The same applies for the State contributory and non-contributory pensions. The budget increases for welfare rates have been set at between 3.1% and 3.3%. The Government forecasts an inflation rate of 2.5% for 2009. Whether people are willing to accept any of the Government's forecasts is open to debate. This forecast is, at best, optimistic. Other commentators have suggested an inflation rate of approximately 3% next year. This year's inflation rate is 4.5% while food and energy costs have increased by far more than the average rate of inflation. Food inflation this year stood at 6.4% while Ireland has among the highest energy prices in the EU.

In September, electricity prices rose by 17.5%, gas increased by 20% and home heating oil has also risen dramatically. Bearing this in mind, for the Government to state that the welfare increases will keep in line with inflation is subjective at best. Pensions should have been increased by at least €10, which Fine Gael stated prior to the budget. Instead, the €7 increase will be wiped out by the increases in VAT, petrol, accident and emergency department charges and the continual rise in cost of food and fuel. This is the same Government that is committed to achieving a State pension of €300 per week by 2012. To achieve this between the next three budgets, the Government will have to provide a total of €70, or an average of €23 a week in each of the next three years.

The Minister likes to point out her Department was one of the few that got an increase in this year's budget. She fails to remember that the promises made on the rates of increase were not fulfilled. She fails to remember that one of the main reasons for the rise, or the necessity to seek to increase in her Department's budget, is that unemployment is rising at the rate of one job every three minutes, a far higher rate than in any other European country.

Like the rate of increase in the pension, contributory and non-contributory, the rate of increase in the jobseeker's allowance and jobseeker's benefit will do little to help families. When Deputy Richard Bruton outlined Fine Gael's tough but fair budget proposals to help ensure getting the economy back on track, it addressed the underlying weakness in the economy as well as providing scope for positive action for those most in need. Jobseeker's payments should have been increased by €9 instead of scapegoating weak and vulnerable people because Fianna Fáil did not manage the public purse for so long.

It is disingenuous of the Minister to pretend her changes outlined in section 18 are to do with ending a dependency culture. They are far more to do with making cuts which will alter the lives of many very vulnerable people.

It is particularly ironic that this decision is being made at a time when employment is becoming harder and harder to find, with 260,000 people on the live register. No longer can the Minister claim that the Opposition is being "a little bit dramatic" when we discuss the live register figures. The solution as outlined in this Bill does not give people any opportunity for further education and training and simply makes it harder for more vulnerable people to access benefits to which they were entitled heretofore.

When the Minister spoke about unemployment last July in the Dáil, she said:

Behind these figures lie real families experiencing real difficulties — people with children, with mortgages and with worries about the future. These are people whom the Government is determined to prioritise.

How hollow her words ring now for those real families with real difficulties. Take the employee from APW Engineering in Oranmore who was told last Friday, with his 120 colleagues, that they no longer had jobs. His major concern was where he would get money for his family the following week, as the union representative had told them it might be 12 weeks before they got their entitlements. He and his colleagues had better hope they have the required number of contributions to ensure they are entitled to support for themselves and their families. It is little comfort to him and his colleagues to see the Minister smile and talk about people who have jobs, as though that somehow makes it less painful for those who do not.

Listening to the Minister saying her main priority is to get people into education and training, some people probably thought she had a plan. She does not. In fact, her only plan is to ensure that a young person or migrant who has only worked for one year cannot access social welfare too quickly, that a person cannot get more on social welfare than he or she ever got when working and, if a person is going to start in the social welfare system, that he or she has at least worked in the economy. However, she has no plan to ensure that people have an opportunity to do this. She clearly does not see the poverty traps that sometimes ensure one is better off on social welfare than in low-income employment. Does she realise there are 54,537 people in this country under the age of 25 who are unemployed? She intends, through legislation, to make it even more difficult for these people, yet she gives them no other option.

The changes in the eligibility criteria for jobseeker's benefit will push more people into applying for jobseeker's allowance, which is a means tested payment. This will have implications for many people, particularly young people living at home. If a young man or woman, for example, was trying to save for a deposit on a house and did not have the required number of contributions for jobseeker's benefit, he or she possibly would not satisfy the new criteria when these savings were taken into account.

In addition, what about the Department's commitment to providing a high-quality service to all its customers, as stated in its own reports? In parliamentary questions we are constantly told that applications are processed and decisions on entitlement issued as expeditiously as possible, yet there seems to be no uniformity in the length of time it is taking to process these applications around the country. We get pre-written, regurgitated answers and there is no change in the timeframe in the particular offices where delays are occurring. For example, the average processing time for jobseeker's allowance in Ballyconnell is 13 weeks, and in a reply to a parliamentary question it was explained that 102 such applications were awaiting decision in that office. In Trim, the processing time is 15 weeks and there are 282 applications. This is in contrast to Blanchardstown, where the average time for processing was six weeks although they had 536 applications on hand, or Cork where the average time was seven weeks and they had 1,684 applications on hand. Why does the Minister not insist that her Department sort this out and that there are equal practices around the country so that people wait a similar amount of time regardless of where they happen to be from?

The people of APW Engineering in Oranmore will be concerned to know that the average processing time in Galway is 11 weeks for jobseeker's allowance and six for jobseeker's benefit. This will be of little consolation to them as they struggle over the coming weeks. Surely there are enough civil servants in the Minister's Department and other Departments who could be transferred to ensure this work is done. We have heard nothing from the Minister as to how she intends to address these anomalies, and from her previous replies on this issue I am not even convinced that she intends to address them.

The changes in the criteria for illness benefit will also cause similar and undue hardship. There seems to be a notion that as this was not intended to be a long-term benefit, it is acceptable to change it. I accept that it was never intended to be a long-term benefit, but the Minister stood over its evolution into such. The reason for this was the vacuum between the illness benefit and the disability allowance. While illness benefit attracts no secondary benefits, it has filled that vacuum, especially in cases in which people cannot get disability allowance because they are unable to prove that their illness will last for one year.

Much kite flying took place before the budget while the Government was trying to decide where it stood on the issue of universality. It attempted to gauge public opinion by talking about the possibility of taxing child benefit or introducing means testing to the payment, and I hope its members realise they got their answer on this through the medical card debacle.

One in nine children in this country is living in consistent poverty. We must focus on this issue. Fianna Fáil, in addition to paying child benefit, needs to implement a targeted approach to children in need. It is time to examine the introduction of a second tier child payment aimed at those most in need, particularly the 20% of all children who are at risk of poverty and who must be assisted in getting out of these circumstances. The Government's tinkering with the child benefit system in the budget and this Bill will do nothing to help those in poorer families. I believe the Government clearly realises this and has introduced a compensatory payment measure up to 31 December 2010 in the hope that it will blunt the impact of its decision. However, the fact that it is ignoring the difficulties faced by poorer families in which a child opts to participate in third level education or is still in school after the age of 18 is deplorable. This will make the option of further education more inaccessible to these families after December 2010.

According to an assessment by the Combat Poverty Agency, the combined budgetary changes in respect of child poverty result in an increase of only 2% to 3% in the child income package for welfare dependant children, and it has pointed out losses in respect of children aged 18 and those aged five and a half to six because of the aforementioned restrictions and eligibility changes to child benefit and the early child care supplement. It concludes that these will result in losses of between 20% and 50% in the value of child supports for welfare-dependent children in these age groups — equivalent to between €21 and €38 per week — which will ensure these families remain trapped in poverty. In addition, the Government has ensured that its strategy has become even more bureaucratic.

There are now six different rates of child income support depending on the age of the child and the level of support decreases from a high of €85 to €90 for younger children to a low of €32 for dependent children in the 20 to 22 age category. A survey by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice which researched minimum essential budgets found that households containing older children have income shortfalls of between €44 and €123 per week compared to similar household types with younger children. The Combat Poverty Agency has stated it believes the at-risk-of-poverty rate for older children is 1.5 times that of younger children. I am not sure what was achieved in bringing everyone together before the budget to consider the changes that needed to be made.

While it is not a feature of this Bill, it is important to highlight the scandalous decision by the Government to withdraw funding under the school book scheme for low-income children attending non-DEIS schools, which will result in losses for affected schools of between €25 and €55 per child. While a token gesture was made by widening eligibility for the clothing and footwear allowance, this will be directly negated — even more than negated — by the losses in the school book allowance.

The Government's decision to increase the threshold for the family income supplement, FIS, by €10 per week from January will only bring approximately 2,000 more families into the scheme, despite the high numbers who are in poverty or at risk of poverty. I received a reply to a parliamentary question today which stated that 26,300 families were in receipt of FIS, yet in 2007 the Department received 36,900 new FIS applications. Some of these applicants were ineligible, but the number making the application shows how many people are struggling out there. The amount by which the band has been widened will not allow for the inclusion of all those who were not able to receive the supplement previously.

I will now deal with the issue of lone parents, or one-parent families. The Minister spoke much over the summer about lone parents being in a welfare trap and I agree with her. However, despite her platitudes, the budget did nothing to assist or change the circumstances of lone parents.

The increase of €8.50 in the one-parent family payment for a family with one qualified child will help keep them treading water and that is all. The €2 increase for qualified children will barely even do that. Last July, the Minister said the fact that we pay lone parent benefit until the child is 22 is no incentive for them to get into steady relationships, marry or get into employment, and that a new strategy is needed on lone parents. Lone parents have heard enough from the Government about them without doing anything to help them. The Minister's two immediate predecessors also highlighted this issue, but we have yet to see one concrete proposal on how the Government intends to help one-parent families.

In the same interview last July, the Minister also said the Government is strongly pushing support for the family, and that it has responsibility for supporting the family. The Government has not shown it values the family and until it assists lone parents to get out of poverty traps, nobody will believe it either. Pilot schemes in Finglas and Kilkenny for lone parents reported to the Minister some time ago, yet these reports still have not been published and we are none the wiser on how effective the schemes were or how they worked.

Earlier this year, I sought a flow analysis from the Department on lone parent assistance for the past five years. The purpose of seeking this was to ascertain the true position regarding lone parents and to see how many are consistently on this payment and how many come in and out of the system. I was astounded to discover that the Department does not maintain a flow analysis of this system. It knows the number of lone parents who claim and receive the payment but cannot provide any statistical information on when they come off the payment or if they re-enter the system. This is from a Department which spent over €11 million on e-Government related projects last year and intends to spend €9 million on them in the coming year.

I am not asking the Minister to re-invent the wheel in assisting lone parents. There have been successful projects. Organisations in this country have done significant work which has been externally evaluated and published, for example, the new futures project under the equality for women measure, which was published in April of this year. It was a partnership between one family and the local employment services network in six RAPID areas, bringing together the complementary expertise of front line service providers.

One-parent families comprise 18% of all families in Ireland and 85% of them are headed by women. The number, 190,000, has increased by 35,350 since 2002. One is four and a half times more likely to live in poverty if one lives in a one-parent family. The 2006 census showed 36% of lone parents were single, 30% separated or divorced and 29% widowed. A number of issues must be looked at if the Government truly wants to assist one-parent families. Token increases barely in line with inflation show a piecemeal, disengaged and unresponsive reaction to the situation by Government. Introducing facilitators who are supposed to work on a one-to-one basis with lone parents, but appointing only 50 to deal with just under 86,000 lone parents in receipt of social welfare and 260,000 unemployed people, will not deal with this issue.

One parent's report clearly outlines that the role of a key worker who is based in the relevant community setting is critical to the engagement of some lone parents in moving away from welfare dependency and that this engagement must be sustained at each stage of the service delivery model into the early stages of employment. It also highlighted the critical role played by the project key workers and facilitators in participant outcomes and pointed to the need for ongoing training and development of these staff and the critical role played by the co-ordinator in sustaining and developing inter-agency co-operation. It also pointed to the need for the development of a pre-engaging programme for the hardest to reach clients, addressing a range of information and support needs before progression to the programmes. It also said that the payment of participant costs, such as child care and transport, at a fixed rate directly to project participants is particularly important to enable them to access flexible, local and informal child minding in the absence of community child care facilities.

The Government has not addressed these issues not only in this budget, but in previous budgets. The haphazard way the early child care supplement was introduced does not deal with this in a way that truly allows lone parents to engage in education, training or employment. Had the Government properly introduced this supplement and ensured that the money was to cover the expensive cost of child care in Ireland, it would have saved more than enough money to ensure that the parents of children getting child care in this country would have been able to retain that payment for the full term.

Many people on the live register and working in low paid jobs were extremely disappointed that the Government did not use the opportunity of the budget, and that the Minister is not using the opportunity of the Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, to change the criteria for the back to education allowance. This is a really important payment, particularly for those in receipt of State payments, to give them the opportunity to return to education. The rules governing it are forcing potential recipients of these payments onto the live register instead of allowing them to continue in employment, at least for a particular period, prior to returning to education.

This was the opportunity and the time to create specific measures to minimise the time people were unemployed and reform the criteria for this allowance. These are the people we need to target with re-training and re-education and to whom we must give opportunities to get back into the workforce. Instead of decreasing the numbers claiming jobseeker's allowance, the Government's rules on the back to education allowance, BTEA, are forcing more people onto the live register. Its poor policies have led us into the position we are in and they are ensuring that our unemployment numbers are increasing. The Minister needs to see the reality of this situation.

To claim the full BTEA for third level, one must be claiming a social welfare payment for a full 12 months. In this climate, where people are rapidly losing their jobs and people on the minimum wage are particularly vulnerable, it does not make sense to deny people on the minimum wage the BTEA. The Minister must examine the figures. It is estimated that there is only €1 a week difference between those on a minimum wage and those in receipt of jobseeker's allowance who get rent supplement and other secondary benefits, such as a medical card. Somebody on the minimum wage earns €1 per week less than somebody on a social welfare payment receiving all the benefits, who receives €347 per week before these changes. What choice does this give someone? As a result of this Fianna Fáil policy, a person who wishes to return to third level education in the hope of increasing his or her skills and employment prospects and ensuring he or she will be able to stay in the workforce in the long term, is being told to quit work and go on the dole to become eligible in a year's time.

The long term savings as a result of changing these rules are huge because these people will have the opportunity of staying on in the workforce with greatly increased employment prospects and earning potential. They will contribute more to the economy through tax in the long term. The Minister, Deputy Hanafin, has refused to change any of these eligibility criteria. It is a serious and deeply unfair mistake on her part.

Another anomaly in the BTEA system is that if a person does not qualify under the other criteria, he or she can qualify by being in receipt of illness benefit for at least two years. However, if a person fails to satisfy the two year requirement on illness benefit, unless he or she has other qualifying social welfare claims, he or she is not entitled to the allowance. Where is the logic in this? Why is it one year for jobseekers and two years for illness benefit when the person has been out of work anyway, albeit for a different reason?

The Minister is very anxious not to allow people to receive the BTEA if they are out of school only a year or two, but the Minister needs to open her mind to the reality. I have numerous examples, as have other colleagues, of people around the country aged 19 and 20 who have been deemed ineligible for the BTEA and, as a result, have dropped out of the education system altogether with the result that all they are doing is claiming jobseeker's allowance. They may now discover that they are not able to claim that either. The Minister is failing to solve the problem that they are getting dependent on jobseeker's allowance and that the criteria are forcing them into this situation, yet there are no alternatives available to some of them. How does this fit in with the promise last July to tackle the worrying increase in under 25 year olds signing on? She said then that now is the time for people to start planning and applying for courses starting in September, yet many who did this found that they had no chance of fulfilling the criteria. The Government claims it does not want a continuing trend where more and more young people start depending on welfare payments as their only income. However, it completely ignores the fact that 22% of those on the live register are the very same young people.

I want to discuss the changes proposed under section 14 to the supplementary welfare allowance, in particular, rent supplement and mortgage interest supplement. Focus Ireland recently published an extremely informative document on the changing context of the private rented sector. Rent supplement, like fuel and energy poverty, is an issue which straddles a number of Departments and seems to continuously cost more without any evaluation of how it can be improved or changed. Some effort has been made with the introduction of the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, but the numbers receiving rent supplement remain relatively constant. The Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, local authorities, the Department of Social and Family Affairs, the Private Residential Tenancies Board and the Revenue Commissioners all have an extremely important role to play in this regard.

It remains the case that there are problems like low-quality housing and insecurity of tenure at the lower end of the market, despite the establishment of the Private Residential Tenancies Board. Focus Ireland has indicated that there are doubts about the portion of existing private residential units which have not been registered with the board, particularly at the lower end of the market. The Comptroller and Auditor General has made the point that no adequate system is in place to ensure that the ultimate recipients of rent supplement, which is funded by the Department of Social and Family Affairs through the HSE to tenants and then to landlords, pay income tax on it. That absence means there is a serious potential loss to the Exchequer, which is particularly unacceptable in a climate in which the Minister's many frugal decisions have left many vulnerable people suffering.

I appreciate that rent supplement was originally designed as an emergency intervention. In practice, however, it is a long-term payment to people living in the private rental sector. It is possible that this need will increase. Local authorities have been relying on developers to provide houses through the social and affordable housing schemes. It appears that fewer such houses will come on stream in the immediate term. While it is necessary, in theory, for the amount of rent supplement to be specified in regulations, this House does not always get an opportunity to debate such regulations. It is important that we should have such an opportunity. I do not doubt that people are paying top-ups to their landlords in addition to the rent supplement and the amount stated on their application forms. Focus Ireland has outlined numerous case studies of this type. They prove that people are finding themselves in difficulties.

The entitlement to rent supplement also needs to be examined. While there have been changes in terms of eligibility, there is room for further improvement. It is time for the Minister to examine the possibility of making rent supplement available on a different basis to ensure that the working poor can continue to work without falling into the poverty trap. We need to make it easier for people to remain on social welfare, rather than risk losing their rent supplement payment, when they secure full-time employment. It has been brought to my attention that the fact that rent supplement is paid in arrears, rather than in advance, is putting some people at a disadvantage.

I note the Minister's statement that it is not necessary to make legislative changes to provide for an increase in the duration of fuel allowance payments. The reality is that token increases have been made. Some 227,000 households in this country experience fuel poverty. In the Combat Poverty Agency's briefing on the budget, it compared the measures relating to fuel and housing costs in budget 2009. If one compares the combined fuel allowance increase and the general increase for a single person household to the increase — by €5 per week to €18 per week — in the minimum contribution to rent and mortgage supplement, one will observe that these changes, in effect, negate the improvement in the personal welfare rate for the 72,000 households that are in receipt of the supplement. What the Government gave with one hand, it took back with the other. It is a pity the Minister did not provide for the option of receiving fuel allowance in two lump sums, rather than on a weekly basis. This would be particularly important for those with oil fired central heating systems.

I would like to speak about the Government's decision to abolish the Combat Poverty Agency and to integrate it with the Office for Social Inclusion. Fine Gael has long held the view that far too many agencies are replicating work that could be done by civil servants. I refer to work that should be under the direct control and responsibility of individual Departments and, particularly, Ministers. When Fine Gael examined every State agency, it decided where it would begin to make savings. While the Government took some of the theory of our proposals on board, its practical implementation was different, unfortunately. Rather than looking for duplication, overstaffing and waste, the Government decided to examine those agencies that are directly responsible for commenting on the success or failure of Government initiatives and outlining what needs to be done to protect the most vulnerable people in society. The hypocrisy of the Government is evident when it constantly talks about protecting the vulnerable while doing the opposite. It was no great surprise that the Government decided to amalgamate the Equality Authority and the Human Rights Commission and abolish the Combat Poverty Agency. Each of these bodies has a direct responsibility in terms of commenting on Government policy and protecting those who most need our help in society.

The Minister, Deputy Hanafin, claimed earlier that the Combat Poverty Agency has not been abolished. She suggested that it is merely being subsumed into the office for social inclusion. We have yet to receive clear information on how this process will work. Since its inception, the Combat Poverty Agency has been independent and has had the capacity to advise on anti-poverty policy and develop responses to tackle poverty. The board of the agency has received assurances from the Department that the new division will have a strong anti-poverty focus and will retain the expertise and ethos that has been built up by the Combat Poverty Agency. It is noteworthy that no mention appears to have been made of the independent nature of the agency. The Minister has not spoken about its ability to decide its own focus and tackle the real issues, rather than the pet issues of any Administration. No reference has been made to its role in working with other State agencies and, above all, publishing critiques without the interference of the Government. I do not think anybody believes this crucial independence will be retained when the agency is subsumed into the Department.

The Minister for Social and Family Affairs has dealt with this matter with utter cynicism. I refer in particular to her proposal to introduce the amendments abolishing the agency on Committee Stage. Surely she could have dealt with this issue when the Bill was published last week, rather than cynically and manipulatively waiting until Committee Stage in the hope that it would gain little or no attention. Can the Minister give us any guarantees that the research that will be carried out by the Office of Social Inclusion will have any independence? Can she guarantee us that the new body will be able to work with the community pillar, as the agency has been able to do before now? Can she guarantee us the research that has been carried out will be published? Can she tell us what savings will arise from this measure? Can she tell us how the workers' transition from public servant to civil servant will work? Can she tell us whether the transfer of undertakings legislation will come into play in this regard? Can she ensure that the State will not lose the expertise of the staff of the Combat Poverty Agency? I refer to people with qualifications and expertise in social policy research, health research, community development and local authorities.

There will be seven vacancies in the agency at the end of the year. The vacancies have been filled with temporary staff only. What will happen to those positions? If the Minister introduces amendments on Committee Stage, she will need to outline exactly how the consultation process will happen. Before the Bill proceeds to Committee Stage, she needs to clarify the accountability frameworks which will be put in place. To put it bluntly, I do not think anyone believes there will be any independence in the office of social inclusion. There has been a lack of consultation on this issue. There is a lack of democracy in the way the Minister is attempting to silence the agency. It is as if the Minister believes she is part of a permanent Government — she does not think anyone should be able to offer an alternative point of view. I do not have time to speak about the issues of carers and pensions, but I will do so on Committee Stage.

See this speech in context