Olwyn Enright (Laois-Offaly, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. I have grave difficulty accepting many of the proposed changes and I disagree with the conclusions arrived at by the Minister in her final remarks. I hope we have an informed debate but I cannot see much room for agreement on many of the issues. Accordingly, Fine Gael will vote against the Social Welfare Bill.

Based on what the Minister said, the Government is probably taking comfort from the fact that legislation is not necessary to abolish the Christmas bonus, which is probably one of the reasons that decision was taken. It is clear that Government backbenchers and local authority candidates, rather than the people in need, were to the fore in the Government's thinking when it was considering social welfare cuts. The Government made a clear decision to cut something that would not require legislation and thus would not force Fianna Fáil TDs to vote on the issue. I welcome the fact that we will have an opportunity to discuss the issue in this House later today and tomorrow on Private Members' time. That will afford an opportunity to all Members of the House to make it clear to the public where they stand on the removal of the Christmas bonus from the most vulnerable people in society.

We in Fine Gael have long sought changes in the back to work enterprise allowance, as the method by which it currently operates is a disincentive to employment and entrepreneurship and forces people to remain on the live register. Everyone in this House can give the Minister many examples of people who have come to them who were ineligible for the allowance, despite having the ideas, determination and skills to create a job for themselves and to potentially create jobs for other people once they are set up in business. However, the changes in the Social Welfare Bill, as announced in the budget, do not go anywhere near what is required to help create an enterprise culture and to help people who have lost their jobs to get back into the workforce.

It is time the Minister accepted and realised that those schemes were set up in a climate where we were trying to deal with long-term unemployment and not one where we are trying to deal with massively rising unemployment in such a short timeframe. That fact alone must change how the Minister operates and how the Government does business, but it has not yet been taken on board.

The old rule that one must be unemployed for two years before one could avail of the back to work enterprise allowance was nonsense. I am pleased the Minister has accepted that. The change, however, does not go far enough. The allowance has been reduced by a year, but what stopped the Minister moving to six months, which is what has been suggested by many people involved in working with the unemployed? One year is an extremely long time to force somebody to stay on jobseeker's allowance or benefit. I disagree with the Minister's assertion that access to the allowance is almost immediate; one must wait for a year, which is a significant proportion of a person's working life.

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