Joe Costello (Dublin Central, Labour)

It is a very broad church, especially in Tallaght, where Deputy O'Connor comes from. His final remarks were magnificent. He said that if there are no jobs, we cannot impose sanctions on people who do not take up jobs. I agree that rather than punishing people, the Government should be flexible in relation to this matter. There is no flexibility in this legislation, unfortunately. It does not provide for an appeals mechanism. The flexibility sought by Deputy O'Connor has been specifically left out. I am not as happy as he seems to be that the Minister will continue to engage with the joint committee on the matter. I have not yet seen any sign that the Minister will be flexible in his engagement. I am glad he has visited Tallaght. I am sure Deputy O'Connor showed him what real life is like there.

The Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2010 is another example of the harsh medicine being applied by the Government. Its approach to dealing with the economic crisis is to impose austerity measures on the unemployed and the less well-off. We saw this in 2009, when two miserable budgets targeted the less well-off, the sick, the disadvantaged, the unemployed and pensioners. Believe it or not, two social welfare Bills were introduced as part of that process. I suggest that there has been a superfluity of legislation of this nature in recent years.

This Bill again puts the boot into the less well-off, including unemployed people, young people, lone parents and their children. This legislation is entirely negative. It does not contain a positive line or offer any incentives. There is not a carrot anywhere. It is all about targeting people at the lower end of the scale, who are on social welfare, by and large. They will be made to suffer as they try to move away from a reliance on jobseeker's payments. They will have to pay for the decisions of those who have ruined this economy and the lives of so many people.

It is impossible to come up with one good word for this despicable Bill. It is interesting that it was published on 28 May 2010 and will be guillotined today, 17 June 2010. It appears to have taken approximately three weeks to ram through a Bill of this nature, at a time when we have been trying to get the Government to establish a commission of inquiry into the notorious and nefarious decisions that brought about the collapse of the Irish economy.

Critical decisions were made in September 2008, almost two years ago, but the commission of inquiry has not yet been set up or its terms of reference decided. Nor has legislation been introduced to name and shame, punish or sanction the people responsible. It is sauce for the goose but not sauce for the gander. There is one approach for those at one end of the scale and another for those at the other end.

In the meantime, what has happened? The economy has been ruined and tens of thousands of householders are in negative equity, with homes they bought during the construction bubble that was created by the financial institutions. To make it worse, in the last two years 200,000 people have become unemployed. Last year 40,000 emigrated; this year the ESRI estimates that 60,000 will emigrate. That is worse, in such a short space of time, than anything we have experienced before. Now a provision has been introduced under which people must accept reasonable offers of jobs - jobs that are not available. Placements and college places are also not available. In April 2009, the Government promised to create 2,000 work placements. How many has it delivered so far? A total of 919 - less than half the number promised. There are people begging for work placements. Similarly, in 2009, 2,500 extra college places were promised for young job seekers; a total of 1,752 were created, which is nowhere near what was promised - in fact, almost 1,000 less.

We know there are no jobs. The number of jobless people is increasing, or people are emigrating. Yet this Bill states that people must take up a reasonable offer of a job. What is the definition of a reasonable offer, especially if there are no jobs in the first place? Why produce legislation in a vacuum? Why not stimulate the economy in certain areas to facilitate people with certain skills who are unemployed? These people could get back to work quickly. Let us create these jobs, placements and college and back-to-education positions, and let us fit people into them, rather than adopting an inflexible approach of applying sanctions with no consideration for the reality of the situation.

Deputy O'Connor put it well when he asked why we should impose sanctions on people who refuse job offers when there are no jobs out there. This legislation, in sections 17, 18, 23 and 24, targets people in a cold fashion. For example, let us consider sections 17 and 18, which deal with the jobseeker's allowance. In last year's budget, this allowance was halved for young people between the ages of 18 and 21. Now a quarter of the allowance has been removed again, so that it has been brought down to €100 and then to €75 from the 2004 level - a drastic reduction. It is difficult to see active young people surviving on that. They need money for clothes and activities; even when looking for jobs they will need money for bus fares and so on. It is not realistic.

The further reduction for those aged 22 to 24 is €35, while for those over 24 it is €46. Thus, the entire category of young people between the ages of 18 and 25 has been targeted. The idea is to push them out to find work that is not there. If they do not find the work that is not there, we get rid of them - get them out of the country. Around 100,000 people have left the country in the space of two years. They are brightest and best. We are exporting them again as we did in the 1950s, the 1970s and the 1980s, but this time it is more concentrated, and legislation has been introduced to force them out. We are shunning the young people of our country in a crude fashion. We are telling them they are not wanted; that they are a burden on the State. We are telling them to get our or starve. That is the message that is coming from this legislation.

We are justifying this based on a refusal to accept a reasonable offer of employment, although reasonable offers of employment are not forthcoming. There is nothing in this or any other legislation that works pragmatically towards job creation or stimulation, or the provision of opportunities or placements for education and training. Community employment schemes have been cut even though increasing numbers of people are seeking them. Lone parents can no longer get onto CE schemes even though they should account for 10% of such schemes. That is not the case any longer.

We have seen cutbacks in so many areas, including funding for librarians in disadvantaged areas - although, thankfully, the Department of Finance has reversed this decision. A small number of disadvantaged schools were benefiting from the new library project, but the information was that great progress was being made by youngsters, particularly in literacy and numeracy but also in terms of educational confidence. The project has been operating successfully in a number of schools in my own constituency. I am pleased that in the last couple of days the Department of Finance has agreed to make the required funding, which had been cut entirely from August of this year, available in the coming year.

Like Deputy O'Connor I will mention my own constituency, Dublin Central, where there are quite large numbers of unemployed people and lone parents. Youngsters are coming out of school seeking employment or training, but they cannot find it. For example, one of the things I did myself was to set up, last year, a soccer club in Liberty House for 20 to 30 young men aged 18 to 25 who have nothing to do and want to do something useful. The club won the league and got to the cup final, so it did extremely well. Such a project keeps young people off the streets when there is nothing else to do in an area. Dublin is the European capital of sport this year, and funding was put into sport to give people - especially young people, who are full of energy and action - alternative activities. Particularly in disadvantaged areas, this prevents them from hanging around with nothing to do all day every day. All the Government is offering them is a reduction in their jobseeker's allowance for not taking up employment which is not available to them in the first place. It is a disaster.

I received documentation from the Daughters of Charity at St. Vincent's on the Navan Road, which provides services for people with intellectual disabilities. They have just been informed, in the middle of 2010, that €4 million is being cut from their funding by the HSE.

At the beginning of the year the organisation expected to have €4 million more than it has. It must channel into a six-month period the cuts that were announced suddenly. The cutbacks will be sharper because they were not told at the beginning of the year that this would happen. Some 56 posts must be cut by the end of the year. There is also the threat of an additional sanction of 5% if they do not comply. Care for senior citizens and respite care for the intellectually disabled will be curtailed, family support hours will be significantly reduced, collect after school clubs will be significantly reduced, summer camps will not be supported, there will be no transport for children with intellectual disabilities, a skills development programme will have to close for weeks and staff have been told they must take a week off at their own expense or be deployed elsewhere. This is very heavy, coming in the middle of the year.

These cutbacks are taking place all the time. This type of legislation is targeting young people and lone parents and is making a wonderful statement through the publication of fraud in the social welfare system. Names, addresses and the amounts of fines will be published. Would it not be great if we had this across the board so that it applied to all companies and all people exploiting the system? For example, the National Employment Rights Authority, NERA, is constantly finding companies, businesses and personnel exploiting people in the workplace. Would it not be great if we had the same commitment in the legislation to a monthly publication of the names, addresses and the amounts of fines for those people? That is not done but we will have that in respect of social welfare as if this was the one major crime. The amount of social welfare fraud committed is much less, on a relative scale, than the fraud committed by larger operators in terms of employees, businesses, hotels and so on. Let us have this measure implemented across the board. I am entirely in favour of naming and shaming those exploiting the system through fraud but let us not just target those who are less well off. Let us target the heavyweights in the economy, the so-called pillars of society and ensure they are named and shamed. This should be done on a regular basis. NERA identifies people in its annual report each year and is in a position to do so because it has been put on a statutory footing. NERA should produce a monthly publication so we can see in the newspapers a list of the great and the good of Irish society and how they behave.

I refer to the most unkind cut of all, in the one parent family payment, which will now end when the youngest child is aged 13 years. Where did that cut-off point come from? The 13th year is the first year as a teenager, the bridge between primary school and second level. Children are particularly vulnerable at this point and need all the support they can get, as do parents. Why is this inexplicable instrument used at this time? What will it do and what will it affect? It will not create employment for the parent. What will it do for the child? Will it force a child out of school? It beggars belief that proposals of this nature can be made. It is anti-child, anti-mother and anti-family.

The Leas-Cheann Comhairle has some experience of the constitutional protection of the family. There is a strong case to be made about the constitutionality of this measure. It targets the children of lone parents, as though there is some stigma. They are being hit at an early stage. At present, the lone parent's allowance continues until 18 years of age if the child is in education and continues until 22 years of age if the child is in third level education. Reducing the age from 22 to 13 is a considerable cut, nine years. The chance of that child going to third level education is now nil. There is no chance if the lone parent's allowance will not be made from the age of 13 years. This is negative legislation and is not what we need at this moment. It would be best if this legislation was withdrawn and the Minister went back to the drawing board.

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