Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fine Gael)

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. The previous Government missed a huge opportunity to overhaul the social welfare system in a radical way during this country's boom times. At a time when the system was being exploited and loopholes were being created, the Government of the day failed to tackle many of the anomalies in the system. We are now being forced to look at many of these anomalies at a time of recession. It is important that they are reviewed and overhauled. I wish the Minister, Deputy Burton, the best of luck as she tries to reform the social welfare system.

One of the anomalies to which I refer is the failure of the system to encourage unemployed people to sign off from their jobseeker's allowance if they are offered a couple of weeks of work. If one signs off to take up work, it might take one 14 weeks to get the allowance back after one's period of employment has come to an end. The failure to encourage people to take up an offer of two weeks of legitimate work is fuelling the black economy. By the time they take up the work and get back in receipt of their payment again they have lost any benefit from taking up that employment.

There are also significant problems in applying for various schemes - the one that comes to mind is the supervisory role in the Tús scheme. I encountered one young man who has been unemployed for the past two years and was lucky enough to get eight weeks' work with An Post. He was delighted to get the opportunity to do eight weeks' work but because of those weeks, he is deemed ineligible for the Tús scheme.

There are many other schemes for which a person is deemed to be ineligible where that person breaks his or her time on the live register. That system needs to be overhauled. In so far as possible, we should encourage the taking up of a week's work or a couple of weeks' work. In another case, a young girl who took up ten hours' work experience for which she was paid at the end of last year has only now got a decision back from the Department of Social Protection after reams of paperwork. She would have been better off had she not been paid in that case. There is a need for reform of that aspect of the social welfare system.

We also need to get away from the position where people are being forced to sign on the live register in order to become eligible for schemes. There are people who want the opportunity to get onto a training scheme or an education course but who cannot be given priority to access such schemes or courses unless they are on the live register. There are people who for one reason or another, many of which are principled, do not want to be on the live register but the way the system is structured they are being forced into that situation or else they will not be able to avail of the various training courses that may arise.

Another anomaly concerns the self-employed. We have all come across situations where self-employed persons acting as employers have been paying PRSI, maybe for 20 or 30 persons all of whom are eligible to claim jobseeker's benefit, but when the employers themselves fall on hard times they are entitled to nothing. Surely it makes sense, from the point of view of the Exchequer as well as those who are self-employed, to allow them to make voluntary PRSI contributions. It will bring additional revenue into the Exchequer and provide them with a safety net if they fall on hard times.

There are difficulties and challenges associated with this issue but they have been addressed in a system that has been introduced in the UK. If they have been able to solve the problem in the UK, surely we can also address that here and at least put a safety net in place for the self-employed who are the ones who will get us out of the economic mess we are in. It is they who will create the jobs in the future and get this economy going again.

Some of the previous speakers raised the issue of delays in processing applications. I would ask the Minister to look seriously at the backlog in processing initial applications and appeals. If someone is deemed ineligible at the end of that process and he or she has been in receipt of supplementary welfare allowance in the meantime, then the taxpayer is the one who is losing out because of that delay. If the person is granted scheme approval at the end of that process there is no net benefit one way or the other to the taxpayers because they would have had to pay it out in the first instance in any event. However, where those applicants are deemed ineligible, the taxpayer is paying over money through supplementary welfare allowance or in excess of the rate of supplementary welfare allowance that should be paid.

On the question of child benefit I commend the Deputy Burton for being the first Minister to take the initiative of raising this issue in Brussels. We have had Minister after Minister in this House who stated that it was terrible, and all the hand-wringing that was done about child benefit going out of this country in the case of EU citizens residing here but where their children residing outside of the jurisdiction.

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