Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

I have to say I was surprised to learn that the Minister, Deputy Burton, believes very little was going on in the Department of Social Protection when I was the Minister in that Department. I will deal with that in a second. I was delighted to note in the five-month Exchequer returns that the departmental Estimates are holding up very well. In fact, the Department of Social Protection is €68 million ahead of profile. It is better than profile because extra income is coming in. At the end of the day, what counts in any Department is the bottom line. The bottom line in this case is that it is €68 million better off than it was profiled for at the beginning of the year. That shows how robust the Estimates prepared by the previous Government were.

At the weekend, the Minister for Social Protection was reported as saying she feels the outgoing Ministers were only there in body during the dying days of the previous Government. She is said to have said: "I have a feeling from my observations in Government so far that Government Ministers mentally departed the space maybe 12, 18 months ago." She went on to speak derisively about the Tús scheme. I will come to that in a few minutes.

I was in the Department of Social Protection for ten months before the general election was called. I was appointed to that position at the end of March 2010. I will set out what I achieved in that time. The day I entered the Department was the same day the Taoiseach announced that FÁS was to be broken up and its employment services were to be transferred to the Department of Social Protection. From a standing start, by the end of the year FÁS was operating under the aegis of the Department with a detailed service level agreement in place.

We had agreement in principle that the staff of FÁS would rejoin the Department once the IR issues were resolved. The activation schemes that were being operated by FÁS came in under the remit of the Department from a policy point of view in September and two of the schemes, that is, the community services programme and the rural social scheme, transferred fully into the Department from 1 September.

We were putting in place a comprehensive approach, on which I hope the Minister will build, to interlink the employment action programme with the activation schemes in a clear hierarchy that I laid out time and again during my time in the Department. Every unemployed person should be contacted, at regular intervals but particularly at the one year crossroads because we know that it is the juncture beyond which people find it very difficult to get employment, and interviewed with a view to getting him or her a job and, failing that, education or training. Failing all of those options that one should be given, one would have the option of going on a work scheme. I recall that I was not a month in the Department when I asked the Chief Medical Officer, a fine doctor, about the ill effects of unemployment. He gave me two page which were quite devastating on the effects on people of unemployment and lack of activity. We were creating a quick, efficient way of facilitating people who were genuinely unemployed, but we were also creating a net that would catch those who were working and drawing social welfare at the same time.

My belief was quite simple, and we had moved tremendously far in this direction, but it all seems to have stopped since because I understand there is nobody on the Tús scheme. My belief was that all those I know who are genuinely unemployed would much prefer to be working in some community project than sitting at home every day but those who are working and unemployed, when one challenges them to take work, suddenly find they are too busy and they sign off social welfare. Before I left the Department, we had started doing primary trials and a new roll-out of the EAP.

The Minister is wondering what the Tús scheme is about and I will explain it. It is a work scheme as opposed to CE, which is a training scheme. My idea was that everybody who is unemployed should get an offer of a place on a community scheme rather than being totally unemployed. The Minister might ask why 5,000. She validated the 5,000 places because it was my belief that I would not roll out more than 5,000 in one year and therefore I could not spend the money. My understanding is that the Minister is way behind the targets I set for the roll-out of that scheme, particularly in the case of the sports scheme which not has happened and where we intended having people employed as coaches in the spring.

Regarding disability, we brought in the partial capacity scheme, but we are still waiting for the regulations, which, I am told, will not be ready until September. The idea of the partial capacity scheme was that for the first time ever, instead of seeing persons with disabilities, we were talking about their abilities while recognising that, depending on the level of disability, one would need to retain some of one's social welfare payment. One could work long term and full-time if one wished. We had passed this scheme whereby we would grade the level of disability and one would retain that payment but could go and get any employment one wanted. There was no limit on it, in either duration or pay, and if one could not sustain the employment, one went back on one's full invalidity pension. We intended following up rapidly, once we had it up and running and got over its trial phase, and extending that scheme to the large number of people who receive disability allowance so that we move away from the negative concept of forcing those on disability payment to stay out of the workforce. As the Minister might also remember, or they might have informed her in the Department, we also made the advocacy services for persons with disabilities permanent in my time in the Department. Unfortunately, I am under time constraints here and there is much to get through.

When one checks under the pension heading, we had quite a bit of work under way on the issue of bringing the defined benefit schemes into a different spot than they were in; I had extended the date to July. However, we have matched that with the legislation we brought in for the sovereign annuities, the idea of which was quite simple. Insurance companies, instead of buying bonds in Germany and exporting our money to Germany or buying high-risk equities, would buy Irish sovereign bonds over a 30 year period at a better interest rate than they get in Germany. This would mean that defined benefits funds which are now in trouble would become more solvent and the Government would not have to borrow this money abroad because we would be getting the money from our own people. As no doubt the Minister has been informed in the Department, there is €70 billion of Irish workers' money in pension funds. It is all in equities, in a small amount in cash and in bonds worth €20 billion. Those bonds are 95% German or French - the vast majority are German. We had it all ready to go. The NTMA was ready to roll it out and I have heard nothing about it since we left Government.

On the mortgage interest problem and the issue of debt, we received the report in the autumn and I left behind me - I kept a copy of it - a clear path to deal with some of the issues that are in the mortgage interest supplement. It was lined up for the spring - the Bill before us now is a summer Bill - and would have changed the mortgage interest supplement scheme to get rid of some of the unfair rules contained in it, particularly the 30 hour rule. This is particularly devastating for couples where the lower income earner remains in employment but is caught by the 30 hour rule. Some couples are in desperate situations trying to pay their mortgages. However, we have not seen this reform. The Minister stated all the changes she will bring in and that we had been doing nothing. However, we left it ready for her to do and she cannot seem to get it done. There were other changes there but, again, I am running out of time.

The public services card is another matter we had progressed. We had got to the point where the contract was awarded and we were ready to roll it out. The card will be a great way of tackling fraud. We know the three issues in fraud. The Minister identified one of them, the one-parent family payment which is very difficult to police. The second one is working and drawing, which is a challenge. The way to deal with it is not to spend more on inspectors but to challenge people with work. If they take the work then that is perfectly legitimate and if they do not, the Department calls them in, at which point one will find they will sign off fairly quickly.

We also completed the transfer of community welfare officers to the Department. As the Minister will be aware, at present they are departmental staff on secondment. There are some IR issues that need to be tidied up. That had been going on for many years. The transfer happened on 1 January this year. As I stated, that was something that had been worked on by many Ministers before me but in my short time in the Department, we resolved the issues that had been there. They came in to the Department on secondment and there were merely some final small IR issues with which no doubt the Minister will also deal.

We also brought in three social welfare Bills. Those Bills were quite substantial. One was a primary rates Bill but it also contained legislation to do with partial capacity, lone parents, etc. During my time, we made legislative changes to try split up the appeals process, which is a major challenge for the Department. I also worked hard in conjunction with the Department. If the Minister checks with the officials, we held special meetings about this to try look at administrative ways of speeding up the appeals process. Considerable progress was made in that regard during my time in the Department. I hope that such work is continuing but I must say I do not see much evidence of that.

In addition, I resolved the miners' issue. This involved miners who had worked in the coal mines around the country, such as in Arigna, Ballingarry, Castlecomer, etc., but had not in my view - it was a case made by the Opposition at the time - received just reward for the disability they suffered. We set up a mechanism to review their claims on the pneumoconiosis issue.

I understand payments continue to issue because of the swift, prompt and, if I may say, humane attitude I took with the full support of my officials in the Department, especially the Secretary General and the Chief Medical Officer, to deal with the issue. It did not hit the headlines. There was one "Prime Time" programme about it but because we dealt with it speedily and in a practical way, which they recognised as sensible, it did not hit the headlines and they did not have to knock on my door twice. I simply dealt with it when it came my way.

I was also involved in a radical overhaul of the rent supplement scheme. I note the new Government is, rightly, going along the same lines I was developing in terms of transferring people from rent supplement after a fixed time. My belief is no one should be on rent supplement for more than one year. Furthermore, we must ensure that all rental properties are pre-registered. I was working with the then Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government on this issue at the time. The idea of the tenancy being registered with the Private Residential Tenancies Board, PRTB, after one had the tenant is like staying in a hotel and when the hotel is being registered with Fáilte Ireland, it receives a standard check after the guests move in. It always seemed bizarre to me. Work was under way on that issue as well.

Also, we worked on the issue of removing payments for non-interactive young people on social welfare to encourage them into activation where we gave them the full payment. All of us know as parents that the worst thing that can happen young people is that they get into the habit of unemployment. This was not to save money. The purpose of this was to encourage young people and to make them immune from peer pressure in this regard.

Many other issues arose when I was in the Department including the issue of the spouses of self-employed people and the problem that arose which, again, was swiftly solved when I went into the Department. It was trying to claw back moneys from women that were to be paid to them as pensioners and that issue was resolved quickly.

I wish to highlight two further issues related to the Bill, including the row back from the €100 payment in the internship programme. We introduced the internship programme, the Tús scheme and so on as extra tools to provide activation and then as a way to chase those who were working and drawing. We were going to pay an extra €100 per week to those in internships. I note that this has gone from €100 per week for 12 months to a nine month to six month scheme, which is regressive.

The final issue I wish to raise amounts to a total sleight of hand. When those in government now were in opposition they were great at referring to stealth taxes. They referred to people doing things in a behind-the-door fashion. I examined the Bill carefully, including section 11, and then I read the explanatory memorandum on section 11. It occurred to me that something awful funny was going on. In the ultimate stealthy way of doing things, the explanatory memorandum outlined that the universal social charge, USC, would be deductible as is income tax and PRSI when one is carrying out a means test for the family income supplement. What it did not outline explicitly and what was carefully avoided was that it will not be deductible in other cases, despite the decision I made.

Let us consider the means test for unemployment assistance. As the Minister is aware, there are many families in which there were two jobs and in which the main income earner is now unemployed and the subsidiary income earner is earning a modest wage. To carry out a means test, one takes the gross means and one subtracts the PRSI - one used to subtract the health levy as well. One should also subtract the USC. Then one takes €60 off the amount if one is working more than three days per week and then one multiplies the total by 60%. That is the means. However, the Minister has declared that it will not be done in this way but that it will be calculated on the basis of the gross income. The PRSI will be deducted but we can forget about the USC which will be left in. If one is paying €20 in USC per week, it will reduce the difference between the two decisions to €12 per week. Why does the Minister not state as much in the explanatory memorandum? Why was the Minister not upfront in stating that we cannot afford it?

I am surprised with the way in which this thing was worded. The Minister was clear that she was deducting it in the family income supplement but it is totally glossed over in respect of the jobseeker's allowance in any of the papers I have seen or in the briefings I have heard about. The Minister should do the honourable thing on Committee Stage and ensure the universal social charge is a deductible charge. I am aware of the arguments those in the Department will make but the Minister should think of the people from whom she is taking the money. All of these people are means tested and not well off. The universal social charge should be a deductible cost in respect of the means test for the jobseeker's allowance.

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