Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

I thank Deputies who raised the FLAC submission and would like to give them some background in regard to this. Section 241(1A) and (1B) of the Social Welfare Act, as inserted by section 9 of the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2009, provided that new claimants of all social welfare payments could be required to provide a range of information for profiling and activation purposes.

If one reads section 12, the description refers to information to be supplied by claimants and beneficiaries for profiling and activation purposes. This relates fundamentally to getting information from people which will help identify where they could be assisted to perhaps get back into to education or to go into some kind of training or work experience. That is basically what is at the core of this.

The amendment proposed to section 12 of the Bill extends this requirement, which was introduced in legislation in 2009, to existing recipients of social welfare payments as well as new claimants. It also moves these provisions out of section 241, which relates to claims, into a new section 244(a) which will be titled, information to be supplied by claimants and beneficiaries for profiling and activation purposes.

Profiling has been largely developed by the Department of Social Protection in conjunction with the expert assistance of the Economic and Social Research Institute. It uses a set of characteristics combined with coefficients reflecting their relative importance to calculate statistically the probability of an unemployed person finding work early or becoming long-term unemployed. The system, therefore, is designed to facilitate early targeted intervention for those people who need it most. It will also introduce greater efficiency and effectiveness in the deployment of resources.

When a 21 year old goes into a social welfare office to make a claim and he or she has never been in work, when one asks him or her about his or her profile and background, in particular education, one finds he or she left school at 14 or 15 years of age. It would not be surprising that most people in the current climate would suggest that one of the options for that person would be to pursue further education because all the evidence in regard to capacity to get work indicates that the better the level of the person's general educational qualification, the stronger the chance he or she has of returning to employment.

A profiling system has been developed and is currently being tested in the Department's Dún Laoghaire office. Once the pilot is completed, the new system will be rolled out across the country. It is intended to commence that process from the third quarter of this year. On a previous occasion, Deputy Boyd Barrett expressed concern that there was harassment. I asked the officials to check if, during the period of the pilot, anybody in the Dún Laoghaire office objected. There was one objection by somebody who apparently did not understand for what the information was meant but who did not proceed with the objection to information about his or her educational achievements and previous work experience being requested.

Collection of the characteristics associated with profiling for those already in receipt of a welfare payment will facilitate identification and delivery of appropriate activation interventions to be delivered and to reduce the duration of social welfare dependency. We all know there is dreadful unemployment currently and it is really hard to get a job but there are people who have been in the social welfare system for a long time and we must positively encourage them to get back into education and work. All the international and Irish studies show that if young men, in particular, end up unemployed for more than two years, the damage to their self-esteem, confidence and subsequent capacity to get and to stay in work is long term.

Shortly after I became Minister, I requested the ESRI to publish a study it had undertaken dating back to 2008-09 in regard to people under the NEAP programme to see how they faired with the interview structure and going into FÁS training. Some Deputies may have seen the study. It indicated that in some cases, if people did an inappropriate course to their particular situation, their chances of getting a job disimproved rather than improved. We all have much thinking to do because it is not acceptable that people would go on social welfare as a five year, ten year or two decade option. It is not good for them, their families or their children.

In regard to the FLAC suggestion that section 12(2) be deleted, I asked for the views of the Department's legal adviser. Section 12(2) confers a power on the Minister to prescribe different types and forms of information to be furnished by different classes of claimants or beneficiaries. Any such power granted to the Minister will have to be exercised lawfully. As a matter of law, the Minister is prohibited from discriminating between categories of persons on arbitrary or capricious grounds. However, the Minister is entitled to differentiate between categories of persons as long as any such differentiation can be justified on an objectively reasonable legitimate basis. Treating people equally does not equate to treating everyone in an identical manner. In the evident that any powers under section 12 (2) are exercised in a discriminatory manner, such exercise would not withstand a challenge in the courts. There is no inherent legal difficulty with section 12(2) such as would require its deletion.

The staff of the Department have coped with an enormous expansion in the number of people seeking social assistance, in particular jobseeker's benefit and other unemployment benefits. The staff of the Department, myself and everybody in this House are aware that people have become unemployed in the current recession who never expected to lose their jobs or lose their businesses and who did nothing to generate such an outcome.

The staff of the Department are extremely mindful of the requirement to treat people with courtesy, dignity and respect.

That is borne out by most Deputies' experience with the Department's staff and by the experience of most claimants. Going to a social welfare office is a new experience for people who never expected to find themselves in that position and the vast bulk of staff in the Department treat people with courtesy and dignity despite the pressures they are under in the context of the number of claimants.

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