Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Self-employed people are an integral part of the Irish economy. Those who take the initiative and risk in setting up a business and creating jobs should be facilitated and encouraged, not penalised in our social welfare system. There are approximately 268,000 self-employed people in Ireland. Small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, directly support 700,000 jobs throughout the State, and Ireland has a higher proportion of SMEs in comparison with the EU average. Given the high unemployment rate, there is a pressing need to develop a strong social protection safety net in order to encourage and foster entrepreneurship and thus stimulate job creation in the SME sector.

The Government should live up to its promises in the programme for Government to establish supports along the lines of those available under various international welfare systems, such as Denmark, which offer immediate support to self-employed individuals who encounter income difficulties as a result of business closures and slowdowns. The Irish Small and Medium Enterprise Association has outlined the disparity in treatment as between employees and the self-employed under the social welfare system. Employees have an immediate entitlement to benefits; are not subject to a means test; their personal savings, other income and cohabitee income are not assessed; the value of their property is not taken into account; and they are covered for invalidity and disability benefit. By contrast, the self-employed have no immediate entitlement to benefits; are subject to a full means test; all savings, other income and cohabitee income are fully assessed, the value of their property is fully reckonable; and they have no invalidity or disability cover.

The Government's defence in implementing reductions in social welfare expenditure will undoubtedly be that they are an unavoidable consequence of the recklessness of previous Governments. Despite all the advancements made by the previous Administration in the areas of social welfare and protection, Opposition Members constantly complained that there was not enough being done, that the country was awash with money and so on. As a member of a local authority during the 1990s and 2000s, I am well aware that these arguments were repeated in county councils throughout the State.

A brief look at the election manifestos of the Labour Party and Fine Gael in 2007 shows they had little thought for restraint. Observing that the broad macro-economic outlook for the Irish economy was good, the Labour Party promised a two-point reduction in the standard tax rate, from 20% to 18%; 2,300 more hospital beds; five half-days of free preschool education for all children; the abolition of the means test for carers; and an increase in the number of community gardaí to 1,500. Fine Gael, in the same boom-time election campaign, promised to cut the standard tax rate, increase the State pension to €300 per week by 2012, provide a laptop for every school child, introduce free GP visits for every child under 16 and continue the public sector benchmarking process. Given these examples of their own election promises, neither party is in a position to criticise as fiscally irresponsible the investment made by Fianna Fáil in social welfare and other areas in the past decade.

Labour Party and Fine Gael candidates travelled around their constituencies between November 2010 and February of this year making many promises. In the case of the Labour Party, they promised to overturn rate cuts of 4% in the previous budget, before agreeing, upon entering government, to accept those reductions. We accept this was a compromise reached with their partners in government. However, they have continued to reiterate that commitment right up until lunchtime today, but always outside the House. It is always when they are talking to journalists from The Irish Times or radio news channels that they make this claim, or when they were standing on the Leinster House plinth to mark their 100th day in office. Now is their chance to put this matter to bed in this House, in the company of their peers. The great socialist flag, the plough and stars, was waved on Friday last in Dublin West. The rose was blooming in Dublin Castle on Saturday as Michael D. Higgins celebrated his fine election win. I hope we will not be left to dine on pink salmon this evening.

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