Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail)

Ba mhaith liom chomhghairdeas a dhéanamh le mo chomhghleacaithe - tá an beirt againn as Gaillimh - atá ina Uachtarán ar Éirinn. Ba mhaith liom chuile rath a ghuí air sa phost nua atá aige. Tá mé cinnte go ndéanfaidh sé jab an-mhaith. Tá aithne mhaith agam ar Michael D. le fada. Bhí sé mar chomhghleacaithe agam sa dáilcheantar. Tá mé cinnte go bhfuil na buanna aige don jab.

At Leaders' Questions recently we debated the promise made by this Government not to reduce social welfare payments. The Tánaiste was quick to state that my party in government had built cuts in the total social welfare budget into the four-year plan. He chose to ignore that this plan outlined our hierarchy of choices as to how these savings should be achieved. The last choice, the one to be avoided if at all possible, was rate cuts. Moreover, we spelt out what needed to be done in order to ensure that option was not necessary. The first one we identified was control measures - while the Minister keeps talking about it, I do not know what she is doing about it. Listening to the Minister one would think the issue of control and reducing wrong payments was one she invented. In fact it was laid out quite clearly in the four year plan. This year's figures are smaller than they were last year because the figures last year only related to ten months owing to the industrial action which did not stop the work but stopped the counting. What new control measures has the Minister introduced?

The second one was labour activation measures. It had been my objective to roll our labour activation measures so that all of those who are long-term unemployed would get an opportunity to be involved in some gainful way in society, which I accept it will take time to roll out. I know of very few people who are unemployed who would not take work even on a scheme as opposed to being unemployed. I also accept that activation measures allow us to deal with the issue of those who are drawing and working, who represent a minority but a very expensive minority.

The third was structural reform. We all agree on the need for structural reform within the social welfare system. The final one is the creation of employment. For every 1,000 jobs created the State saves approximately €25 million in the social welfare budget between payments to the unemployed and the income that now comes in directly to the Department from PRSI. It is considerably handier for the new Minister because there is no longer a sharing of that with the health levy and it can be very accurately assessed now. Through all these measures it should be possible to make the €600 million saving without touching headline payments.

What has the Minister done since she came to office? Since one of the biggest customers, effectively, of the ESB was the Department of Social Protection, I had made a proposal that a saving could be made to the Exchequer by demanding a better deal from the people supplying the free electricity to the customer. What did the Minister do? She did it with the private sector with telephone suppliers, but she failed to force change on the electricity companies - the main one being the ESB which has by far the biggest number of pensioner customers and at the time had an inflated electricity price because of the regulator's ruling. She failed to make the saving there and instead reduced the number of free units to people in receipt of free electricity from 2,400 units to 1,800.

She might say there were difficulties. When the departmental officials told me about the difficulties I said muna féidir liom é a fháil ar bhealach amháin, gheobhaidh mé ar bhealach eile é and the second way was very simple. If we could not get a bulk discount - even though we are the best payers on time all the time and they need to spend nothing collecting this money - I said that there is a very easy answer and that is that we could make the saving by demanding an extra dividend from Bord Gáis Éireann and the ESB if all else fails. Just as the Minister did not cut the free telephone rental allowance, in no way was it ever intended that a saving would be made by cutting the free electricity allowance to people.

When I left the Department we had proposals on mortgage interest supplement at an advanced stage of development. One of those was to abolish the 30-hour rule. In many cases because two household incomes have been reduced to one there is still a partner working for more than 30 hours which automatically disqualifies people from mortgage interest supplement. A document that was left for the Minister of which I have a copy, proposed the abolition of that provision and many other improvements to mortgage interest supplement. Listed in the document prepared by Department of Social Protection officials was to introduce a Bill in spring 2011 to abolish the 30-hour rule. I asked them to give me a timescale in which these things could be done. I have the document they gave me and the timescales were their timescales. Obviously I wanted it done as quickly as possible and they suggested a Bill in spring.

I got an answer to a parliamentary question today which stated the Department had put all that back, indicating that it was not really concerned about people being unable to pay mortgages. It suggested they could wait while we have another committee to consider it all over again and come up with different solutions. The Minister should consider all the people she could have helped if she had been willing to make the simple changes - which are often the best ones - in the mortgage interest supplement for which we had provided when we were in government.

Regarding control measures, I ask the Minister for an update on the PPS card which was ready to roll and how many she has issued since she came into office. The Minister never tires of telling us about the fundamental reform she will introduce into the social welfare system and how she will change it all. I hope she does so because we had already laid out the menu of changes and had already introduced some legislative changes. I will now spell them out. We passed a law relating to partial capacity, which allowed people in receipt of invalidity pension depending on the extent of their incapacity, to retain part or all of their payment and engage in long-term gainful employment. This was a very human proposal because it gave certainty to people rather than the present system which grants an exemption for a year and perhaps for one further year but the person will never get fully commercial employment because of his or her disability and often winds up having to go back on social welfare full-time. We had passed the law and were drawing up the regulations to introduce it. Having made that very important first step for those with disabilities, I wonder where the impetus has disappeared.

In the four year plan we had also provided for an integrated child income support system replacing the child dependant allowances and child benefit with a universal payment and a top-up payment depending on a person's income. The advantage of that was that it would introduce a single system and eliminate wrinkles in the existing system that can create poverty traps. We had also outlined the need for the development of a single social welfare assistance payment rather than the myriad of payments that create so many difficulties at the moment.

I have heard the Minister talk generically about the need to reform the system as if she had invented the entire idea of reforming the Department. I have never heard her spell out those reforms in detail. Many of those reforms were already in train when the previous Government left office. As the Minister knows it takes time between the conception of an idea and its delivery, but there was considerable work going on that would make it a much better system, focused on the people rather than being focused on the schemes. At the moment our system, like many systems, is based on the concept that a person fits into the scheme. The social welfare of the future should be such that the scheme fits the person's requirements and is tailored around those needs. Considerable work had been done.

I hope the Minister can confirm tonight that there will be no change in social welfare rates and that the cut in the free electricity allowance will be reversed. I hope also that she will outline in detail the structural changes of which she spoke and what structural changes already in place she will implement.

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