Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

This is a change to which the country will have to adapt because it is what happens in countries such as Germany. We need to learn how to retain jobs rather than incentivising redundancy.

A core principle of sustainable social protection systems in advanced economies is that citizens receive benefits in proportion to their contributions. Some of the changes I will introduce today in the area of pensions put this principle into practice. Another principle is that we should gradually move towards a system where everyone should have an entitlement to one weekly income support payment only with no special arrangements or top-ups for particular groups. It is no longer possible to have a social welfare system where some people get more than one primary weekly payment if we want to avoid reducing the level of weekly payments generally. We have delivered on our promise to retain core rates, but we are discontinuing entitlements to certain concurrent payments whereby some people end up receiving more than one social welfare payment in a week.

Just over half the savings announced come from five main measures. I will reduce the rebate for companies which make staff redundant. The fuel allowance will in future be payable for 26 weeks, a reduction of six weeks.

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