Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)

Ba mhaith liom mo bhúiochas a ghabháil ag gach Teachta a ghlac páirt sa díospoireacht seo. Ba mhaith liom mo bhúiochas a ghabháil go h-áirithe leis na Teachtaí a thug a dtacaíocht do na reachtaí éagsúla sa Bhille. I thank the Deputies who contributed to the debate and I would especially like to thank those who gave their support to many of the measures contained in the Bill.

I listened very carefully to what was said by those who spoke on the provisions contained in the Bill and on other social protection issues. I appreciate the depth of feeling and sincerity of those who have criticised the measures now being proposed. However, I would like to make it clear that these measures result from budget 2012 and the need to reduce overall social welfare expenditure and to reform the social welfare system, both of which were given as specific commitments to the IMF when the country entered the EU-IMF programme in late 2010. The amendments are also driven by the need to make the social welfare system better by encouraging people to move closer to the world of work and away from long-term social welfare dependency.

I will now respond to some of the points raised in the debate on the Bill and related Committee Stage amendments, to which I also referred during my opening contribution. Opposition Deputies have argued that the measures contained in this Bill are targeted at specific groups, such as women, self-employed people, home-makers and rural groups. This is not in any way true. Equality and fairness are important tenets of our social welfare system and ones which I uphold vigorously.

The higher rates of consistent poverty experienced by lone parents and their children, in comparison to the population generally, are acknowledged. The fact that they have remained at these levels, despite more than €1 billion being spent on the one parent family payment annually, indicates that the long-term income support, which the one parent family scheme provided up to last year until children were aged 18, or 22 if in full-time education, to lone parents without any requirement for them to engage in employment, education or training was not effective in addressing the poverty and social exclusion experienced by some of these families.

Social welfare is a hand up not a hand out. A key objective of this Government is the activation of people of working age in receipt of income support, including lone parents. This is reflected in the development of the national employments and entitlements service with a move from passive income support to active engagement with social welfare customers of working age. That is from roughly the time people leave school, or complete their education, to the time they come to retire. This involves the identification of customer needs and the provision of co-ordinated supports to support them into education, training and employment.

As I said at the start of the Second Stage debate, the availability and affordability of child care is central to enabling parents move from social welfare dependence to work and financial independence. While there are services in place in regard to pre-primary school care, more services are required for afters school care. Child care supports available to lone parents include: the early childhood care and education programme, which is open to all children aged between three years three months and four years six months in September of each year and to all parents. It provides a free year of part-time care and education; the community child care subventionprogramme, which funds some 1,000 community-based non-profit child care facilities nationwide to enable them to charge reduced child care fees to disadvantaged and low-income families; and the child care education and training scheme, which is implemented by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs on behalf of FÁS and the VECs. Under the scheme, parents who are FÁS-VEC trainees and who need assistance with child care costs to access education and training courses in order to enter or return to employment, do not have to pay for child care.

Reform of the one parent family payment and activation policy in regard to people parenting on their own and of working age poses challenges. These challenges will require a whole of Government response with regard to the provision of appropriate education, training and employment supports and the child care and especially the provision of after school care that all job-seeking parents will require. In advance of leaving the one parent family payment, lone parents may apply for the back to education allowance and the back to work enterprise allowance and, if they are in employment of more than 19 hours per week, they may claim family income supplement. The rate of jobseeker's and qualified child increases are exactly the same for one parent families and general jobseekers.

I have listened to, and been part of, the debate on child care and preschool and after school education for more than 25 years. We really have to change the system. To quote Rahm Emanuel, sometimes a crisis is the best time to make changes which the previous Government agreed with as it brought in the early childhood education provision which I supported in opposition because I thought it was a good move.

I refer to voluntary contributors, to which a number of Deputies referred. There are some misconceptions about this scheme. The total number of participants in the scheme is currently 3,200. Some people who commented seemed to feel that this applied to tens of thousands of people. It is actually a very small specialist number of people. The number of new applications in 2011 was 1,720. It does not primarily affect women - 62% are male and 38% are female. I think Deputy Ó Snodaigh said it affected women but that is not true. It affects former self-employed and employed people, with 25% being former employed contributors and 75% being former self-employed contributors. It is estimated that 100 cases would be affected by the change in 2013, with a further 100 cases annually from 2014 onwards, but it will not affect existing cases. The principal purpose of the change in the scheme is to support the change in the minimum number of paid contributions for the State contributory pension to 520. Failure to increase the voluntary contributor scheme minimum number to 520 would undermine the savings arising from the change in the pension.

In respect of fraud and control measures, Deputy Sean Fleming asked how savings were calculated and why the savings figures were high year after year. Control savings are an estimate of the value of the various control activities across the Department's schemes. They represent an estimate of the value of prevented future social welfare expenditure on fraudulent claims that would have been incurred if the control work had not been carried out. Control savings are used as a performance indicator for year-on-year activities and do not include any case of departmental or clerical error or any case where the customer voluntarily told the Department of a change in his or her means or circumstances resulting in an adjustment to the customer's rate of payment.

My Department has a process of continuous review of claims. By the end of 2011, €645 million in control savings were recorded and in excess of 982,000 cases were reviewed. The control savings target for 2012 is €645 million, with a target of reviewing 945,000 individual welfare claims.

Ports and airports are the subject of an amendment and have arisen for discussion on Second Stage. While social welfare inspectors have a range of existing powers of inquiry, this does not include any specific power of inquiry at our ports and airports. The amendment will allow my Department's inspectors to make inquiries at ports and airports where they believe or are aware a social welfare offence has or is being committed by an individual, that is, where they have reasonable suspicion or evidence that an individual is entering the jurisdiction solely for the purposes of continuing to claim social welfare payments to which he or she is not entitled. This is an important additional power. As Deputies are probably aware, there has been considerable commentary on this issue from time to time.

Regarding rent supplement and landlords, there are almost 95,000 rent supplement recipients, requiring a provisional expenditure outturn of €503 million in 2011. The Estimate for 2012 is €437 million. We are paying for approximately 40% of the private sector rented accommodation. Although there are existing powers that allow for the general investigation of rent supplement claims, these do not include any specific power of inquiry to investigate a landlord of a premises where a rent supplement is being paid to ensure that the supplement is being correctly paid in respect of the person living in that accommodation.

The measure relating to jobseeker's benefit was announced at the time of the budget and will not affect any person whose sole income is from social welfare, for example, the headline rate of €188 per week for a single person. People who are currently in receipt of jobseeker's benefit who are working three days per week receive €94, or 50% of their jobseeker's payment, in addition to their income from employment. The income from employment will vary according to rates of pay and amount of time worked each day. However, as jobseeker's benefit is not means tested, no regard is given to this when paying the €94. There have been some suggestions that this weekly mix of income from employment and some jobseeker's payment has resulted in some employers experiencing difficulties in getting staff to return to or avail of full-time work. The effect of this measure will be to reduce the contribution from jobseeker's benefit to the weekly amount of total income - welfare plus wages combined - and help towards a reduction in the reliance on the welfare system among those who avail of a mix of welfare and earned income.

We are moving jobseeker's benefit from a six-day week to a five-day week. An estimated 18,000 jobseeker's benefit recipients will be affected in a full year. It is important to note that they may opt for jobseeker's allowance, which is subject to a means test. If a person normally works full-time but his or her employer reduces the number of days worked on a permanent basis, the person may receive jobseeker's benefit for the days he or she does not work. For each day that a person is unemployed, one sixth of the normal rate of jobseeker's benefit is currently payable. For example, if a person takes up part-time work for two days, he or she can get four sixths of the normal jobseeker's benefit payment for the week. The measure in the Bill proposes that, from July 2012, the benefit will move to a five-day system as opposed to a six-day working week basis.

See this speech in context