Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)

Yes. I am amazed that within 14 months the Minister has followed down this road.

It is five months since budget day. Nobody believes there was not enough time to draft this legislation. Maybe the person who wrote the script believes it, but nobody else does. When the budget was announced we knew the Finance Bill would be introduced, but we also knew the social welfare Bill would follow. There is no reason the preparation work could not have been carried out over the last five months.

The Minister published this legislation on 3 April, just over two weeks ago. In it, she provided that one-parent family payments were to cease when the children concerned reached seven years of age, to commence in a couple of years' time. Within a fortnight of publishing the Bill, however, she announced in her Second Stage speech:

I entirely agree that seven is too young for anyone to seriously contemplate any of these things without there being a system of safe, affordable and accessible child care in place, similar to what is found in the Scandinavian countries [...]. That is why I am undertaking tonight that I will only proceed with the measures to reduce the upper age limit to seven years in the event that I get a credible and bankable commitment on the delivery of such a system of child care by the time of this year's budget.

That is some eight or ten months away. The Minister published her legislation, intending to do something on 3 April. Within a fortnight she came to the House and stated she did not agree with what she had published earlier this month and would reverse it. The following week the Minister returns with the same amendment. I have heard of U-turns and double U-turns and pirouettes, or whatever the word may be, but I cannot believe the Minister has done this. Last week, some people actually thought the Minister was making a great announcement. I spoke to some journalists who praised the Minister but I said: "Hold on. The Minister is not doing that. She is saying she would like to do it if the Minister makes a change in the budget next year to give her a bankable commitment." In the meantime, as I noted last week when the Minister announced this, she is using young children and their parents as a pawn in her budget negotiation for next year. That is unacceptable.

Essentially, we are back to square one. I find it extraordinary that a few short weeks after publishing the Bill the Minister is back in the House with a whole range of new amendments, many of which will be out of order under the terms of this House because what is being planned within them is not in keeping with the Bill as published on Second Stage only two weeks ago. I could understand this if the economic or the budgetary situation had changed or if something had happened over a period of months, making it necessary to revisit legislation before it went to Committee Stage. The legislation was published only a few weeks ago, however, and already we have to deal with motions to allow us to discuss these amendments on Committee Stage. To use the Minister's own phrase, she has made a right banjax of the legislation. She used that phrase about the country last year.

On this issue, I will quote another phrase the Minister has used several times, namely, rushed legislation is guaranteed to be bad legislation. There will be flaws in this Bill. The Minister is stating that even though we had five months to know what we wanted to do, we were all rushed during nights in the past week or so, trying to publish amendments. There are amendments going through the Bills Office and the staff do not know whether they are coming or going. In addition to the list of amendments the Minister sent in, I understand the amendments for Committee Stage cannot be published until this motion is passed. We have seen some drafts that were e-mailed to us but I have not yet seen the full list of amendments for Committee Stage which is starting tomorrow morning. As the Minister stated, some of the amendments she is making are more substantial than original sections of the Bill. How are we, as an Opposition, meant to have an opportunity to amend the Minister's amendments? There is no time allotted yet in the Order of Business for Report and Final Stages, only a mention of Second and Remaining Stages to be concluded by 3.42 p.m. on Thursday. We do not yet know if there will be a separate Report Stage. I would hope there will be. Several hours should be set aside for it.

I urge the Minister to allow us an opportunity, even right up to the last minute, to make amendments following Committee Stage. This might involve a sos in the Dáil for a couple of hours or some other such arrangement in order that we can make some amendments on Thursday. Again, this is on the basis of the Minister forcing a guillotine on the debate. I still do not know why it must be finished on Thursday. If it is so important, the Minister might have taken it into committee for some days instead of taking up the entire proceedings of the House. We could have given it extra time in committee, as happens with the Finance Bill which has a full three day period on Committee Stage, returning then for Report and Final Stages in the Dáil. To rush all this in the Chamber in one fell swoop is totally unfair not only to us, but to the people who are trying to follow it and who have an interest in this legislation.

There is further confusion. I do not know the status of an article in the Sunday Independent by an eminent journalist who obviously spoke directly to the Minister. She gave him the impression that under the terms of a new Bill to come before the Dáil this week social welfare inspectors will have powers to access bank accounts of people on the dole without their consent. I presume the article followed a personal interview with the Minister by this reputable journalist. She must have said something to that effect. I looked for those provisions in the amendments that have come across my desk by e-mail in recent days but have not seen them. I do not know whether the provision is included. Was the Minister thinking of including it when she gave the interview last Thursday or Friday and did she then draw back? Are the powers already there? I am not sure but I know it was another spin from the Minister. Perhaps she felt she was getting flak about the seven year olds and wanted an article in a Sunday paper that would show how she would tackle welfare fraud by introducing these new powers. She might confirm whether they are to form part of this Bill or that she was only flying a kite in the media over the weekend to detract attention from the substance of the Bill.

Some of the changes the Minister has proposed today are very serious. The last one she mentioned offers even further confusion in regard to the Bill. She stated just now that she would announce on Second Stage that she wanted to introduce amendments on Committee Stage in regard to a household benefits packages for people who are paying rent to the local authority. These would ensure they could not withdraw their consent without permission of that authority. They have not even tried to do that. Consent is consent; people have to give their permission. This measure would have it that although people give their consent to withdraw from a scheme they voluntarily entered into, they cannot do so without the approval of a State body, namely, the local authority. Thank God the Attorney General told the Minister where to go with that suggestion. Last week, she announced in the House she would do it but she found out the situation very quickly when she checked it out. I wonder if all this legislation is being drafted on the hoof at very short notice. That will lead to flaws in the legislation and in its implementation and management.

In regard to some of the changes coming forward, as mentioned by the Minister, I ask her to consider the following point. I made only a brief reference to it on Second Stage because I saw the Minister's speech only when I was sitting in the Chamber. I mentioned she was ensuring she would get fully chargeable PRSI on the amounts for those people who will work under the new special assignee relief programme, SARP, which was introduced in the budget as an incentive on the part of the Minister for Finance to facilitate assigning skilled workers in companies from abroad to take up positions in Ireland. It gave them a certain substantial amount of income tax-free. The Minister, Deputy Burton, was obviously not happy with that and told the Minister he could exempt such people from PAYE all he liked but she would make sure she got PRSI from them. Right or wrong, she has taken a diametrically opposed view to the Minister for Finance. Under SARP there is a provision whereby the Irish taxpayer will pay the private education fees, up to €5,000, for second level education for the children of those employees. It is a big ask to ask the people to do that and give that special exemption. However, if the Minister is to be consistent, she should also take PRSI deductions from that €5,000 because it is part of the SARP. She might reduce the amount via PRSI or charge PRSI by some other mechanism through the tax system as a benefit in kind. If she believes in what she is doing on the SARP issue she should apply it to the full programme and not be the Minister who will exempt that tax relief from PRSI. I suspect she would have a difficulty with that in the first place given she is ensuring she will get her PRSI from it at this stage.

I refer to some of the changes she is announcing tonight. The employer is not liable to deduct employment contributions in certain situations. We will have to tease out the details of this tomorrow. The Minister mentioned very many amendments but one I wish to highlight is the entitlement to mortgage interest supplement. I understand that for people who are in arrears a logical question arises as to how they will get this supplement. I want to see an amendment to the legislation so that when the person comes out of arrears - one hopes this is the objective of this exercise - and into some form of low-paid or other employment, the Minister will make a statutory mechanism to reinstate the mortgage interest supplement for that person. I have not checked the details of the scheme but presumably people can get the supplement once only, in respect of their first home or the first house they buy. This may be cancelled if they fall into arrears or have to make an arrangement with their bank but after a year or so they may be back to the same level of income they had in the first place. They should be entitled to receive the mortgage interest supplement and get back into the scheme. I suspect there may be a rule somewhere in the system that states a person cannot re-enter the scheme if he or she has availed of it previously. I put the question; I do not know if that is the case. The Minister might clarify this during the course of the debate tomorrow when we come to that particular issue. There are occasions when people cannot apply for a local authority house without a certificate from the tax office. I cannot remember the name of the form but it is attached to housing application forms and confirms the applicant has not received tax relief at source on a mortgage. If a person has received it, it proves the person owned a house before and the local authority would check to see what happened to that house and why the person was on the housing list. People get caught out in various ways. It is good to know that one can go in and out of the mortgage supplement scheme although I do not know how many times one can do so. It must be clarified to ensure people can avail of it.

A major problem is that the Minister is attacking part-time workers by cutting their jobseeker's benefit. It is a nasty and insidious day's work and many of the Minister's party members will be very sore at this. When the Fine Gael Party said it would not reduce income tax, the Labour Party had to trump it by promising not to touch mainline social welfare payment rates. That is why there are insidious plots on people receiving mortgage interest supplement and lone parents. In order to make necessary savings in the budget, the Minister must go after some of the most vulnerable people. I am not suggesting there should have been a small cut across the board but it is an option. Fianna Fáil did it twice and, although people did not like it, they found it fair. Attacking lone parents and those in part-time work by cutting jobseeker's benefit for those in the lowest employment categories is not a nice way of doing it. The Minister is preserving payments for many people but she is making severe attacks on certain groups. This motion and the Bill should be withdrawn. The Minister should come back to us when she has had time to consider it and provide us with an opportunity to consider it in further detail.

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