Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Ó Snodaigh and his Sinn Féin colleagues on the introduction of this Bill, which is welcome for a number of reasons. I will speak in a moment about the specific provisions in the legislation which will offer an amnesty to people who have been overpaid, in most cases through no fault of their own. It is extremely important for us to highlight an issue that is raised by this Bill. I refer to the often hysterical media commentary, and sometimes political commentary, about social welfare fraud.

Such commentary promotes a popular belief that there is massive, widespread social welfare fraud perpetrated by so-called dole spongers. The screaming headlines imply that people who are on social welfare are somehow milking the system. This Bill is very welcome because it disproves that by simply discussing the fact that the level of actual fraud, in terms of the overall social welfare bill, is just over 1%. Of course, that needs to be addressed but it is very much less than the public are encouraged to believe is the case by the screaming headlines about social welfare fraud and by opportunistic political comment by certain people implying that fraud is widespread.

The Bill is very welcome and it must be stated, in the clearest possible terms, that the vast majority of people are in receipt of a social welfare payment because they need it. Furthermore, the vast majority of people who are overpaid social welfare - and the numbers are very small - are overpaid because of the Department's own mistakes and not because of wilful or malicious fraud. If nothing else, I hope that fact is recorded arising from this debate. If the Government or the commentariat wants to do something about the very large social welfare bill, frankly, it should stop talking about fraud, which is minuscule and start talking about unemployment and the unemployment crisis.

In the 1980s a Governor of the Central Bank, whose name escapes me, spoke about social welfare spongers and there were screaming headlines implying that huge numbers of people who were on the dole at the time were spongers who were milking the system. At that time it was very hard to argue that this was not the case and that the vast majority of people in receipt of a social welfare payment were in receipt of it because there were no jobs and it was impossible for them to get a job. The sponger argument was definitively refuted with the rise of the so-called Celtic tiger. Notwithstanding the huge problems underlining it and the flawed basis of the Celtic tiger, one thing the economic boom proved was that when jobs are available, the vast majority of people choose to work. That is what it proved. Unemployment reached negligible levels when work was available so the idea that people wilfully milked the system and stayed on social welfare because they could not be bothered to work was disproved during the boom. The vast majority of people, when jobs were available, chose to take those jobs and that remains the case today. We now have hundreds of thousands of people dependent on social welfare because of the economic crisis caused by politicians, the wealthy, bankers and so forth and because of the failure of this and the previous Government to deal with the unemployment crisis and to provide jobs for people. That is why so many people are in receipt of social welfare and it is no fun being in receipt of a social welfare payment because the income is miserable and reducing. We must absolutely dispel the notion that there is widespread fraud in the system.

If the Government refuses to grant this small measure, namely an amnesty to the tiny number of people who were overpaid, then it is guilty of gross hypocrisy and double standards and of applying one law to the rich and another to the poor. The whole tax policy of this and the previous Government is based on the premise that we must not tax the rich because if we do, they will dodge their tax. That is the main argument put forward by this and previous governments who gave tax amnesties to the super rich in this country. The argument at the time of the tax amnesties was that tax fraud was widespread and that it would be beneficial for the State and the public Exchequer to give an amnesty because it would then take in large amounts of money. Governments chose to reward the super rich tax fraudsters and then actually reduced taxes on the rich, including corporation tax and income tax on high earners. When Deputies like myself argue that instead of attacking social welfare, cutting public services and cutting jobs in the public sector, the Government should tax the rich, the Government's answer is that it could not possibly do that because if it taxes the rich they will all leg it out of the country with their money. They will all become Gerard Depardieu. In fact, the tax policy is tailored for the Gerard Depardieus of this world, for the super rich who do not like paying taxes. The policy ensures that the rich are not interfered with and that there is not too onerous a tax burden placed on them. That is not just the policy in this country but right across the world. It is the neo-liberal consensus which maintains that we cannot tax the rich because it is too difficult, too complicated and if we push it too far, they will simply dodge their tax liabilities. An alternative view is that the Government should go after them with vigour and make them pay their fair contribution towards the infrastructure, public services and the financing of this State.

This Bill is a minimal acknowledgement of the fact that some people, mostly through no fault of their own, have been overpaid by the Department and that it is cruel to force them to repay that money at up to 15% of their weekly payments, which are already miserable and which have them on the poverty line as it stands. We are forcing people to pay that money back when, in the majority of cases, the overpayment was not their fault. At the very least, the Government should do this. It should do a hell of a lot more, frankly, but at the very least it should apply this amnesty. If there are technical issues with the Bill or particular arguments to be made about elements of it, they can be dealt with on Committee Stage. If the Government has any semblance of fairness in its approach to these matters it should accept this Bill.

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