Noel Harrington (Cork South West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Social Welfare and Pensions Bill 2013 and in addressing the Bill it is important to provide at least some elements of context. In a budget adjustment of greater than €2.5 billion, it is clear that for a spending Department such as the Department of Social Protection, which has an annual expenditure of approximately €20 billion, the idea it would remain untouched is ridiculous. It was always going to face a significant cut in the budget and while that was necessary, it was not and is not pleasant. There is no getting away from this and I have listened to Members opposite speaking ad nauseam about how we found ourselves in this position and who repeatedly have stated that default should have been the option. At a time when the State is borrowing almost €1 billion per month simply to pay the day-to-day bills, the reality would have been an overnight reduction in Government expenditure of between 40% and 50%. That would have condemned the most vulnerable in society to penury . Both social welfare clients and middle income earners would have been taking to the refuse bins simply to survive. However, this has not been mentioned at all.

Members opposite also have spoken about figures and I listened to the previous speaker, Deputy Fleming, speaking about cuts to this figure and reductions in respect of this or that scheme and overall, he mentioned about eight or ten of them. I will provide two figures for Deputy Fleming's consideration concerning the personnel, payroll and related systems, PPARS, project in which €160 million was lost from the Exchequer and e-voting, in which a further €60 million was lost to the Exchequer. Taken together, these two items alone would have dealt with this budget adjustment for social protection. Moreover, this does not take into account the €7 billion the Members opposite squandered and wasted in Government mismanagement over a ten-year period. The present Government is dealing with that and while the Opposition can talk about how this is a crisis born out of the collapse in Lehman Brothers or a crisis born out of a world financial catastrophe, this was a crisis born out of complete incompetence in the State. Members opposite mention budget cuts in schemes that have been targeted. As I stated, they are unpleasant but they are necessary.

I have concerns, chief among which is a trend I have noticed in respect of budget reductions and announcements in recent years, which is that they have taken place against those who have contributed under the benefits scheme. The jobseeker's benefit and the bereavement grant are schemes to which people would have contributed but in the case of the former, it has been reduced in duration from 15 months to nine months. Similarly, the bereavement grant is another benefit scheme.

Even though reform is taking place there are still areas where further reform is not only desirable, but essential. While the social protection offices have combined with FÁS or the new service Solas and the community welfare service has combined with the Intreo service, the pace of reform is appallingly slow. In many cases progress is held up because many of these offices had questionable long-term contractual lease arrangements with developers dating back to the period between 1997 and 2007 or later from which they cannot move on. If we wanted to provide these services in a one-stop shop, particularly in rural areas where the services are dispersed, that could not be done. The ideal provision would be to have an arrangement whereby a person who has lost his or her job would go to an Intreo office and the first point of contact would be a Department of Social Protection official. The person would then be quickly moved on in the same office to the next booth and would meet an official who is knowledgeable about the services provided by FÁS or Solas and job activation initiatives In that way the person on his or her first contact with a departmental office would have a route back to a possible job that matches his or her skills. There is a major unemployment problem in rural Ireland and those engaged in the construction industry took a massive hit in my constituency of Cork South-West. Despite the hysterics we have heard, there are still people in rural areas who worked in the construction sector who are looking for work and some of the measures in the budget will greatly assist them. I know of people who, having lost their jobs in the construction sector, went to a departmental office to participate in job activation initiatives and who were matched with positions that defied logic. They were given opportunities in the hi-tech IT sector. Unfortunately, the officials concerned simply engaged in a box-ticking exercise. That mentality is changing but it is not changing fast enough.

A debate on the efficient use of personal public service, PPS, numbers has been ongoing and I cannot understand the reason that issue has not been resolved by now. Why are PPS numbers not used more efficiently in all Departments? There is still a major lack of communication among Departments with regard to them. There was the case of the chid the HSE had concerns about in recent days where the child had to be handed back. That type of issue should not arise in this information age when every Department has an IT section but those sections only speak in-house, as it were, and do not communicate with each other. PPS numbers are not being used to counter fraud. Those numbers are not used by the franchise section of the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government for voting purposes. We are all familiar with looking at a register of electors and picking out the people who have died in the past three or four years. That type of thing happens across Departments and we will see similar examples of that with regard to medical cards and GPs' offices. There should greater scope for accessing information through PPS numbers.

I propose that further reforms should include a one-stop-shop for means assessments. I cannot figure out the reason that separate means testing assessments are carried out by the Department of Social Protection, the Department of Health, the Department of Education and Skills and other Departments that award means tested payments or grants and by the local authorities. A significant portion of every Department's expenditure, budget and resources goes into a complex detailed wasteful exercise of means assessment when a one-stop-shop should be in place resourced with people who have an expertise in this area. Each Department has different criteria, thresholds, limits and vagaries with regard to means testing but all means assessments should be done through a one-stop-shop. Fundamental savings would be achieved if such a unit providing such shared services could be established as soon as possible.

I spoke to a man this morning who comes from north County Dublin who told me that he works two days of the weekend in a bar. He is a casual claimant and claims for the remaining four days. He told me he has no intention of taking up work that has been offered to him on several occasions in that trade unless he is guaranteed a pay rate of €12 an hour. He is a bright guy and has done the sums. The only way it will pay him and allow him earn more than simply breaking even is if he gets €12 an hour. How is the Department going to deal with situations such as that? Five years ago one could possibly have walked into a job that paid more than €12 an hour but that day is gone. If one does not have a skill or a profession one will only get a job that pays the minimum wage rate or a little more and one will have to work up one's pay, but that message is being lost or is not being communicated. That point was not mentioned and people cannot see the wood for the trees. We see it happen in every town and constituency where people make decisions like that man and one cannot blame them. These are not statistics, these are people who have families who want to protect their incomes. They want to do the best for their children and they genuinely want to work but they are trapped. It is only human nature for them to make such decisions

There are many issues that need to be further teased out. I broadly welcome the debate. It is unpleasant to take €226 million from this budget but I congratulate the Minister on achieving something that was difficult but had to be fair and had to be seen to be fair. Anybody who says anything different belies the fact that we have a very progressive social protection system and taxation system, which should not be forgotten.

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