David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We talk about fairness and progressiveness, but the income tax system is extremely fair. Some 19% of tax is paid by the top 1% of earners, while 41% is paid by the top 5% of earners. Some 77% of tax is paid by the top 23% of earners, while 14% of workers do not pay any tax at all. That is impressive and progressive.

The Minister for Social Protection is doing a very good job. The expectation was that her Department would have to cut a lot more but that did not happen. There have been no changes in weekly social welfare payments for all 1.45 million current beneficiaries. There have been no changes in child benefit or the fuel allowance. The free travel pass, free television, electricity, gas and over-80s allowance have remained the same. The State pension for older people has been maintained at current levels. The half-rate carer's allowance is to be maintained and the extra weekly payments for carers for more than one person will be retained.

We should examine the Government's macro-economic strategy which is focused on trying to get more people back to work. That is ultimately what it is all about. I know many people who started off on the JobBridge scheme and are now in full-time employment.

I have met employers and employees who are delighted with the scheme. I would like to make two suggestions to the Minister in relation to JobBridge, the first of which is that start-up businesses be allowed to take on more than two interns. I have met employers who would like to do so. SMEs with fewer than ten employees should also be allowed to take on two interns. Second, the Minister might consider shortening the length of time in respect of which people must be unemployed before qualifying for JobBridge. Currently, the requirement in this regard is 12 months. I believe it should be reduced to six months or less.

There is scope to do more with JobBridge. This is what I and my colleagues are being told by employers and employees. The scheme is very successful. Six months is a long time to be unemployed. If people unemployed for six months were allowed to access JobBridge employers could take on more employees, some of which could be permanent positions, and create more business. This is already happening under the scheme as established. I would welcome the extension of the scheme to persons unemployed for six months, if possible.

In the UK, there is a cap on benefits. I congratulate the Minister on not introducing a cap here, although it is something that should be considered in the longer term. There are other things happening about which I am concerned. For example, I understand an issue arises in regard to social welfare payments being exempt from the Fines Bill. However, that is a matter for another day. It is important it is easy to move from social welfare benefits to work and vice versa. We need to put in place more measures to allow this to happen.

I would like now to speak a little about illness and so on. I was struck recently by the number of people in Ireland on disability benefit. Tens of thousands of people have left the workforce due to disability. This has occurred despite that we have a younger and healthier workforce. Since 2006, there has been a 37.7% increase in the number of people who have left the labour force, citing a condition that substantially limits one or more basic physical activity. Many people cite psychological and emotional conditions. The question we must ask is how has our population become dramatically more unhealthy during the past few years and is the State recognising conditions which up to now were not regarded as conditions which deemed people unfit for work? David McWilliams has done a lot of work in this area, which I have been examining carefully. In a perverse type of way some of our schemes incentivise people to be unwell. Perhaps we should be incentivising people to be well. We all know the power of the mind. One can almost convince oneself to be unwell. I accept that there are people who are genuinely unwell and people with genuine disabilities. We must be careful not to categorise people as fraudulently or genuinely unwell. However, there is a middle ground in this regard. We must focus on fitness, wellness and health. We need to consider incentivising employers to ease people back into the workforce. I know there are already schemes in place which do this but we need to do more. I am alarmed at the number of people currently unwell in our society for one reason or another. We need to undertake more research to find out why this is the case.

As stated by David McWilliams, there are some cases that are not legitimate and are fabricated or exaggerated. This makes life more difficult for people who do have disabilities because taxpayers will come to think of all people who are stressed, bullied, immobile or injured as faking it. This is an issue we need to address. We need to ask ourselves if we are in some way or other incentivising people to be unwell and what we are doing to incentivise people to be well. Many of our schools operate the Green Flag system. Perhaps consideration should be given to what can be done in our schools to encourage teachers and children to be healthier during the school year, at the end of which an analysis could be undertaken to see if they have improved over the course of the year. Those schools which are successful could then be awarded a flag, similar to the Green Flag. This would be worth investigating and doing.

This year, €19.6 billion will be spent in the area of social protection, which is a huge amount. I know there was pressure on the Minister to reduce that figure. One way of decreasing that amount is to get people back to work. If this means additional training schemes and so forth, so be it. I was recently told by an employer that there was a vacancy in his business, in respect of which the salary was €33,000 per annum, but he was finding it difficult to find someone to fill the position. He was extremely annoyed that this was the case. We need to start linking employers with people looking for jobs. We need to make it easier for people who want to hire to do so. I welcome the change in respect of social welfare offices, which are supposed to be doing this work. It is important we push to ensure it is happening.

In 2006, a good friend of mine, the late Seamus Brennan, put forward proposals for supporting lone parents. Despite that those proposals contained some good ideas, nothing in that area has happened since then. I would like to see that debate reopened to see if we can do more in that area.

See this speech in context