John Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I compliment social welfare officials across the country who have been very helpful to us over the last year. They are working under serious constraints. Their offices are understaffed. It is taking 18 months for appeals to be heard and between six and nine months for carer's allowance applications to be dealt with. It is taking months for jobseeker's benefit to be dealt with. There is a problem in that the offices are completely understaffed at the moment. The Minister should look at this issue, particularly in respect of the carer's allowance. The length of time it is taking for people to get approval for carer's allowance is a scandal. I have had many situations in my own county where people applied for carer's allowance and by the time it was approved, the person who needed to be cared had passed away. The Minister should look seriously at that situation.

The cuts that the Minister for Finance announced in the budget include the abolition of the bereavement grant, the reduction of jobseeker's allowance and the supplementary welfare allowance for those aged under 25, the abolition of the mortgage interest supplement, the reduction in the maternity benefits and the issues that we are not discussing tonight for some reason, such as the abolition of the telephone allowance, changes to the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance which were seriously reduced, and a reduction in exceptional needs payments, which is causing major problems for poorer families. Then we had the reduction in the ESB allowances as well.

The Government has continued to hit the less well off in our society in the last two years. Perhaps the new Deputies are not up to speed with what their older colleagues said prior to the last election, when promises were made to protect the old and the less well off, and that everyone would receive the medical card and so on. Clearly there are were a lot of false statements. Many issues were used before the last election and when the then Opposition parties formed this Government, the tune changed.

I would like to raise a couple of issues in respect of young people.

The cut in the social welfare payment for young people will have a serious effect. Obviously many people will emigrate to Canada, Australia and America. The Department of Social Protection is already advising people that jobs are available in Canada and so the thinking of the Government seems to be to get more people to emigrate.

When young people go on a Tús scheme, community employment scheme or any of the other schemes, after one year they are placed back on the dole queue, which is not right. In many cases the training courses available are not suitable. The south east was very dependent on the building industry over the years. Many young people are out of work because there are no longer jobs in the building industry. These young people are looking for further education and training that is relevant to the jobs available in the region. Most of the jobs available in the south-east region are in farming, fishing or related industries. It is important that the new FÁS training schemes and the other training schemes coming on board should be made relevant to an area. One size does not fit all and it is very important that we have training schemes that are relevant to young people.

The social welfare system at present does not encourage people to take up temporary work. While people might get a job for three or four months in the fruit area or other areas, they then find it very difficult to get back on social welfare. This is a major problem that needs to be addressed. As a result people are not taking up temporary work because they claim it takes several weeks to get back on their social welfare. A new system needs to be introduced. I have taken this up with my own Ministers in the past. When people go on a temporary work scheme they should automatically resume getting jobseeker's payment as soon as possible.

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