Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will explain. The reason I raise this is the complicated cases I encounter in my constituency clinic, and I am speaking from personal experience of dealing with those cases. Where I believe this measure discriminates against women is at the jump from full pay after three months to half pay. The Minister has a mechanism in place for people who are going onto the rehabilitative arrangement whereby their payment does not go lower than the social welfare rate at that point. That is not the point at issue. I am also not referring to the pre-1995 people but to the people in the public service who are relatively young with young families and are paying and have been paying the full PRSI rate.

The Minister will say that no change, other than the reduction from six months to three months in respect of half pay, is being made. However, as a result of this change more people will be on half pay sooner than was previously the case, which means many more people will be impacted by it.

Reference is made in the legislation to linkages with the Social Welfare Acts. Up to 30,000 people in the public service are in the lower paid grades. The statistics indicate that there are more females than males in the lower pay grades in the public service and that there are many more females than males at clerical officer level in the Civil Service, HSE, local authorities and so on. As a result of the new arrangements, staff will now drop to half pay much sooner than heretofore. A female public sector worker earning €30,000 per annum who is the sole bread winner in a household, whose husband or partner has lost his job and has three children would be entitled in terms of illness benefit to the single person allowance of €188 per week, €124.80 in terms of the qualified adult allowance and €29.40 for each child, which amounts to €402 per week. However, when her salary of €30,000 is reduced by half she will have an income of only €15,000 per annum, which equates to only €300 per week. That family would be far better off on illness benefit. As per the circulars issued across the public sector, staff are obliged to sign a certificate instructing the Department of Social Protection to forward information in relation to illness payments to their employer and to fill out the required forms promptly after going on illness benefit. They do not have the option of having the cheque forwarded directly to them as they will have already signed up to an arrangement whereby it is sent to the employer. As I said, there are more women than men on low pay. While this measure was not designed to hit women the fact that more women than men are on low pay means women are more likely to be impacted by it.

I have had extensive discussions in recent days, including again this morning with officials in the Department of Social Protection, on the general theme of this measure, which is that nobody will be on lower pay than their social welfare entitlement, which I accept. The legislation does not deal specifically with the reduction to half pay after three months but to what happens at the end of the half pay period of entitlement. I presume there is a presumption in the legislation in this regard, even though I have not been able to locate it. Under the legislation, after three months on sick pay a person will be entitled to €188 per week in illness benefit. While it is valid to say that a single person is entitled under social welfare legislation to €188 per week in illness benefit, for social welfare payment purposes the household income of a person on illness benefit is taken into account but for employment purposes a person is classified as an individual. This means an individualised approach is being taken in terms of salary and a family approach is being taken in terms of social protection. While the intention is that a person's pay will not be lower than his or her basic social welfare entitlement, as I understand it, this is only the case in respect of the person but he or she may be entitled to claim for other people.

I discussed the following issue earlier with officials in the Department of Social Protection. The top-up payment for the qualified adult and child allowance for a person on illness benefit is means-tested. If the husband is in receipt of jobseeker's allowance he may be able to have the balance made up through his claim. However, if the husband, because he has lost is job is back in education, he may not be eligible for jobseeker's allowance and may also have no other entitlements because he is not available for work. The Minister will probably say that this has always been the case. However, more people will be affected a lot sooner because of this change. When the people on high incomes of €80,000 or €90,000 are reduced to half pay they will still be receiving payments well above illness benefit and social protection payments but the person on the salary of €30,000 will when reduced to half pay be receiving less than their social welfare entitlement. I accept it will be difficult to deal with this issue.

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