Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We have tabled this motion in response to requests we have received from many elderly and vulnerable people throughout the country who are very worried that there might be interference with their right to free travel. This Government has a record of using reviews of important social services as an alibi for reducing those services. The medical card fiasco is an obvious example. The Government has embarked on what is called a review of the viability of the free travel system. Many people throughout the country suspect, perhaps correctly, that this is a precursor to the entitlement to free travel being restricted or interfered with in some way. The Government should not underestimate for a moment the fear, anxiety and distress this has caused among the elderly and people who are very ill and vulnerable; nor should it underestimate the vehemence and determination of the resistance it will encounter if it seeks to interfere with this provision, which has been in existence since 1967.

Let us consider the type of people who would be affected by a change in the scheme. The first are people over 66 years of age. It is a statistical fact that 80% of people over 66 years of age who are in receipt of pensions rely solely on their old age pension. They have no other income or means. They are on a fixed income, the old age pension, which has not been increased in five or six years. They are a particularly vulnerable section of society and they have already been harshly treated by the Government, as I will demonstrate shortly. As I have said, 80% of them have no other means of support.

The second section of people who would be affected are carers. We all know what carers are doing for this society. I believe they are contributing, in net terms, approximately €4 billion per annum to the economy. In most cases they are shackled to their home or to the home of the person for whom they are caring. Some of them work around the clock. Free travel is one of the small perks they have been given, and there is now genuine anxiety that it might be taken away.

The third category of people who would be affected are people who are registered as blind. As is said in legal circles, res ipsa loquitur. Another category is people who live on invalidity pension. Members will be aware that in this country one must be quite ill to qualify for invalidity pension, and one must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that one will never be in a position to work again. The vast majority of people who are in receipt of invalidity pension have no other means or separate income or resources on which to survive. They rely solely on their invalidity pension. Finally, there are the people in receipt of disability allowance. These are people who receive the means-tested benefit as they do not have sufficient contributions to qualify for illness benefit or invalidity pension. Given that the payment is means tested, they obviously do not have any resources other than their meagre social welfare income.

The attempt to interfere with free travel is further evidence of the regressive approach which has consistently been adopted by this Government in all the budgets it has introduced. "Regressive" means that one takes most from those who can least afford it and least from those who can most afford it. Let us consider the record of the Minister for Social Protection in respect of the elderly. She has slashed the fuel allowance by reducing the period from 32 to 26 weeks and emasculated the free electricity allowance, which is now worth approximately one-fifth of what it was when the Minister, Deputy Burton, took office. She has abolished the free telephone rental allowance, thereby removing a lifeline from the elderly. The elderly were disproportionately and overwhelmingly affected by this, although it also applies to people on invalidity pensions.

The bereavement grant has been abolished and pension changes have been introduced, many of which people still do not understand until they encounter them. When they encounter them they find that many people who worked for many years are now receiving a great deal less than they otherwise would have due to pension changes introduced by the Minister. There is also the 20% reduction in the respite care grant, which gives the lie to the Government's claims that it has not cut core social welfare benefits. Carer's allowance is a core benefit and everybody in receipt of carer's allowance receives the respite care grant. If one cuts the respite care grant, one has obviously cut the entitlement of every person in receipt of carer's allowance, in this case to the tune of €6 per week.

All of the measures introduced by the Government have reduced the disposable income of people who are largely on a fixed income, which has not changed for the past five to six years. It should be mentioned that their disposable income has also been affected by the medical card fiasco. I well recall the occasion a number of years ago when the previous Government proposed that a single person on a net income of more than €1,500 per week would not get a medical card. The current Taoiseach and leader of Fine Gael described that as - I noted his words - a Judas betrayal. If a limit of €1,500 net per week is a Judas betrayal, what is the current situation, when it is €900 gross per week?

I do not have time to dwell on prescription charges, which we were promised would be abolished and instead have been increased fivefold. That disproportionately affects the elderly and the ill. There is also the slashing of home help hours, higher carbon taxes and property tax, which pensioners on fixed incomes must pay. They feel obliged to pay it even though they could claim a temporary exemption and postpone it, as it were. They are anxious to pay it, however, because they do not want it to build up as a debt at a rate of 4% per annum compound interest. Water charges are on the way, along with a host of other stealth taxes by which the disposable incomes of the most vulnerable people in this country are being steadily reduced.

The justification for this further attempted assault on the elderly is twofold. The Minister said money had to be found somewhere because there was pressure on finances elsewhere. Where is that? Is it pressure to reduce tax for the better off, pressure to give the children of wealthy parents medical cards up to the age of six, regardless of whether they need or want them, or pressure to pay consultants to give advice to the likes of Irish Water? The fact is that the cost of the free travel scheme is €77 million, which is a drop in the ocean in the context of overall Government expenditure. Public expenditure in this country amounts to billions of euro. Some of that is well spent and other parts of it are not so well spent, but I doubt there is any part of it for which the Government gets better value than the expenditure on free travel. Never has so little expenditure helped so many people.

If one adds up all the changes the Minister has made to social welfare, in so far as the elderly are concerned, the net effect is €290.4 million per annum out of the pockets of the elderly and people who benefit from free travel. There are 90 private operators in the scheme, and they are threatening to withdraw because they are not being paid enough. According to my calculations and the conversations I have had with some of the operators, a sum of €7 million would satisfy their demands.

This is pretty paltry in view of the fact the Government has already taken €290.4 million per annum away from the people who are going to be affected.

I notice that the Government's amendment to the motion refers to the previous Government's decision to freeze the provision for free travel. Three and a half years down the road, we are still talking about the previous Government. It is true that the previous Government did not increase the budget for free travel in the two budgets in its last year in office. However, if the Government is critical of that decision, why did it not reverse it in the last three and a half years? It has had three and a half years to unfreeze it, and in each year in which it has failed to do so more and more people have qualified for free travel.

We are accused of whipping up fear among the elderly. I am reacting to reputable organisations such as Age Action Ireland, the Irish Senior Citizens' Parliament and various organisations throughout the country which have come to us reflecting the fears and anxieties that are being expressed to them. We are here in Parliament, as is our duty and our right, to seek answers on behalf of those people. If the Government wants to make the accusation that fear is being deliberately whipped up among the elderly and vulnerable, let it then point the finger at organisations such as Age Action Ireland.

The other justification, of course, is that it is all designed to combat fraud and that fraud is widespread. Irish Rail and Bus Éireann have been encouraged to put out statements recently suggesting that bus passes were removed from so many people last year, there was a dawn raid somewhere and so many people were found on a train trying to defraud the free travel system. They are putting out those headlines as if the elderly people of this country and those on invalidity pensions - the poor and the vulnerable - are engaged in systematic and widespread fraud. That is a calculated insult to this vulnerable section of the electorate. The Government, Bus Éireann and Iarnród Éireann should cease putting out statements of that type.

The main reason such fraud is pursued is that the older versions of the free travel pass are easily photocopied and do not contain a photograph. That is being corrected as we debate this in the House, because we are in the process of replacing the free travel pass with a public services card, which will eliminate the fraud. There is no need to have a review of the viability of the whole system to deal with that situation, as it is being dealt with by the Department itself.

In any case, I want to ask the Minister of State a simple question. How will introducing a charge, whether nominal or otherwise, restricting the hours during which people can use the free travel pass or restricting the use of the free travel pass to one mode of transport act to combat fraud? Let us take an example of a person who wants to travel to and from Limerick on the train for a fee of, say, €60. If he is able to defraud the State, he is going to be €60 better off in that he will gain €60 by not paying for his ticket - for example, by showing a forged travel pass. Are we suggesting that if we add a €5 travel charge and he gains only €55, he will not defraud the system at all? Is that what we are being told?

Research has shown that almost 80% of people who are entitled to a free travel pass use it on a weekly basis and 30% use it on a daily basis. A survey carried out by Age Action Ireland showed that the people who use the free travel pass use it on average six times per week, and that it is used to visit friends and family and for social interaction. Is it not ironic that we have spent so much money communicating with people through the media about their social obligation to visit and regularly check on the elderly, particularly those who live in isolated rural areas, in order to reduce social isolation, while at the same time contemplating a policy that will inevitably increase social isolation? The Government has already taken one lifeline from the elderly - namely, the free telephone rental allowance. Now, it seems to be on the path of taking another, and I am asking it to stop.

As I said, Age Action Ireland, a reputable organisation, did some research on this matter and came up with some very interesting findings. It found, for example, that when the elderly were asked what activities would be affected and what they would not be able to do if they did not have the free travel pass, 65% said they would not be able to visit their friends and 50% said it would interfere with their regular visits for medical appointments. In other words, what they were essentially saying was that it would increase social isolation, something which we, as a society, are supposed to be combating.

What I found especially ludicrous were the main proposals of the review group, which were leaked to the media. It is proposed, for example, that the Government would introduce a nominal charge. To talk about a nominal charge would be fine if we had not had all of those attacks on the disposable income of the elderly. What happens to a person on a fixed income of €230 per week who is using the free travel pass six times per week if a €5 charge is introduced? Another alternative proposal would be to restrict the hours during which free travel is available. What about people who have to attend medical appointments, many of which are scheduled for early in the morning? Moreover, if people are coming from outside Dublin, they would have to start early in the morning to get there. The possibility of restricting usage to one mode of transport was suggested. Do the members of this review group live in the real world? Do they not know that journeys often involve several modes of transport? For example, I know people who come up to Dublin for medical appointments by train and they then have to get the Luas or a Dublin Bus. Is it suggested that the entitlement to free travel finishes at the Luas stop?

The fact is that people are worried about this and they want reassurance. I ask the Government to give a commitment, at best, that it will cancel this review and put it on ice or, at a minimum, assure the elderly and vulnerable people of this country, who have already suffered enough and who have been sacrificed on the altar of austerity, that it will not put any of those changes into effect. By that I mean, first, that it will not introduce a nominal charge which, if one considers what happened with the free telephone rental, prescription charges and so on, would certainly be seen as the thin end of a very thick wedge; second, that it will not restrict the hours during which people can avail of free travel; and, third, that it will not restrict the modes of transport that can be used. I ask the Government to give that reassurance not to me but to the elderly and the vulnerable who are traumatised and anxious from one end of this country to the other.

There was recently an election contest for the leadership of the Labour Party. The person who emerged victorious, the Minister, Deputy Burton - good luck to her - said in her first statement after her victory that she wanted to rule with both the head and the heart. While we are used to pronouncements and statements from the Labour Party that have about as much value as a Zimbabwean dollar, I am prepared to take the Minister at her word. I am prepared to believe that she is sincere and that those words which she uttered on her election mean something. If she wants to rule with the heart as well as the head, I cannot think of a better place to start than by cancelling this review or at least giving us an assurance that she will not implement any of those three proposals which have been leaked to the media.

There are 800,000 people - more than 1 million if we count those with companion passes - who avail of free travel, whose lives have been bettered by it and to whom it is a lifeline. They are allowed to socially interact, to meet their friends and to have something to get up for in the morning.

It does not matter about me but they are waiting for a firm assurance in this regard. I would like to get it from the Government at the conclusion of this debate.

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