Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank all the Deputies who contributed to the debate on the Bill. This is a very short Social Welfare Bill by normal standards. Nonetheless, it marks a positive shift in our economic and social recovery.

I will revisit some of the points mentioned by Deputy Creighton because much of her information is wrong. The Department has undergone enormous reform from what was described by the IMF when it came in here as a passive social welfare system to an active social welfare system where the Department is operating a very successful drive to get people back to work. So far, there are 79,000 more people back at work, almost all of whom are in full-time employment.

For the Deputy's information, as she is obviously not aware of it, the Department now invests over €1 billion per year in employment supports. I am sure she has heard of some of the schemes. The first is family income supplement. If somebody with children takes up an entry-level, low-paid or part-time job, by the end of this year, we will spend well over €280 million on supports for families going back to work. That is really important because getting families, particularly those with children, back to work improves the life chances of everybody in the household and means a much better future for the children involved.

At any one time, the Department funds about 23,000 people through the back to education route. We emphasise the return to education more than almost any other country in Europe with our type of welfare system. It ranges from people who missed out on second-level education to people pursuing degrees. The State funds the cost of the education and people hold on to their social welfare entitlement. I constantly meet people who have used the back to education route enormously successfully and changed a life where they had become unemployed due to the crash from 2007 onwards, particularly if they were construction workers.

We have a variety of opportunities such as schemes like community employment, Tús and Gateway, all of which are heavily subscribed. Internship opportunities are also available through JobBridge where to date about 34,000 people have taken a six or nine-month internship on a voluntary basis to get back to work. In particular, we know from the independent studies that people who have worked with SMEs have had extremely positive outcomes in terms of employment.

There are a number of errors in the Deputy's comments on the self-employed. I will ask Department officials to send her a note setting out what self-employed people are entitled to because it is important she is aware of what is available as she is talking to people. As the advisory group report showed, self-employed people probably get the best value out of social welfare. For a contribution of 4%, they get coverage for a series of very important life events such as being widowed. A self-employed businesswoman who has a baby gets maternity benefit. I am sure the Deputy is aware of this from her own friends. People really welcome the maternity benefit, which is one of the highest payments in our social welfare system. In addition, the self-employed have extremely important access to a retirement pension at a level and rate that one could not buy in the private sector for a 4% contribution.

However, the rate paid by people in employment is 14.75%. The advisory group has brought forward proposals to extend coverage to self-employed people but self-employed people will have to make a contribution. We do not have the resources at this point to extend further entitlements for self-employed people for a 4% contribution. We want to extend various kinds of invalidity pensions to self-employed people should they have an accident for a small additional contribution. Well-off, highly paid self-employed people can often afford income protection policies, which are very expensive. I know the Deputy was in the same party as Deputy Butler who has spoken in this House on many occasions. The organisations representing self-employed people have been very reluctant to advocate publicly in favour of extending the social insurance system to self-employed people. There would need to be contributions but those contributions would lead to very valuable benefits.

After I became Minister, I changed the system in respect of self-employed people looking for income support and I am sure the Deputy must be aware of this. We changed the basis of the assessment from the previous years in respect of a self-employed person who was doing very well at the height of the boom, as many were, but whose income dried up and collapsed, particularly those in construction. We allowed people to be assessed on the basis of their current situation rather than on the preceding year's information when times might have been very good for them. If Deputy Creighton cares to look at the advisory group's report, the consequence of that change in the assessment has been that the vast majority of self-employed people get an entitlement to an allowance.

The Deputy suggests that self-employed people are treated differently. The biggest difference is that an employee is entitled to nine months of jobseeker's benefit. Thereafter both employees and self-employed people can apply for a means-tested benefit.

In case anybody who is self-employed is listening - I will have my officials send the Deputy a note on this - the assessment is the same for both. If a spouse or partner is working, his or her income is taken into account. The Deputy's suggestion that somehow or another a former employee is treated more favourably than a self-employed person is wrong in the example that she cited. I am anxious that self-employed people feel free to use the services and supports of my Department rather than making a misstatement which might imply they did not have an opportunity to access those services. We can give self-employed people a tailored service if they contact the Department because, with the Intreo system, we have moved over to a one-on-one case management approach. We would welcome the opportunity to provide any services that may be relevant to self-employed people who have become unemployed, including support to get back to work alongside the supports from the local enterprise offices, which are now operating in most local authorities.

Community and voluntary groups have highlighted a range of concerns about budget 2015 and this Bill. As I met them over the year, they constantly presented their wish lists or priorities. Maintaining the rates was the No. 1 priority for all groups, and I am happy to say we have been able to do that again this year. We have sufficient surplus to be able to increase child benefit by €5 per month. That has been strongly welcomed by the various organisations dealing with children, and I thank them for their welcome. We have also increased the living alone allowance, which almost every organisation regarded as important. This is the first time it has been done in a lengthy period. In addition, the back-to-work family dividend will be introduced in legislation in April 2015, and backdated where appropriate, to assist parents with children who have gone back to work after 1 January.

Overall, I am happy this is a very positive Social Welfare Bill. It is the first expansionary Social Welfare Bill since the collapse in 2008. I noted Deputy Troy's criticisms but the biggest reductions in social welfare took place during his party's Administration, when the rates for a wide range of weekly social welfare payments, with the exception of pensioners, were reduced by a cumulative €16.30 per week over a very short period. The Deputy also referred to lone parents. The supports we have put in place for lone parents have resulted in a significant number of lone parents returning to work, particularly as their children get settled in primary school and the youngest children reach the age of seven years. I want lone parents to get opportunities and encouragement from the Department to return to education in particular because their education may have been disrupted or abandoned. Education, in turn, allows them to go back to work and achieve financial independence. Huge numbers of lone parents are achieving that objective. I greatly admire the people doing that. There are also positive impacts on their children and families. My Department's role in supporting lone parents has been critical but we must also give people who are parenting on their own opportunities to improve their qualifications and, ultimately, to get back to work.

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