Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am glad of the opportunity to conclude the debate on the Private Members' motion on income and living conditions and to support the Government's amendment.

I have listened to and considered the points raised by the speakers from the Technical Group and noted the various reports that they have highlighted to support their arguments. Fundamentally, I believe the points they advance are not sustained by the evidence. The Government is committed to meeting the national social target for poverty reduction, which is to reduce consistent poverty to 4% by 2016 and to 2% or less by 2020.

I heard many references in the debate last night to children. Again, the Government is leading policy here by setting for the first time a child poverty target as part of Better Outcomes, Better Futures, the national policy framework for children and young people. We are now implementing a multidimensional plan to meet this target, in consultation with stakeholders, including children's organisations.

Clearly, meeting these ambitious targets has been a great challenge in the face of the major economic crisis confronting Ireland for the past few years. Therefore, the priority has been to protect the most vulnerable. Now, as we chart our way through economic recovery, we will have the means to deliver on the target. The recent CSO SILC data show that the at-risk-of-poverty rate was 15.2% in 2013. This is a welcome reduction on the 2012 rate of 16.5%. It is lower than the pre-crisis average rate of 16.6%. Despite the economic crisis that has hit Ireland so hard, our at-risk-of-poverty rate is lower than the European average, according to EUROSTAT, with Ireland ranking 7th out of the 28 member states.

Throughout the crisis, social transfers have continued to play a crucial role in reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate. In 2013, social transfers, excluding pensions, lifted 23% of the population out of being at risk of poverty. If pensions are included, the share of the population lifted out of the at-risk-of-poverty category increased to 35%. This equates to a poverty-reduction effect from social transfers of between 60% and 70%. According to EUROSTAT, Ireland is the best performing country in the EU at reducing poverty through social transfers, excluding pensions, at 63%. This compare to the EU average of 35%, while the figure for Greece is only 17.5%. Ireland has a similarly strong performance in tacking child poverty, as social transfers lift a quarter of all children out of the at-risk-of-poverty category. This shows how the Government has protected low-income households since coming into office by continued investment in the social protection system and the maintenance of core weekly rates of social welfare payment.

In budget 2015, the Government was in a position to target additional moneys to help families and to support the most vulnerable. The Department of Social Protection recently published a social impact assessment of the budget.

It found that for the first time since the economic crisis, welfare and income tax policy will result in an increase in average household incomes of 0.7%, equivalent to about €6 per week, and this includes the effect of the water charges.

Now that the Government has restored financial stability, exited from the EU-IMF bailout programme and delivered a return to job creation and economic growth, we can prioritise the decisions needed to broaden and deepen the economic recovery in a manner that is felt in the daily lives of individuals, families and communities across the country. The strongest antidote to poverty is to move people and their families back into paid employment. This is evident in the data, which shows that if even one person in the household is in work, the consistent poverty rate falls from 20% to less than 7%.

Under the Government's Pathways to Work strategy to assist those on the live register return to work, unemployment has fallen from a crisis peak of 15.1% to today's figure of 10.4%. The new JobPath employment programme will assist an estimated 115,000 long-term unemployed jobseekers return to work over its duration. The new back to work family dividend will provide very significant financial assistance to families where a parent is returning to work, and ensure that work pays and families can build financial independence over time.

The economy is growing, unemployment is falling, and confidence is slowly returning. The Government has completed the first phase of the recovery and we are now starting the second, the process of restoring living standards. The Government will deliver a social as well as an economic recovery to ensure that everyone, every family and every community will benefit from the recovery. Through this, I am confident we will achieve the national social target for poverty reduction and the child poverty target by 2020. I commend amendment No. 1 to the House.

I wish I had time to respond to individual points made. Many of the points raised by some members of the Technical Group are tackled on a regular basis but Deputy Ross gave the House some figures, and his wisdom. I normally seek his wisdom on page two of the business supplement in the Irish Independent, which is well supported by that paper, but we should remember that the Deputy is the man who wanted to put Mr. FitzPatrick in charge of the country. He is the man who questioned whether we could get 100,000 people back to work, but we have created 90,000 real jobs already, and we still have over a year of this term to run. We will achieve and surpass that target of 100,000 jobs in the economy.

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