Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This Bill has many shortcomings and is disappointing in many ways. The new system of allowing those returning to work from the jobseeker's or one-parent family payments to hold on to qualified child increases for 12 months will make a difference to those it applies to. The main purpose of this Bill is to provide for the back to work family dividend announced in budget 2015. This scheme will allow some people who cease claiming jobseeker's allowance or the one-parent family payment by moving into employment or increasing their hours of employment from 5 January 2015, to hang onto their qualified child increases of €29.80 per child for up to four children, for the first 12 months and half that for a further 12 months. In that respect I welcome the Bill but it is a missed opportunity to roll back on the less favourable moves by this Government in regard to social welfare payments and the social welfare system generally.

This Bill will affect all too few people because we still have a lack of good jobs, regardless of what the Government would lead us to believe. The jobs a person leaving unemployment can obtain today are generally low paid, insecure and precarious. The maintenance of certain social welfare payments is all the more necessary because if a worker was to take one of these positions without those payments they would be disadvantaged by taking up the jobs. They would be disadvantaged not, as some Thatcherite voices including the Tánaiste might claim, because they are lazy and they do not want to work and just live on the meagre pittance of social welfare payments. They would be disadvantaged because they would lose that pittance and have it replaced by another pittance for the pleasure of working for a company that does not see fit to pay its workers enough to live in any level of comfort.

The Tánaiste and this Government have clearly set their goal for the social welfare system to be a crutch to exploitative employers who would rather not pay their workers for the work they do. We see this in the exploitation of young workers with the JobBridge, Gateway and First Steps schemes, which seek to undermine that principle that a part of Labour should strive to uphold and protect, that a fair day’s work deserves a fair day's pay. The idea that young people, some with degree certificates, diplomas and apprenticeships, will be forced into a free labour scheme which provides no training in many cases is scandalous and something the Labour Party, if it does not cease to exist in the near future, will look on with great shame in years to come. There are people being threatened with a cut to their entitlements if they do not take up a role as a trainee chip-cutter, juicer or labourer. The JobBridge site is full of ads for recruitment companies. The irony seems to be lost on them. It would not be lost on the intern getting €50 on top of their dole to work getting other people paying jobs. The businesses that exploit this are an insult to the people who run their company and pay their workers for work done. What is equally shocking are the ads for highly specialised workers who have worked hard and trained already for their qualifications. The prevalence of universities like Trinity College advertising for research assistants when they already underpay PhD students, who are overworked in labs doing important research, is truly shocking and an utter disgrace.

Through this and other cuts to exceptional needs payments and supplementary supports the Government is creating a two-tier social welfare system, which barely supports the unemployed while propping up exploitative businesses and promoting low pay. Who would want to believe that the Labour Party would be such an active cheerleader for driving down wages, displacing workers and undermining organised labour? The point of social protection is to protect those worst off from poverty, not to place everyone from the unemployed to low paid workers into a pit of poverty. This Government must cease all measures that actively drive down wages including JobBridge and the about to be commenced JobPath. The dividend in this Bill is welcome but it does not come close to compensating for the myriad cuts already made to the supports lone parents depend on. This July we will have another one when the cut-off age for the one-parent family payment scheme is further lowered to seven years with significant consequential loss of weekly income for lone parents who are in work, but on low incomes.

I must also oppose strongly section 3 concerning eligibility for carer's allowance, carer's benefit and the respite care grant. This will make it more difficult for people to successfully apply for these payments and so there will be more appeals and more delays. We already have people waiting up to one year for an appeal. If anything, these criteria are far too strict. It is an utter disgrace that we are paying €5,000 a month in some cases to private homes like the one owned by the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, but the State seems to do everything it can to deny €800 a month for a carer to look after their loved ones in their home.

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