Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputies, including Deputy Joan Collins, had an opportunity to make their points. I am trying to respond to the issues she and her colleagues raised. In 2015, gross voted current expenditure across the key sectors of social protection, health and education will amount to more than €40 billion, or 81% of total current expenditure. In developing proposed budgetary expenditure measures, due consideration is given to ensuring our society's most vulnerable members are protected to the greatest extent possible in light of continued fiscal restraints.

I will now outline the key issues affecting Irish people and the Government measures in these areas. Net outward migration is expected to cease next year, with a return to inward migration from 2017 onwards. The young people who have left are coming back and will continue to do so.

On the right to work, we have added 95,000 net jobs to our economy since the peak of the financial crisis. It is forecast that we will pass the 2 million people in employment mark next year, replace all jobs lost during the downturn by 2018 and, between 2015 and 2020, add 200,000 new jobs in total. Of course, we must ensure those returning to employment are doing so in the full enjoyment of their rights, including the right to just and favourable conditions of work. The Low Pay Commission, established in February of this year, is tasked with ensuring any changes to the minimum wage are fair, incremental and evidence-based. As part of that, the practice of zero-hour contracts is being reviewed. The establishment of the Workplace Relations Commission will ensure Ireland's employment rights bodies provide for fair and equitable resolutions to industrial disputes. In addition, the Department of Social Protection is in the process of increasing by 1,000 the number of case officers assisting the long-term unemployed in returning to work.

Pathways to Work, the Government's labour market strategy, sets out a far-reaching reform of the State's approach to helping unemployed jobseekers return to work. It is focused on making sure as many new jobs as possible, and other vacancies that arise in the economy, are filled by people who are unemployed jobseekers. This programme, which is the largest single reform programme in the public sector, has delivered on a number of significant reforms. One such reform involved the merger and integration of three previously separate organisations, the community welfare service, FÁS employment services, and the Department of Social Protection's income support services, into the one-stop-shop Intreo service provided by the Department. We have seen the reorganisation of the State's further education and training services through the creation of education and training boards, ETBs, and SOLAS, the new further education and training authority. We have provided for the refurbishment by the end of 2014 of 46 new Intreo offices around the country, with a further 14 to be completed. The development of a new operating model as part of Intreo has yielded significant reductions in claim processing times and faster and more systematic provision of employment services. The introduction, as part of Intreo, of a group information process whereby all new jobseekers are briefed on the services available to them saw, during 2014,186,000 jobseekers attending group information sessions. There has been a profiling of jobseekers on the live register to help prioritise and direct the provision of one-to-one employment services. Since this process started, every jobseeker on the live register has been profiled and more than 800,000 one-to-one interviews between jobseekers and case workers have been conducted. The introduction of a claim suspension facility to allow unemployed jobseekers take up short-term and seasonal work opportunities is another in a broad range of initiatives to assist people back to work.

More than 60,000 long-term unemployed people have moved into work since the Pathways to Work strategy was launched. The persistence rate from short-term to long-term unemployment has fallen from 33% to 29% and the progression to employment rate for people more than two years unemployed has already reached its end of 2015 target of 40%. That is not ideal and we are striving to do better. In 2014, the Department of Social Protection expanded its engagement with employers. The national employer relations team and divisional employer liaison teams work closely with employers and industry bodies to support engagement with jobseekers and the Department's employer services.

The Youth Guarantee implementation plan was published in January 2014 as part of the overall Pathways to Work strategy. Within this framework, the Youth Guarantee sets a medium-term objective of ensuring young people receive an offer of employment within four months of becoming unemployed. The main plank of the guarantee is to provide assistance to young people to find and secure sustainable employment. For those who do not find jobs, additional offers are provided. In 2014, more than 70% of such offers were in further education or training, while others were in community-based employment programmes such as community employment schemes, the Gateway and Tús initiatives, or through the JobsPlus employment subsidy for private employment.

Budget 2015 announced the back to work family dividend, BTWFD, scheme, which provides financial support to jobseekers and one-parent family recipients with children who end their claim in order to take up employment, increase their hours of employment or take up self-employment. Under BTWFD, where applicants meet the eligibility criteria of the scheme, they are entitled to a weekly payment for up to two years following the expiry of their social welfare claim.

The Department of Social Protection administers more than 65 separate schemes and services. Each week, nearly 1.44 million people receive a social welfare payment and, when qualified adults and children are included, almost 2.3 million people benefit from these payments. Some 615,000 families receive child benefit payments in respect of almost 1.2 million children each month. Despite increasing demands across many social welfare schemes, primary social welfare rates have been maintained, including pensions, disability payments and jobseeker's payments. This has ensured Ireland's system of social transfers, which is the context in which the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights applies, remains among the most effective in Europe in reducing the at-risk-of-poverty rate.

The Department of Social Protection carries out extensive analysis of the impacts of tax measures and changes to certain social welfare payments. This analysis is published as part of the budgetary process over a wide distribution of income levels and is further supplemented by regular analysis and commentary provided by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI. Furthermore, the Minister for Finance publishes a very detailed analysis of the distributional impact of tax measures across a range of income levels and family types. This is further augmented by hypothetical family case studies.

With regard to the right to housing, the Government announced that local authorities were to receive €312 million in order to build 1,700 homes in 100 social housing projects across the country. This is the first phase in a €3.8 billion, six-year strategy to deliver 35,000 new social housing units by 2020. The strategy will increase social housing supply and reduce the number of people on waiting lists by one quarter by the end of 2017.

On the right to health, the realisation of universal health insurance remains the objective of this Government, despite some of the contentions of people opposite. We continue to progress plans to provide free GP care to children under six and adults over 70 by July of this year. We are committed to moving away from a hospital-centric model of care to an integrated, safe and efficient model which treats patients as close to home as possible, through the primary care model. The increased allocation provided to the health sector in 2015 will deliver over 1.7 million medical cards and a further 0.4 million GP visit cards. In 2014, staffing levels increased by 2,331 or 2%. The increase in staff has been concentrated in the hospital sector. There has also been €35 million in funding in 2014 and 2015 for enhancements to mental health services.

The education sector has faced increasing demands over the past number of years. Primary pupil numbers have increased by over 25,000 between 2011 and 2014; secondary pupil numbers have increased by over 10,000 between 2011 and 2014; and third level student numbers have increased by over 7,500 between 2011 and 2014. Our continued investment in the education sector has seen the pupil-teacher ratio broadly maintained since the Government came into office.

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