Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to take this opportunity to dismantle some of the myths presented within this Bill as endorsed by the Labour Party and Fine Gael. Key aims were presented by the Tánaiste, Deputy Burton, on budget day, which included the strengthening of supports for families with children, increasing the momentum to date in helping jobseekers back to work and providing targeted assistance for vulnerable groups. While the Government hailed these aims as being progressive and inclusive, it is clear they are myths that must be dispelled and the truth revealed that these aims are in fact backward and cynical.

I will begin with the first myth as advocated in this Bill, which is it will increase the momentum to date in helping jobseekers back to work. The Bill outlines slight increases in supports for family income supplement, jobseeker's transitional payment, a new tapered PRSI credit for class A employees, as well as top-up payments of €2.50 per week for community employment, the rural social scheme, Tús, Gateway and similar schemes. This top-up is to be contributed towards costs, namely, a meal and travel costs. On paper and in elaborate budget speeches, these additions may sound nice. However, on closer observation they in fact are surface-level, shallow and random. Two issues stand out for me. First, in trying to get people into work, people are faced with low quality insecure jobs. Second, a characteristic of 21st century capitalism is flexible, periodic and insecure employment, as well as transiency, lack of control over time, over qualification and uncertainty. To reiterate this point, there are 272,000 fewer full-time jobs in Ireland at present compared with the position in 2007 and this constitutes a fall of 15%. The number of people in part-time jobs is more than 55,000 higher than was the case in 2007, which is an increase of 14% and more than one quarter of part-time workers are underemployed. In addition, between 2010 and 2014 the number of people who were long-term unemployed fell by 48,700 but during the same period, the net loss of Irish people to emigration was more than 123,000. A worrying statistic published by the Central Statistics Office shows that just over 73,000 workers were being paid the national minimum wage rate for an experienced adult of €8.65 per hour, or less, in the second quarter of 2014. Contrary to the Government's job push proposals, over time, people will be obliged to depend increasingly on social welfare as job security decreases across society. Social welfare traps will re-emerge because the Government's jobs and social welfare policies lack a coherent targeted approach for jobseekers or those on low incomes. Instead, it has covered its tracks with a shallow layer of small top-ups and token initiatives. The increase in the income disregard for those in receipt of the jobseeker's transitional allowance is a modest approach to increasing a parent's ability to stay in low-paid employment. Keeping families on the margins of work through low pay will mean welfare traps will become an increasing reality. Currently, 59,000 families are in receipt of the family income supplement and combined with the changes in the universal social charge, this means the State is creating a low-paid economy and actually is subsidising low pay within the economy through Government transfers.

I will move on to the second myth, which is that this Bill will strengthen support for families with children. It does not do so at all; it only just about sustains them. One would expect a Government that has witnessed a doubling in child poverty rates since taking office to have drafted a policy to reflect this urgent issue. Many of the supports, such as child benefit, are blanket increases to all recipients and are not targeted to anyone on the basis of the level of need. Barnardos has stated that although the child benefit increase might appear to be a step in the right direction, without meaningful investment in public services, the Government target of lifting 70,000 children out of poverty will never be achieved. Barnardos stated further that while some measures in budget 2016 were encouraging, for example, the introduction of paternity benefit, there is little to suggest it will be followed up with investment measures that in turn will have a lasting impact on families who have spent years struggling against poverty and inequality. One Family, which deals with lone parents and their families, has explicitly expressed its disappointment in the budget's approach to lone parents, whose poverty rates are far higher than in the rest of society. That organisation has stated that low-income families need the family income supplement to be adjusted in order that it makes work pay by reducing the qualifying hours to 15 hours per week and tapering the payment.

The final myth is that this Bill provides targeted assistance for vulnerable groups in society. The Bill does not do so and in fact, Social Justice Ireland has declared this budget to be the fifth regressive budget, as it favours the better off in society and there is no denying this point. Vulnerable groups were sidelined in this Bill and all Members know why.

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