Denis Naughten (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Ireland has the highest level of jobless households in the whole of the EU. Any debate on social welfare must take place in that context and we need to focus on that. In fairness, I acknowledge the Government has provided some supports, particularly for the self-employed, in this budget. The self-employed are the risk-takers, the ones who set up a business, try to make a living and then employ someone else. The majority of employed people are employed by those individual risk-takers. They are the ones who have, at the end of the week, to come up with an additional wage packages, whether it is two, three, five, ten, 15 or 20 wage packets. They then have to pay the State the money it is due before they can put anything on their own table. If we are going to get back to full employment, they are the people we need to support and to encourage.

In fairness the Government has restructured supports for businesses. The Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation has a one-stop shop which is very effective in indicating the supports available to small businesses. What we need in this country is an ethos of supporting risk, of encouraging people to gamble and set up a new business. It is disappointing to see that many start-ups are now relocating to the United Kingdom because of the tax structure here but also because the safety net is not in place to support those who take the risk.

For every business that is set up, nine of them will fall flat on their faces. We need to ensure we can pick up those pieces, support those individuals, dust them off and get them back up again. That is why I have consistently raised the issue of allowing the self-employed to make additional voluntary contributions, so they can access supports when they fall down through illness or injury. I know the Government has talked about it but we yet have to see movement on this. This should also be extended to self-employed people if their business goes to the wall and they become unemployed themselves. I am disappointed the Tánaiste and Minister for Social Protection has dismissed that. Her defence was that nine out of ten self-employed people who applied for jobseeker’s allowance between 2009 and 2011 received the payment. However, it was drummed into the self-employed that there were no supports available to them and there was no point in them applying for social welfare. It was only those who were really on their uppers who applied for social welfare. I have come across numerous families where there was genuine poverty and where they believed they were not entitled to a social welfare payment. However, they were fully entitled to it and got it eventually. Many more suffered through that and did not apply because of that misconception. It is important that proper supports are put in place for the self-employed. These are the people who will create the jobs and sustain our economy in the long term. We need to support them when they fall on hard times. It is disappointing there is no provision for this in the legislation.

The second issue I wish to raise concerns the lack of pension entitlements for FÁS supervisors. The Minister of State at the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Deputy Nash, has responsibility for small businesses and collective bargaining. During the passage of the Industrial Relations (Amendment) Bill in the House, he stated the Labour Court will be able to initiate a review of pay and pension conditions and make recommendations to the Minister. Accordingly, if the Minister is happy with the process that has been employed, he can sign an order bringing them into force. In 2008, the Labour Court made a determination, recommending that a scheme be put in place for the provision of pensions for supervisors and assistant supervisors in FÁS community employment schemes.

Both the State's side and the employees' side of that case were heard fully and the court made that recommendation.

The Minister of State, Deputy Gerald Nash, has said in this House that Dunnes Stores should go before the Labour Court to deal with its industrial relations issues and use the industrial relations mechanisms available. The State's industrial relations mechanisms have made a recommendation that the State provide pension entitlements for community employment scheme supervisors, yet the Government ignores it saying it will create a precedent for other private organisations in receipt of State funding. I would like to see the evidence behind that assertion because I have not seen it to date.

In 2007 the benchmarking implementation group did not give public servants any additional payment on the basis that they had access to pension entitlements. The community employment scheme supervisors did not get an increase at that stage on that basis. They did not, at that time, have an entitlement to a pension. They feel there was a legitimate expectation at the time that they would be given access to pension entitlements. Will the Minister of State examine this issue? The community employment schemes were established by Government in the 1990s. It was subsequently forced into establishing private companies and the Government is using that fact as a mechanism by which to turn its back on the supervisors.

Today Bank of Ireland announced that it no longer wants customers. It stated that unless people are withdrawing €700 in cash from a bank branch they are not to come near it. We have addressed this matter previously but the Minister of State's officials in his Department wrote to pensioners advising them that the most efficient way for them to access their money and for the Department to send the money to them is if they open a bank account into which the money could be paid. Not only does the Bank of Ireland no longer wish to deal with cash customers in its branches, in my part of the country, County Roscommon, and many other rural counties, Bank of Ireland does not want customers on certain days of the week either. Given his Department officials were so anxious to write to pensioners asking them to provide their bank account details and encouraging them to use the banks instead of their local post offices, will the Minister of State now write to those customers to whom the Department is electronically transferring money pointing out to them the huge risk associated with continuing to use their Bank of Ireland accounts and encouraging them to go to their local post office?

I have seen it before but what is going to happen is that older people will take out their cash and keep it in their homes. We have enough gurriers going around the country raping and plundering rural Ireland and pillaging communities at the moment without adding an extra incentive. We should not be encouraging older people to take out cash and allowing those individuals that are coming from urban centres, mainly in Dublin, to rob older, vulnerable people in their homes. I urge the Minister of State to issue that directive to his officials. He should encourage them to tell their customers - the people in receipt of welfare payments - not to do business with Bank of Ireland and to return to their local post offices.

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