Vote 37 — Social Protection (Revised Estimate).That a sum not exceeding €10,872,429,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on 31 December 2016 for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Social Protection, for certain services administered by that Office, for payments to the Social Insurance Fund and for certain grants. I am pleased to open this debate on the 2016 Revised Estimates for my Department. The Revised Estimates which are before the House provide for an allocation of €19.625 billion in 2016 for my Department. This represents 38% of all gross current expenditure. The major element of the social protection spending by far is expenditure on a wide range of schemes which are paid on a weekly basis. Each week, some 1.37 million people receive a payment from my Department. That is 2.1 million beneficiaries in total. It includes payments for pensioners, people with disabilities, carers and jobseekers. In addition, more than 625,000 families receive child benefit each month for almost 1.2 million children. The wide range of payments and services provided by my Department has an impact, either directly or indirectly, on the lives of almost everyone in the State. We also have a huge impact on the labour market. Payments or social transfers play a crucial role in alleviating poverty and are essential in providing adequate incomes to live. Social transfers freed over a fifth of the population from the risk of poverty in 2014, representing a poverty reduction effect of 56%, which is among the best poverty reduction effects in the EU. It is not always fully appreciated in public debates as to who benefits from welfare expenditure. There is a misconception that most of the payments go to the unemployed. This is not so. Accordingly, as a starting point today, it is useful to outline the Department's expenditure on its various programmes in 2016. The biggest single block of expenditure in 2016 will be expenditure on pensions, which will amount to almost €7 billion or 36% of overall expenditure. Expenditure on working age income supports - including jobseekers, one-parent family payment, maternity and paternity benefit - accounts for some €4 billion or 20% of overall expenditure. Expenditure on working age employment supports, such as community employment, back to education and enterprise and various employment supports amount to €1.1 billion or 6% of the Department's expenditure. Expenditure provision for illness, disability and carers amounts to €3.5 billion or 18% of expenditure in 2016. Expenditure on children and families will account for nearly 13% of expenditure or €2.6 billion, of which €410 million will be spent on the family income supplement paid to low-income working families. Expenditure on supplementary payments, agencies and miscellaneous services accounts for €867 million or 4% of expenditure. Supplementary payments have four main elements. These include rent supplement, the household benefits package, fuel allowance and free travel. It is worth highlighting that expenditure on pensions and children alone will account for almost €9.6 billion or just under 50% of the Department's overall expenditure in 2016. Deputies might note that in order to enable an accurate year-on-year expenditure comparison to be made, account must be taken of two items in 2015. Some €135 million was needed to enable pensioners and other recipients who were due to be paid on bank holiday Friday, 1 January 2016 to have their payments brought forward to Thursday 31December 2015 and €197 million was needed to pay out the Christmas bonus last year. I will return to the topic of the bonus in a few minutes. When these two items are excluded, the 2016 allocation is over €52 million higher than the net outturn in 2015. Indeed, the allocation in 2016 is more than €1.6 billion greater that what was spent in 2008, or more than 9%. It is important for the House to note that, given the demand-led nature of most Department of Social Protection expenditure, the allocations for the vast majority of schemes vary from year to year based on emerging trends. The variations can result in a higher or lower requirement. The very welcome reductions in expenditure on jobseekers, due to falling unemployment, means that we have been able to meet expenditure pressures in other areas. Deputies will be already familiar with increased spending on pensioners as the number of seniors rises, but there are two other areas I would like to highlight. First, payments to carers will amount to almost €912 million this year, an increase of 18% since 2012 due to a higher number of carers being supported. Similarly, expenditure on disability and invalidity payments has increased by 13% or €232 million since 2012, again due to increased numbers of people on the schemes. As already outlined, the 2015 outturn included expenditure of €197 million on the payment of a Christmas bonus. The Christmas bonus was introduced in 1980 and was abolished in 2009. The last Government re-introduced it partially in 2014 with the payment of a 25% Bonus, followed by a 75% Bonus in 2015. If one looks back historically, a 75% bonus was a relatively normal payment hitherto 2009. As happened in 2014 and 2015, when a bonus was subsequently paid, there is no provision for a bonus in the Department's allocation for 2016. In both 2014 and 2015, the Government was ultimately in a position to proceed with a bonus given the continuing improvement in the State's financial position. The State's financial position is improving again in 2016 and I will therefore be seeking approval from my Government colleagues in the coming months for the payment of a Christmas bonus once again this year. An announcement will be made on budget day in October. The job of the last Government was to fix the economy and rescue Ireland from national bankruptcy. At one point, unemployment had reached a crisis peak of 15%. Central Statistics Office, CSO, data published recently shows that the monthly unemployment rate has fallen to 7.8%. Long-term unemployment has fallen below 5% for the first time since the crisis and youth unemployment has fallen from a peak of 33% to 16.9% last month. Deputies will be aware that it is typical internationally for youth employment to be roughly double the average unemployment rate largely as a consequence of the very large numbers of young people who are in education. At the end of May, there were approximately 38,500 fewer people on the live register than the same time last year. There continues to be a strong decrease in the live register, with an 11% decline in numbers in each of the past two years. Recent CSO data shows strong increases in employment. Employment has increased by 47,000 people in the past year and it is particularly welcome that the construction sector has experienced one of the largest increases. As I said earlier, the ongoing drop in the live register is freeing up resources to meet rising demand in other areas such as pensions, people with disabilities, carers and so on. A growing economy generates more jobs for more people. However, some people are still struggling to break into the workforce. There is evidence of rising levels of people who have been unemployed for more than five years. This is where my Department's Pathways to Work strategy comes in, which aims to ensure as many of the new jobs as possible go to those who are on the live register, particularly those who are long-term unemployed. It also aims to gradually expand access to activation services, as resources allow, to other jobless people of working age in order to promote active inclusion, which is participation in both the economy and society. Having a job is not only good for one's financial well-being, it is also good for a person's welfare, family and community. The Intreo integrated employment and support service marks a fundamental transformation in how the Department of Social Protection supports and assists jobseekers, representing a move away from a passive payer of benefits to actively engaging with jobseekers and employers. In 2015, the Department provided group information sessions to 189,000 jobseekers, including 47,500 people who were long-term unemployed. It also provided initial one-to-one guidance interviews with 126,000 jobseekers. Last year, the Department also commenced JobPath. JobPath is a payment-by-results contracted service whereby long-term jobseekers receive intensive individual support to help them overcome barriers to employment and to assist them in finding jobs. Referrals started last July. It is expected that 60,000 referrals will be made to JobPath providers in 2016. I am pleased to report that my Department is phasing in a full activation support service for people with disabilities who wish to avail of the service on a voluntary basis. To this end, Intreo will become a gateway to employment activation not just for people who are unemployed, but also for those who have disabilities who will be case managed along with the live register cohort. Turning to additional expenditure items announced in 2016, the social protection budget for 2016 has four keys aims: to increase income for pensioners aged 66 and over, to strengthen supports for families with children, to further hasten momentum in helping jobseekers back to work and to provide targeted assistance for vulnerable groups.

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