Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

The Government's approach to the Revised Estimates shows that despite the setback in its fortunes last February, which to a large degree can be attributed to its overblown claims of recovery, we still have all the cuts and impositions left in situ. Lessons have not been learned about the hardship being felt.

Savage cuts in the one-parent family payment, which remain unaltered, were implemented by the former Minister, Deputy Burton, on the basis that so-called Scandinavian standards of affordable child care would come on stream. This still proves to be a chimera. Such cuts served to tip a number of predominantly young mothers into homelessness.

The provision for activation schemes remains unaltered. We have to square the projected spend for the remainder of the year with the utterances of Ministers about their desire to see the abolition of JobBridge. It is uncontested that this scheme has been abused by employers who blatantly used it as a substitute for real jobs. JobBridge represented an attack principally on young people. This was compounded by blatant discrimination in the form of reduced social welfare payments for those under 25. Attacks like this, combined with the horrendous situation with accommodation, amounts to the Government infantilising young adults, forcing them to be dependent on their parents or, worse, serving as a push factor in leaving the youth no alternative but to emigrate. There is no alteration in the Estimates on this score.

The bereavement grant, which was a minor but important contribution towards funeral costs for the poorest in society, was scrapped almost outright by the previous Government. I know, for example, that the hardship the absence of this grant brings on the families of those who have died from heroin overdoses has become a topic of discussion at local drug task forces. Again, this situation remains unaltered.

Family income supplement, FIS, is absolutely necessary for the families who receive it. That does not contradict the fact it is an indictment on employers and the prevalence of short hours and low pay. The projected increased spend this year over last year is, again, a reflection of the nature of the jobs recovery, which in large measure is being built on precariousness, with the taxpayer indirectly subsidising the profits of the private sector via income supports. The introduction and enforcement of a living wage and the abolition of short-hour, if-and-when contracts together would serve to lower expenditure on FIS on a proper basis.

The combination of an explosion of unemployment at the start of the crisis and a simultaneous reduction of public sector numbers, which found its own reflection in the Department of Social Protection, meant that the experience of many people in their engagement with the Department of Social Protection has been one of waiting weeks and months for the processing of applications. Again, investment in adequate staffing at this stage could eradicate these waiting times which, besides providing relief to the applicant, would also ease the volume of inevitable queries and representations made to public representatives and the Department, which in itself represents a drain on resources.

The former Minister, Deputy Burton, applied cuts to rent supplement when, for a brief juncture at the start of the crisis, the average cost of rents dipped. The subsequent skyrocketing of rent saw no commensurate restoration or increases. Instead, all we have had is the very partial roll-out of the housing assistance payment, which itself carries a sting in its tail as those who receive it are removed from the housing allocation list. Again, this is a cut that remains intact.

We must also remember that the Revised Estimates in the Department of Social Protection, like those of every other Department, are a restatement of the succession of cuts that were imposed on public service workers, most of which remain in place even after the Lansdowne Road agreement expires. Workers in the Department experienced a pension levy, unilateral cuts to salary in 2010, the USC, increment freezes, additional enforced hours, which constitute an effective cut in the rate of pay, and lesser conditions for post-2011 entrants into the Civil Service.

A serious process of Revised Estimates would have reconsidered all these cuts and proposed upward revisions to spending to provide relief for hundreds of thousands of individuals and families who have been put through the ringer and for whom talk of a recovery remains a sick joke. Instead, the airwaves tomorrow will be taken up by Government promises to abolish USC within the lifetime of this Government. While this is absolutely necessary for low and middle-income workers, the lack of action on these issues demonstrates by default this Government's contempt for the section of the population who depend on welfare.

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