Eamon Scanlon (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Minister on his new portfolio and I wish him well. Our social welfare system needs fundamental reform. The net effect of recent budgets has been that low-income families and persons who are dependent on social welfare have suffered more by comparison with those who are better off. The Revised Estimates, published this month, provide €19.625 billion for all Department expenditure on schemes, services and administration in 2016. This is a similar figure to that published in the Revised Estimates in 2015. I hope this figure can be increased because of the improvement in the economy and that any increase is focused.

The application processes for carer’s payments needs to be changed to enable applicants to provide more information on the level of care being provided. This would give the Department a far clearer picture of the level of care being given in the absence of a face-to-face assessment and would prevent over 50% of applications being refused at the initial stage. Eligibility for disability allowance depends on capacity to work. However, decisions are made based mainly on a medical assessment. In many cases this does not, by itself, give an accurate assessment of a person’s capacity to work. People should be given an opportunity to describe how their disability impacts on their daily life. The Department should endeavour to work with the disability movement and voluntary disability providers to develop a fair and comprehensive system of assessing people’s capacity to work.

I appeal to the Minister to speed up the application process for carer's allowance and carer's benefit. The delays are causing unnecessary hardships and stress to many families who are caring full-time for their family members and loved ones. The staff in the Department of Social Protection dealing with the backlog of payments are doing what they can but they are understaffed and under-resourced. There are delays that could and should be avoided because of the service these people provide. A nursing home bed costs between €1,000 and €1,200 a week. These people are genuinely trying to care for people at home. There are other issues concerning home help and home-care packages which are not being provided as quickly as they should be to prevent people having to get nursing home care.

Those applying for payments are already in a distressing situation and this is only compounded by the time it takes for a decision to be made on a person’s entitlement to a payment. This needs to be addressed urgently. The family income supplement, FIS, is a welcome attempt to make work more financially worthwhile. As currently structured, however, it contains an obvious poverty trap which should be removed. This arises from the fact that in order to qualify for FIS a person has to work at least 38 hours per fortnight. This should be replaced by a sliding scale in order to reflect the fact that many people may be working or wish to work fewer than 19 hours a week and may be in just as much need as current FIS recipients. This would also create more of an incentive to work. I know a man who has two children and whose wife is having a difficult pregnancy and is off work. He works on a community employment, CE, scheme for 19 hours per week. He also works as a caretaker in a health centre on a contract basis and is paid €103 for ten hours a week. The family's total income is €510 per week. He is working approximately 40 hours per week. If he was working only 19 hours per week, he would be entitled to €610 a week. There is an anomaly here because, although he is working hard to provide for his family and pay the mortgage, there is a difference of €100 a week. While he is paid for ten hours on a Health Service Executive, HSE, contract, he informs me he is working approximately 20 hours a week to do what has to be done. That anomaly should be addressed.

Given the changing nature of the workforce, more focus is needed in the welfare system and the system needs to be more flexible. I welcome the Minister's statement that he plans to extend social welfare benefits to the self-employed. Treating the self-employed to ensure that entrepreneurship is protected and encouraged in public policy is of the utmost importance. Furthermore, FIS should be extended to the self-employed, under a system of selective voluntary opt-ins for them as well as those who operate small businesses. Self-employed workers should get the chance to increase their pay-related social insurance, PRSI, contributions to give them sick pay and unemployment payment entitlements. People who have to work for themselves and who in many circumstances give work to others have been given a very poor deal under the current welfare regime.

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