Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will do my best to reply to as many Members as possible in the five minutes I have been allocated and I will correspond with those to whom I cannot reply now on the issues they have raised. I agree with Deputy O’Dea’s initial comment that Estimates would be better done in the old way through committees and that is what is intended in future. We could spend more time scrutinising the Estimates in committee format where there are questions and answers, rather than this format.

Deputy O’Dea said that the budgets introduced in the past five years were regressive. I dispute that. I know that is what the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, Stimulating Welfare and Income Tax Changes, SWITCH, model and other models say but those models are based on two false assumptions. One, they assume that a tax cut is the Government giving people money. I dispute that. I am of the view that people’s money belongs to them and when a Government cuts taxes, it is allowing people to keep more of the money they earned. Most people would agree with that. Those models, such as the SWITCH model and others conducted by academics, have no regard whatsoever for services. For example, an increase of 50 cent per week in social welfare is considered to be progressive but a second week of free child care counts for nothing. General practitioner, GP, care for everyone younger than six, including families with no income, counts for nothing. I am happy to make this argument and will do so in future.

I do, however, agree with Deputy O’Dea when he says there have been substantial cuts to welfare payments in recent years. There was the €16 a week cut taken from everyone on social welfare, apart from pensioners, under the Fianna Fáil-Green Government. Subsequent to that, while there were not cuts in weekly payments under the last Government there were cuts in real terms as a result of inflation because welfare payments did not increase in line with inflation in the past few years and there were cuts to secondary benefits. I am not going to pretend otherwise. I do also agree with him that it will take several budgets to restore the full value of benefits to the level they were at before the crisis. I do not intend to reverse all the structural reforms brought about by my predecessor which were designed to reduce welfare dependency and to encourage people to move from welfare to work but I do intend to reverse the cuts made solely with the purpose of saving money. I intend to do that, if I can, over the next four or five years and I hope I will have the support of the House in doing so.

In response to the question on the housing assistance payment, HAP, a total of €24 million will be transferred this year; €20 million was transferred in 2015. There were just over 10,000 people on HAP as of 13 June - 1,261 in Limerick but none in Wicklow, so there is quite a large variation.

Deputy O’Dea referred to the report on the back-to-education allowance, BTEA, as damning. It is damning in that it indicates that people on the BTEA are less likely to make it into employment than those who do not go back to education, but that requires much more study because it does not distinguish between people who completed their education and those who did not. That is not good enough. We need to make a distinction between those who managed to finish their education and those who did not. That requires further study.

Deputies Rabbitte and Connolly mentioned JobPath. It is outsourced to two different companies, one for-profit and one not-for-profit. JobPath tries to get people into jobs that have contracts with wages. It assists them in different ways, helping them to get a certificate they may need or a course, even to the point of helping them buy a suit for an interview. It does not carry out work capacity assessments on people with disabilities. There is a bit of a campaign to try to make out that the reforms carried out in the United Kingdom, UK, are being aped here. That is not the case. That is total misrepresentation by certain campaign groups. Neither JobPath company has the authority to stop or reduce anyone’s benefits, which is in total contrast to what was done in the UK, where private companies could make those kinds of decisions and carry out capacity to work assessments on people with disabilities. Nobody on disability allowance is even being referred to JobPath, only people on jobseeker’s allowance.

In respect of CE, Tús and Gateway, the rates of progression from those schemes into employment are pretty poor. They are designed for people who are long-term unemployed or people who struggle to get into employment. It would not be a good idea for somebody who is 21 or 22 and who is only three months unemployed to go into CE. It is much better for that person to get a regular job and the same applies in other circumstances. The real value in CE is assisting people in long-term unemployment and others who would struggle to get a normal job, giving them something to do and getting them started on the road to work. The real value is in the work actually done by CE schemes and communities. It should be aimed at those who are long-term unemployed, those who struggle to hold down a job, not those who are 21 or 22 and have been unemployed for only a few months who should be getting a regular job.

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