Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I shall start on a positive note and welcome the €5 increases for almost all social welfare payments and the new provisions for the self-employed that go some way to addressing the unequal way they are treated, including the provision of an invalidity pension and the extension of treatment benefits including access to dental and optical benefits. To delay such necessary changes until December 2017 is unacceptable and the package does not deal with all of the issues raised by the self employed who, as has been repeatedly pointed out in this Chamber, are the backbone of employment in the State. I also welcome the reversal of cuts to pharmacists, the introduction of the paternity benefit, the partial restoration of the Christmas bonus, among other positive provisions.

I deplore, however, the utter failure by the Department to do what it should be doing. One area in which the Department does very well is in combatting fraud, having had the Garda and Revenue on the roads in Galway with regard to tax fraud, although it only consists of a minor fraction of the overall budget of over €19 billion. One of the main functions of the Department is to advise the Government and formulate appropriate social protection and social inclusion policies. I believe the Department, the Government and, unfortunately, the Minister have utterly failed to deal with that. If they had looked at any of the research available they would realise that inequality is deepening and the gap between the rich and the poor - which is repeatedly quoted from this side of the Chamber - is not a cliché; it is actually happening. Consider the recent reports from Social Inclusion Ireland, the Think-tank for Action on Social Change, TASC, or the National University Ireland Galway, which I have downloaded and read, with regard to lone parents and the detrimental effect of driving lone parents, 90% of whom are women, into the workforce. It has actually made them poorer. The Minister of State did not introduce that measure - unfortunately it was the Labour Party - but he has done nothing to rectify it in this budget. Notwithstanding one line on page 28 in the annual report from the Department of Social Protection, that income inequality is largely unchanged, the Department has utterly failed to advise the Government on policies that might address that inequality.

Social transfers keep half of the Irish population out of poverty. There are 1.6 million people who receive a social welfare payment and when qualified adults and children are included, almost 2.1 million people benefit from the payments. That amounts to almost half of the Irish population who would be at risk of poverty without social transfer payments from the Department of Social Protection. They are the figures from the Department. Further, there is any amount of up-to-date independent research which confirms that we have a most unequal society with the gap continuing to widen. I ask the Minister of State to look at that. I am not here to complain or to be negative. I am here to pressurise the Government to change the policy that would save the taxpayer money in the end. If we lessen the divide we will have a healthier society and a wealthier society. TASC's 2016 report Economic Inequality in Ireland has 18 indicators and on each one they show that economic inequality is worsening in Ireland. They are policy decisions. The report says "As has been demonstrated internationally [and repeatedly], a rising level of economic inequality such as we are experiencing in Ireland, jeopardises the sustainability of the recovery, both economically and socially". This is something I can never understand. For perhaps the third time in the last two weeks I use the word "naive" about myself, but I simply find it difficult to understand how Government cannot understand where different policy decisions will result in a better society for most of us, and therefore save money in the long term. For example, Ireland has levels of almost 20% functional illiteracy. This figure has been static for a very long time and yet there are absolutely no measures for it in this Social Welfare Bill.

One of the most direct measures for helping poverty is to increase the direct child benefit, but there is no increase here whatsoever. The lone parents, 90% of whom are women are being pushed also. The whole theme through this budget is absolutely anti-women with regard to the 90% of lone parents who are women, with regard to the gender gap in pensions and with regard to carers. The Anti-Austerity Alliance, AAA, made reference to carers. I totally agree with the AAA's concerns around the lack of increase for carers. The startling figure of over 60% of the current budget for the provision of services for older people goes towards long-term residential care. While 60% of the budget goes to long-term residential care only 4% approximately of the population who are aged over 65 live in residential care. A policy decision has been made to fund one side and the other side, the carers who are saving the State an extraordinary amount of money, do not even get a €1 increase. These are policy decisions that are happening all the time and I have a real difficulty with them because it would save money in the long term if we did it differently.

I will now turn to the issue of domestic violence and the figure I have quoted repeatedly - some €2 billion - which is the cost to the economy on an annual basis as a result of our failure to deal with it. Not only are we failing to deal with it, year after year we have actually reduced the money available to the organisations that specialise in helping people who have been subjected to domestic violence.

There are many other points I can make but my time is limited so I will mention just one or two other matters, one of which is JobPath. Deputy Penrose has already spoken about this. It has also been my experience in Galway that this new JobPath - under Seetec and Turas Nua - is the subject of the most serious concerns. If one looks at Connemara, where community employment schemes provide essential services in a rural area, people cannot be found for those schemes because they have no choice but to go to the private company Seetec. I have raised this, as have other Deputies, and we do not get an adequate answer, or we get no answer from the Minister. I would hope that with the Minister of State's particular interest in the area of disability he might look at this. We should have learned from JobBridge and we should have learned from how these private companies operate in the UK, but when each Deputy raised this with the Minister he dismissed our concerns, told us that it was going to be done differently in Ireland and yet we have seen absolutely no details in that regard.

My final point relates to rent and how policy decisions again are costing the taxpayer money. In Galway city the Intreo building - an extraordinary building that was not built for social welfare - was a property owned by the city council in Galway for the people of Galway. It was given over for a project that ended up in receivership and rather than the Government getting any social dividend from it, they are now paying over €500,000 per year, year after year, for a rented building in Galway city. This is only one of the buildings that social welfare, through the Office of Public Works, is renting year after year. This is an absolute waste of money. The question must be asked; what social dividend did Galway city or county, or any other city, receive from NAMA as a result of all the banks we bailed out. As I speak there is a building in Galway, previously used by Anglo Irish Bank, which has remained empty while the city council must rent premises; the library and the social welfare buildings in Galway city are rented. This is absolute money down the drain that could be going to essential services.

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