Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I was saying last night, we are, thankfully, in a changed situation from five or six years ago. This is the first occasion on which the Minister has been able to bring forward a social welfare legislation that is in any way beneficial in terms of restoring some of the things that were forgotten or ignored during the downturn. Many have been critical and stated that the measures do not go far enough. However, I am quite sure that everyone in the House would agree that the cuts made during the downturn were part of a package of emergency measures. We had no options and those who suggest that we did have options are speaking far from the truth, though that is not to suggest they are telling untruths. Those of us who were in the House at the time investigated every single option that was available and some that were not. If there had been other options, we would have found them. I mean no disrespect to any commentator in saying this.

It is also fair to say that we experienced increased levels of homelessness during the boom as well. I and other Members visited people in those times who were sleeping rough each night and we even had to rescue individuals who were living in tents on roundabouts, which, among other things, was a threat to their personal safety. That should not have happened but it did. It is a challenge to us all to address the issues that are affecting people. This morning I saw lots of individuals sleeping in doorways as I came through town and we must address this in the short term in order to ensure that irreparable damage is not done to our society as a result of people being forced to sleep and live in such conditions.

A number of speakers referred to and welcomed, rightly so, individual aspects of the Bill, while others said it did not go far enough. I agree that it does not go far enough, but it is only a first step. There has to be a first step in every instance and.we now have options. We could try to address all of the issues arising from the downturn in one go, in which case we would end up back where we were, or we can address them gradually over a period of three years or more. The latter is the proper approach. Naturally, people who do not see a restoration of benefits will look askance and raise questions, justifiably so, but as I said, we now have options. I want to address specifically the difference between the options available to us now and those that were available to us previously. We are often reminded that we had options and that we took the wrong ones. We did not because the options that were available to us previously were not simple. For example, had we taken the option of avoiding the issues arising from the collapse of the economy, all pensions would have been reduced to a figure in the region of 20% or nothing and it would no longer have been possible to pay family income supplement and make many other support payments. That is what happened in a number of other jurisdictions. We should never allow what happened to happen again under any circumstance. That said, we must move on in a way that will benefit the economy, on the one hand, and the people, on the other.

There are 2 million people at work in this country, the highest number ever. The Leas-Cheann Comhairle and I have been Members of the House since the 1980s. At that time it was a struggle to get the number at work up to 1 million. Therefore, we have moved forward and there are economies of scale when the population increases, from which we will eventually achieve benefits. Incidentally, there is plenty of scope for a country the size of Ireland to have a much larger population. We have to plan for an increased population, although I do not propose to make any suggestion as to how that might happen.

Social support is not meant to be a replacement for employment. The purpose is to help households and families when faced with unemployment which has hit across the board. Self-employed persons suddenly found themselves out of work and unable to access social welfare payments. Many of them were wrongly informed that they had no entitlement to social support payments. It is not true because everybody has an entitlement to receive such support on a means-tested basis. Unemployment is very worrying for those who find themselves in that position. Many people who were well-off, comfortable and self-sufficient and who had built themselves up from very humble beginnings suddenly had the rug pulled from under them. Our ambition should be to never allow this to happen again. Whatever our plans and ambitions for the future, we must always keep our feet firmly on the ground with a view to ensuring we will not allow the economy to implode again. I do not blame anybody for what happened; I am just making the point that it did happen.

On competing demands, a number of speakers spoke about the need to address the issues affecting the families of people with disabilities and people with disabilities in general. It is true that this group have been stressed for the past few years and that they were even under pressure during the boom years. One can only imagine what life has been like for them in the intervening period in terms of the burden on them in trying to meet their requirements, given the withdrawal of services and dramatic cuts in supports. Many of them, particularly women, are shouldering this burden on their own and faced by an impenetrable wall of bureaucracy that does not appear to be conscious of their needs. I am sure every Deputy knows of women who have been carrying the responsibility of caring for family members with severe disabilities for up to 40 years on their own with little or no support, recognition or respite. Very often they are dependent on bureaucrats' decisions on their entitlements. It is horrific. I hope that as we recover further economically they will be recognised in a way they have not been heretofore, including during the boom years.

It is welcome that many Deputies have highlighted the case of women who, on reaching pension age, find themselves with no or a dramatically reduced pension, which is appalling. This is an issue I have raised on numerous occasions in recent years. Many years ago when I was a Minister of State, I was somewhat instrumental in addressing one part of the problem for people who, because they had only made a limited number of contributions, did not qualify for a pension, while another who had made one more contribution was entitled to receive a pension to a figure of 75% or 80%. There are many things that could be done about this, in respect of which the cost would vary. I recall that the estimated cost of introducing the current system in 1996-97 was €780 million. According to one assessment carried out by the Department, the estimated cost was €850 million. At that stage, I undertook my own assessment - to this day nobody knows how it was done - and estimated that the full year cost to improve the system for the people concerned would be €14.5 million. The actual cost was €9.5 million; therefore, we had erred on the side of safety. Unfortunately, a subsequent Government decided to extend the system further and the resultant cost was approximately €1.4 billion, a huge increase. As such, the issue requires careful consideration before further changes are introduced. Women who were forced out of the workforce because of the marriage ban and have no entitlement to the State contributory pension need to be catered for. It must be recognised that women who retire temporarily from the workforce to rear their children or care for a family member are making a major contribution to the national economy and, therefore, should be rewarded by way of entitlement to a pension. I know that the Minister, Deputy Leo Varadkar, is well disposed towards considering this proposal and we must move towards implementing it. On the assessment of pension entitlements into the future, it should be on the basis of the potential entitlement of the applicant to the State contributory pension. In the case of a person who accrued two or three years' contributions at the beginning of his or her working life, the obvious thing to do would be to disregard these initial contributions and thereby allow him or her to become eligible for the State pension.

On the State pension, I would like to raise another issue. In the case of a couple, when one person dies the surviving partner is faced with the same costs, including rent and electricity.

The only reduction is in food and clothing costs. That is disproportionate and the living alone allowance does not compensate for it albeit it is of benefit. We need to look at how best surviving partners are catered for because they find themselves in a worse position when half the pension is gone. There is a need to look at their situation again and I hope the Minister will do so in the course of his examination and review.

A number of people have referred to the removal of the bereavement grant. It was removed for serious reasons but I agree that in certain circumstances we need to look at it again. Even as times improve, there are families who find themselves on a tight social welfare budget through no fault of their own. If there is a bereavement in the family, they can find themselves unable to pay the funeral expenses. There are people who complain that undertakers were the beneficiaries, but I disagree completely. In fact, the biggest single expense now is often the cost of a grave, sadly. I ask the Minister to look at these things in the review. I know he is doing it, in fact. How soon it can be done is a budgetary matter, but the sooner the better. The exceptional needs payment, which is supposed to have taken the place of the grant, does not necessarily meet the expenses that emerge where a bereavement takes place. It should not be forgotten that it may be a surviving parent who passes away leaving a very young family of orphans behind with very little to fend for themselves with and very little experience. They find themselves in a very serious situation in so far as making ends meet is concerned and feel threatened and challenged by what is around them. As public representatives, we have to do our jobs because the system does not always address them in a sympathetic way. That is the best way I can describe it and the Minister knows what I am talking about, as do his officials. I hope they will have regard to that in dealing with those sensitive situations that arise.

I hope we have learned from the experiences of the last six or seven years. They have been harsh and have hit every aspect of our society in a very severe way. I hope we have learned how to deal with that situation better than we did in the past and hope that we can plan in future to ensure we do not have that type of economic chasm that makes people involuntarily vulnerable and facing the situation on their own. The other point it does no harm to remember is simply this. In future, we can benefit from the sacrifices that were made if we do not try to do everything in the one year. There is a grave danger that we might decide we are okay again and can do it once more. I express the wish that the hard lessons we learned never have to be learned again and that we can see our economy and our people moving forward in a cohesive way and remaining a strong economic entity in future.

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