Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sorry I did not get to engage on Committee Stage of this legislation. A problem everybody on this side of the House has in proposing amendments is the restriction on tabling any that would result in a cost to the Exchequer. It makes it very difficult to engage fully. I have tried over the years to table amendments in this regard and have them accepted by various Ministers responsible for social welfare.

What is being proposed is a simple step. There is a need to tidy up the legislation based on the amended version from the committee. Sections 12 and 13 are basically duplicates and should not have been dealt with in the way they were. The Minister indicated on Committee Stage he would accept the proposal on a report. His indicating this should have triggered the commencement of the work on the report, no matter how long the delay in passing the Bill in this House or the Upper House. The production of the report should be triggered immediately on the passage of this Bill. Obviously, it would take six months to prepare it but there should not be a delay. A six-month period would mean that, by the end of June next year, there would be report. That is fair enough. The work on this should begin even if there is a delay in the passage of the Bill in the Seanad. We do not want to dictate to the Seanad what its timeframe should be.

A number of Opposition amendments tabled on Committee Stage and today propose the production of reports. When I was a member of the social protection committee during the term of the last Dáil, we travelled to Scotland to examine its equality budgeting services. One of the steps it was taking at the time might inform the work of the new budget office and the new budgetary committee set up in the Oireachtas. It would mean that, when preparing measures, including in respect of social welfare and finance, we will have taken into account the effects of those measures. In this case, the Minister would have already have done some of the work because he would have already worked out the possible consequences. In this instance, we are seeking a report that will look back over a number of years to determine whether circumstances were as chaotic as those who have come to my clinic have suggested. The effects were catastrophic for them. Others might not have this perspective. These are the views that could be debated when a report comes back to determine whether changes need to be made to legislation. There could be an anomaly affecting a cohort of those in receipt of social welfare, and they might need to be protected. Ultimately, this is what social protection is about. It is about protecting people who fall through the cracks. We have information from SPARK and constituents. Probably every Deputy from every party has been asked, especially in the past five years, to propose various measures, particularly for lone parents. The latter bore the brunt of many of the cuts and the changes made to the social welfare code.

If the Minister is adamant that this must be passed, I urge him, even at this stage, to indicate that he will make the required changes in the Seanad to remove the delay. Thus, work on the report will start on the passage of the legislation, with a deadline of June 2017.

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