Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I apologise on behalf of Deputy Mitchell who was supposed to speak on this Bill on behalf of Sinn Féin. I was asked to come in at the last minute. I have a background in this area, having served as my party's social welfare spokesperson at one point. As a hardworking Deputy, I deal with many social welfare cases every day. I am pleased that we have been given an opportunity speak on the Social Welfare, Pensions and Civil Registration Bill 2017. I welcome a number of aspects of it.

Section 3 is a sensible proposal that seeks to ensure the individual welfare rights of a person who is the guardian of an orphan are not adversely affected by payments that are made to him or her in that capacity. I think that clarification is very welcome. I know from my past experience of dealing with this area that one of the difficulties encountered by parents and others in caring roles, including guardians who are looking after children, is that there is a difference between the foster payment and the guardian's payment. The child being cared for by the person receiving one of these payments is required to have been abandoned. This issue arises quite frequently in the Dublin area, with which I am most familiar. It probably arises in other areas as well. If one of the parents of someone who is on drugs is dead and the other parent is living a chaotic life, that person's child might be taken in by his or her grandparents. I think it is unfair for the abandonment stipulation to apply in such cases. Regardless of the frame of mind a parent is in and the awful things that are happening in his or her life, the idea of signing something to say that he or she is abandoning a child to its grandparents is problematic. Perhaps the Minister for Social Protection can look at this at some stage in her new role. I take this opportunity to congratulate the Minister on her appointment.

I would like to speak about the section of the Bill that deals with the rights of people with disabilities to work. As we know, in Ireland people with disabilities are half as likely to be in employment as others of working age. Collectively, we agree that this needs to change. People with disabilities should not be in fear of losing medical cards and disability supports because they want to enter the workforce. I think we are going in the right direction in this regard, but we are doing so slowly. When we talk to people who have impairments, they tell us that this frustrates them the most. They cannot move out of the poverty associated with this area of social welfare because of the supports they need. Changes in this area are very welcome and will be of great benefit to citizens with disabilities.

I want to take issue with other aspects of this legislation, such as the controversial section of the Bill that provides for the publication of the names and addresses of people who have been convicted of welfare fraud. I do not think we should do down this road. I will outline some of the reasons I am uncomfortable with it. When these cases go to court, they are generally reported on in local newspapers. The details are published by the courts. This is being proposed as a further deterrent. I am aware that the names of tax defaulters are published by the Revenue Commissioners when the total amount of tax, interest and penalties owed exceeds €35,000. We are talking about allowing the names and addresses of those involved in fraud to the tune of €5,000 to be published. From where did the €5,000 figure come? I would be interested to know why this is happening.

Certain problems in society are viewed from two different viewpoints. I am not justifying the behaviour of those who are involved in criminality such as white-collar crime or social welfare fraud. Two different approaches are taken in cases in which people owe money to the Department. If someone discovers after many years that he or she has been underpaid and the fault lies with the Department, there is a sunset clause that ensures the Department does not have to pay after a certain period has elapsed. If an individual owes money to the Department because he or she made an error when filling in a form or something of that nature, the Department will follow that person to his or her grave to ensure that some sort of agreement is reached or ceiling is set about the debt that is owed.

This needs to be looked at as it is unfair. There seems to be one approach for the Department and the mistakes that it made, and another approach for the welfare recipient or the person that is redundant.

This whole idea of the welfare fraud campaign was based on figures that were nowhere near the actual figures involved. The figures for savings in 2016 went from a headline figure of €506 million to an actual figure of €41 million. There is a view that calculations were made that were based on flawed, utterly bizarre assumptions and make-believe numbers were created. There is a view held by many on this side of the Chamber that it was to give someone a lift in the leadership bid for that person's political party. The social welfare fraud campaign labelled a whole cohort of people and suggested that somehow, everyone who is in receipt of social welfare payments had something suspect about them or a question mark over them. It feeds into the negativity that those people do not want to work, like to spend all day in bed at home, are wasters or are just not interested in contributing to society. As we know through our own lives, our own work and from those who are in receipt of social welfare payments, the vast majority of people who are reliant on this payment have no choice. They would prefer to be out of this position and back in gainful employment but for various reasons, including the lack of employment opportunities, lack of education and all sorts of other reasons, they cannot do that. I am uncomfortable with that campaign. We need to change the narrative that people in receipt of social welfare payments are somehow taking all the time. In many cases, I know of such people who still contribute to their communities. They work in community centres and help out within the community itself within the parameters of what they are allowed to do under social welfare regulations.

How was the figure of €5,000 arrived at? Has the Government consulted with the Data Protection Commissioner on this provision? When this Bill was considered by the committee during pre-legislative scrutiny, a number of provisions were in place for people on defined benefit schemes. These were not perfect but provided some support for members and some sort of long-awaited Government response to the crisis in the defined benefit scheme as witnessed in the case of Independent News and Media and that is now unfolding in Irish Life. These protections have been wiped out in the Bill. The question to ask is why it happened. One need only consider the situation in Irish Life with the defined benefit scheme to know that stronger provisions are necessary. Our view is the Government is hanging workers out to dry, is facilitating companies walking away from their own pension commitments and is letting them away with ripping off their employees. The Irish Life pension scheme has a huge surplus. It has assets of €1.2 billion and has never been in deficit, yet the scheme is being wound down. What is the Government saying to such companies that simply decide to take the liability off their balance sheets and renege on their pension obligations?

Every year, this Bill gives an opportunity to do something positive for the most vulnerable in society and the Bill contains a number of tidy-up measures and some anomalies will be fixed in this Bill, which is welcome. For lone parents, however, the Government could have ended the child maintenance scheme being calculated as an income for rent supplement and that money could be classed as something for the child. For young jobseekers, the Government could have ended the ongoing discrimination introduced by Fianna Fáil and continued by Fine Gael where their age determines that they receive €102 or €147 a week and they are expected to live off that. For older people, I touched on the matter of the farce of the 65 year olds being asked to go on to jobseeker's payment. I find in my constituency that individuals come in who were unaware of this until the point at which they thought they were going to get the payment and who were then put in this situation where they must sign on. I do not know how many people I have had in tears in my office. The idea of very proud people who have never received a social welfare payment in their lives but who were looking forward to retiring being obliged to sign on is wrong. This issue needs to be reconsidered.

A Bill has been put forward by my colleague, Deputy Cullinane, which proceeded to Committee Stage. The difficulty is that as it needs a money message from the Department, it is really going nowhere. Everyone who comes in asks if it is going to be resolved. I say that I believe it will be, that it is the will of the House and that everyone here, including the Government, the Opposition and everyone else, wants it to happen. I acknowledge there is a cost factor related to it but we need to collectively agree that it needs to be moved on. The idea of people being obliged to sign on at that age, who have never been in that circumstance, is wrong. The other way it used to be was to put people on community employment, CE, schemes or such for the year. It is an anomaly. We all collectively agree that it should be a choice. If people want to work on, they should be given that opportunity and in many cases they are not because of the regulations that have been put in previously.

There is a huge amount of anomalies within the Social Welfare Act. They are not being addressed. Perhaps some can be addressed on Committee Stage, but the fact that we pushed it and had this conversation here today is healthy, since we can raise the issues and give some sort of idea to the Minister of some of our concerns. There is concern about section 5(2), which deals with the public service card. I agree on the need for checks and balances but it seems that the card is being rolled out for everything. The previous Minister was keen to tell us that this card was not compulsory. However, to engage in any way with social protection systems, it is becoming increasingly mandatory. One even needs a card now if one wants to do a driving test or to apply for one's first passport. It is a piece of identification that is looked for now.

There is a move towards including a cardholder's date of birth on the card. Why is that necessary? The concern from civil libertarians would be that it is a move towards a national ID card. What is the idea? I know that an identifier is needed but it is all information for fraudsters or anyone else who sought to rob a person's identity and so on. If they have that, they would know a person's date of birth. It raises serious questions about individual privacy and data protection. Digital Rights Ireland has expressed serious concern that this is an attempt to introduce a national ID card by stealth and if it is, it has enormous implications for civil liberties and privacy. That probably deserves a debate of its own. In the Bill as published in May, there were aims to ensure that same-sex couples would enjoy the same rights and entitlements when it comes to occupational pension schemes as would any other couples. Will the Minister explain why this provision has been removed? It is a technical issue but what is the Government's intent in this area?

There are other areas on which we hopefully will see action in the forthcoming budget. I already mentioned that women are still facing discrimination in the State pension. The changes being made affect 36,000 people, mainly women, who are on the reduced State pension. It is to do with a person not having enough stamps or enough contributions and it is a huge issue. People are shocked to find it out. They plan in their minds. Not everyone goes down the route of checking that they have everything. They just believe that they have worked for all their lives and while there might have been a short gap, people are under the impression that they will get their pensions. I urge the Minister to make pension equality for women a key priority going forward and all the parties in the House would work with the Minister on that.

Another issue is tackling discrimination against younger people on jobseeker's allowance. Consideration should be given to moving towards reversing this unfair discrimination.

I presume that will be a budgetary matter. It was an unfair and cruel cut and it is being felt right across communities. When I knock on doors and there are young people in the houses, I see the fact that the son or daughter is caught up in this situation is one of the issues for many families in financial difficulties and creates a huge burden and huge hardship for those families.

As I stated at the outset, there are elements of the Bill that I welcome. I have raised some of the issues that require greater scrutiny.

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