Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

This is my first budget as Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection. Since June I hope I have been clear in repeating that my priorities include the 113,000 children living in consistent poverty; working families, including lone parents; and people on fixed incomes who are entirely dependent on the social contract we have in Ireland.

We are very lucky that the recovery we are experiencing is a jobs-led recovery as reflected in the live register figures. It is important to remember why we need a strong economy. I believe it is only so that we can provide for the lives of people who, for whatever, reason for short periods of their lives are entirely dependent on the State.

Budget 2018 will balance the books while at the same time supporting the building of homes and enhancing education supports to children with special educational needs. We will improve our mental health services at community level. We will provide health care to our ageing population and to our young population. We will build roads, schools and even hospitals. Most important, we will try to build a fairer society that supports enterprise and employment, while also respecting the social contract, whereby people who are employed are prepared to support those who because of illness, infirmity, caring for a loved one or unemployment, temporarily cannot provide for themselves.

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We know, however, that some groups are at a higher risk of deprivation and poverty than others. That is why I was determined that in this budget, the social welfare Bill would leave nobody behind.

Everybody deserves to share in an economic recovery. I hear that consistently in this House and I agree with it. That is why my dual aims are to improve the welfare of families with children and to maintain the relative positions of all the groups the State takes care of. I look forward to detailing the precise targeted engagements and activation measures contained within the budget package for my Department in the coming weeks and months but as the budget legislation is before the House tonight and I will be sharing colleagues' time, I will just touch on some of them.

I was pleased to be able to announce, with support, the €5 increase in the maximum weekly rates of payment for all social welfare recipients this year, commencing from 26 March. There are proportionate increases for those on reduced rates of payment and for those receiving payments in respect of adult dependants. In total, 1.3 million social welfare recipients and a further 560,000 of their dependants will benefit from these changes. I am particularly conscious of the role my Department has in reducing child poverty. Weekly rates increases will help in this regard as all expenditure on social welfare schemes, and on working age schemes in particular, is progressive and will help households on lower incomes. We were very pleased yesterday to announce, for the first time in eight years, an increase in the qualified child payment, which is paid each week to families with children. It will increase from €29.80 to €31.80 per child. This is an increase of 6.7% and will directly benefit 400,000 children.

I am pleased that the Department's budget package includes a number of measures which will specifically help families who are working, and particularly lone parents who are working. Lone parents returning to work will benefit from an increase in their income disregard, as will those on jobseeker's transition payments. The disregard will increase by €20, from €110 to €130 per week. This is in addition to the €5 increase in the weekly rate of payment and the €2 increase in the qualified child payment. We are also increasing the family income supplement earnings thresholds by €10 per week for families with up to three children. This will also be of particular benefit to low-income working families and will the reflect the changes made to the qualified child payment.

The name of the family income supplement will also change to the working family payment. This reflects a number of initiatives within the Department that support families when they move from welfare into employment. This is a particularly excellent scheme. As I said yesterday, there are probably thousands of eligible families who are not claiming this working family payment. I urge people to get in touch with their local Intreo or Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection office to inquire as to whether they are eligible for this payment.

We also recently announced a measure to assist mothers of premature babies, which will extend the term of maternity benefit. The House will be aware of a motion on this issue which was tabled by Deputy Catherine Martin of the Green Party a number of months ago. I was particularly touched by a young woman who rang me approximately two weeks after I was appointed to my current role. She told me that her baby was still in Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin. She was due to return to work the following Monday but still had not pushed her baby in a pram. That is wrong and this measure will fix that. I am grateful that the funding we have this year has allowed us to do that.

We are also introducing a range of other targeted specific measures. The fuel allowance is, as Members will know, currently paid for 26 weeks of the year or the equivalent is paid in two lump sums during those 26 weeks. We are now increasing the duration of the fuel season by one week to 27 weeks. We are also introducing a new scheme, which is something like an old scheme but obviously different. It is called the telephone support allowance. When the old telephone allowance was abolished in 2014, the non-governmental organisations which look after older people reflected on the fact that it hit people who were living on their own or in isolation especially hard. This was because its abolition took away their resource to pay for a landline, which directly affected their security alerts access and the safety they felt in their own homes but, equally importantly, it affected their ability to keep in contact with their loved ones - their children and their grandchildren. I have listened to that criticism and we have heeded it. To that end, we have reintroduced a telephone support allowance, which will be paid to the value of €9.50 a month.

I also take the opportunity to highlight the "make work pay" initiative for people with disabilities, which is again something people genuinely do not know about. When a person who is in receipt of a disability allowance starts work and comes off social welfare payments, he or she retains his or her free travel pass for five years. Some people are genuinely not aware of this. Similarly, people with medical cards who move from welfare to work get to keep that medical card for a number of years. We are doing everything that we can to encourage people who would otherwise be entirely reliant on the welfare system to move into employment by maintaining the supports that make the transition period as easy as possible.

We are also providing two new incentives in the area of employment supports. While unemployment has come down significantly in the past year, with 48,000 new jobs created, I acknowledge that there are two particular areas of difficulty. One such area relates to people under 25, who potentially are not graduates, and the other to people who are over 50 years of age. We will introduce two new schemes that will specifically address the issues in those areas. I will detail those at the beginning of the new year. We have increased the national minimum wage by 30 cent and 155,000 people will benefit from this measure.

This budget is for families, for older people and, in particular, for the most vulnerable in society. As a Government we are making reasonable and, more importantly, responsible decisions to ensure that as our economy grows, we look after the people who are entirely reliant and dependant on the social contract we have. We have made real progress in reducing unemployment but the Government and I are determined to make sure that we go even further. It is conscious that not everybody can work and earn a wage. The Government is absolutely adamant that, whatever the reason those people are reliant on the State, they will also benefit from the recovery and that the social contract will not leave anybody behind in what is now a republic of opportunity.

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