Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly on the Social Welfare Bill 2017 before us today. There are some welcome measures in the Bill which will give legislative effect to the changes announced in budget 2018 and in order to effect those changes the Social Welfare Acts, the Maternity Protection Act 1994 and the National Training Fund Act 2000 will be amended and extended. The Government decided to continue with its partial restoration of social protection payments for next year with €5 increases across most payments. Disappointingly, and in keeping with last year, these partial restorations will not come into effect until the end of March 2018.

In my own pre-budget submission to the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, I had called for a social protection package with an increase of approximately €500 million in Department allocations which would have included €7 per week increases. In the event, the Government chose to increase the social protection budget by less than €300 million, or under 1.5%, and most of this increase is funded by savings from the fall in unemployment.

I welcome section 12 as it partially restores the weekly earning disregard for those in receipt of the one-parent family payment from €110 per week to €130 per week. In my own submission, I had called for full restoration back to €146.50 per week at an estimated cost of €11.1 million. In some of the Government’s cruellest austerity years cuts, lone parents were targeted and the weekly income disregard dropped to a low of €75 per week in 2015 and €60 per week in 2016. Surveys and CSO statistics have been showing for years that lone parent families experience higher consistent poverty rates than any other cohort of Irish society. In the most recent survey on income and living conditions, SILC 2015, this rate was 26.2% for consistent poverty, while 57.9% experience deprivation compared to 25.5% of the rest of the population. Despite this, the Social Welfare and Pensions Act 2012 further discriminated against lone parent families by ceasing payment of the one-parent family payment once the youngest child reached seven years of age. At that point, lone parents were switched to jobseeker’s transitional payment and while studies show that these draconian reforms did move some parents into employment, the majority of which is low paid, part-time and precarious employment, they also led to over 30% of recipients of the new payment losing over 10% of their weekly income. Losing 10% of one's weekly income when one is already in poverty is soul destroying and the previous Government should have done everything in its power to reverse changes that meant this cohort of families are being pushed further into poverty and consistent poverty. The Indecon report on those changes was published by the Department at the beginning of October 2017, so what action will the Minister take on foot on that?

At the Dáil Committee on Budgetary Oversight last week we had a lengthy briefing and discussion on gender inequality and gender proofing of budgets into the future. The committee, under the chairmanship of the Minister's colleague, Deputy Josepha Madigan, is determined to take this issue in the context of budgets 2018 and 2019. A key issue I raised again, and has just been raised by Deputy Joan Collins, was changes made in budget 2012 to the PRSI contribution bands for the pension, which also disproportionately impacted on women. On 19 October, the Dáil voted on the motion on correcting pension inequities and on 21 of February this year I raised the topic during Leaders’ Questions with the then Taoiseach, Deputy Kenny, when I called for a reversal of the budget 2012 changes and for those affected to be reimbursed.

Age Action Ireland's excellent report, Towards a Fair State Pension for Women Pensioners, researched and written by Ms Maureen Bassett, set out in detail the number of people impacted by the change from four bands to six and highlighted that almost two thirds of those affected pensioners were, and continue to be, women. Many people reaching pension age are not even aware of these changes and are often shocked, upset and angry when they realise what was done. I am sure the Acting Chairman has found this in his information clinics in Kildare. They are even more so when they learn the Government of the day had been warned that such changes would disproportionately affect women who had little or no child care supports while rearing their families and so had no choice but to stop working in many cases.

While the €5 increase in weekly pension rates this year and last year are, of course, welcome, there are many who would think the underhanded austerity years changes should be reversed and that pension inequalities should be corrected. We have heard the Minister's comments on this and she clearly thinks it was a crazy decision, although she voted for it. Now she is in ministerial office in the Department and has the opportunity to reverse it and ensure we bring justice to these women, whom I meet week in and week out, who have lost €30 or €40 due to those changes for the rest of their lives. This would be a good ambition for the rest of the Minister's term in office.

Another important point on equality is the continued discrimination against those citizens under 26 in their lower rates of jobseekers' payments. While this year they are receiving the full €5 weekly increase, they still receive far less than other jobseekers. Young citizens aged between 18 and 24 years will receive jobseeker's allowance of only €107.70 a week even after this Bill is passed. In my submission I called for an increase of €30 per week for all those aged under 26, at a cost of €24 million. The Government narrative that young people all live at home with their mammies and daddies, who pay their rent and buy them food, is completely disrespectful to those who do not have this safety net and who are trying to afford city rents while looking for jobs. This year, we saw a huge increase in homelessness in the 18 to 24 year old age group.

Section 3 amends the definition of "share-based remuneration" because of the introduction of the key employee engagement programme announced in the budget. However, reports suggest this share option, while initially welcomed, will now have a minimal positive impact for employees of many innovative business sectors.

I welcome sections 4, 5 and 6, which increase the rates of maternity, paternity and adoptive benefit to €240. Section 8 renames "family income supplement" as "working family payment", and this renaming comes into effect from 1 January 2018. However, the new income thresholds of €521, €622 and €723 do not come into operation until the end of March. Once again, I note how, as with the changed name and function of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, which reminds me of the Department for Work and Pensions, that we always seem to follow British models with regard to necessary social protection supports. We have renamed virtually all of our social protection supports after what the British were doing, but we would be bitterly opposed to the austerity approach of successive Tory Governments.

I note the number of FIS recipients has now risen to almost 56,000 families, from 22,000 a decade ago. It is also good to see the back to work family dividend extended beyond March 31.

Section 14 is a welcome provision and should have been introduced long ago. It provides for the payment of maternity benefit in cases of premature birth.

Section 16 in Part 3 amends section 4 of National Training Fund Act 2000 to provide for the increase to 0.8%, and this will come into effect on 1 January 2018. This levy is set to increase annually to 2020, to 0.9% in 2019 and to 1% in 2020. I had called for it to be increased to 1% from 2018, which would yield a much needed €200 million for third level funding. The Minister might remember that the Taoiseach, Deputy Varadkar, refused to indicate to me during Leaders' Questions not too long ago whether he has made a decision on student loans. This is a major feature of funding third level education.

The Minister’s Department is our largest in terms of expenditure, with 32.8% of our total expenditure. However, as the Minister knows, more than half of this is funded through social insurance. I understand the level of transactions under way at the Department is staggering. The Minister has told us that figures from the 2015 annual report show that 1.6 million people received a payment from the Department, 1.7 million applications were processed and 8.3 million telephone calls were answered. This is very impressive, but I want to raise a few issues about the way in which the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection works. The length of time for processing applications and appeals remains far too long for many payments. As a volunteer director of community projects and organisations, I have first-hand experience of the requirements involved in employing community employment participants and I have noted the frustrations of our staff and management in navigating what seems to be an ever more complicated system. Are there plans to move the Department more towards a user-friendly system? Does it have the personnel resources? Earlier, we heard the Minister, Deputy Flanagan, state the Department of Justice and Equality seems to be down by one third of its staff. What is the situation in the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection?

I want to raise the issue of the interpretation of exceptional needs. I have been contacted by an outstanding lawyer in my constituency, who highlighted that Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection staff recently stated that in order to approve an exceptional needs payment the need must also be unforeseen. In a reply to a parliamentary question on 7 November, the Minister stated:

Under the supplementary welfare allowance (SWA) scheme, the Department may make a single exceptional needs payment (ENP) to help meet essential, once-off and unforeseen expenditure which a person could not reasonably be expected to meet out of their weekly income. The Government has provided €31.5 million for exceptional and urgent needs payments in 2017.

However, as the barrister who raised the issue with me said, if a person's mother is ill and dying for a number of months, the funeral costs may indeed be exceptional but not unforeseen, and issues such as this are arising in departmental offices, definitely around Dublin but probably in other areas of the country also. I would like the Minister to look at exceptional needs.

In my submission I included a request for a pilot basic income programme to be proceeded with to see how feasible it would be to introduce basic income on a larger scale. Finland and perhaps one or two other countries have been experimenting with this.

As always, I want to mention very briefly the Social Insurance Fund, which last year stood at just under €11 billion. I understand the fund is now back in surplus and in her reply perhaps the Minister will tell us what is the current standing of the fund this year. Does the Minister have any plan to expand the range of benefits available, especially to workers and their families?

In general, I welcome some of the partial restorations provided for in the Bill, but I believe the Government has the resources to do much more, especially in the area of gender and disability equality proofing.

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