Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Bill. Often on Second Stage, Deputies can, perhaps, meander from the essential provisions of legislation when they speak. However, I presume and hope that the purpose of this type of debate will not be stymied as we become more strict in interpretations of what the Dáil can and cannot do.

The Bill will give legislative effect to the changes announced in the budget. There are some inherent inequalities that we have to accept and address. As a society, we are beginning to abandon tranches of people. This is not the result of any malicious design on the part of Government or otherwise, but we are leaving cohorts of people behind. If we do not accept that, we will end up with a very unequal society. Instead of wealth filtering down, we have a situation where wealth is, by osmosis, going upwards. We have to accept this urgently and address it in a very rapid timeframe.

The reason I highlight this is that if we look at the issue of lone parents and child poverty, there is still a huge poverty trap in many of the schemes supporting lone parents to get them back into education and the workplace. People encounter difficulties in trying to move from various stages of schemes back into the workplace. In this regard, I refer, for example, to the cap on the hours they are allowed to work, traps in education and difficulties with child care costs and facilities being provided. All of these create huge poverty traps and cliff edges whereby, when they move off schemes, people fear losing their entitlements and secondary benefits. If we do not take imaginative approaches to this, there will be a huge cohort of people who will feel totally alienated from a functioning society and we will simply cast adrift another generation of young people in socioeconomically deprived areas. This, in itself, would be a betrayal of our citizens.

I am a bit tired of the State at times absolving itself from responsibilities and the onus it should have, which is to protect its citizens, not only in the context of security but also in aspects of educational attainment, housing and social welfare provision, and giving people a sense of hope and aspiration. We need to address this very quickly.

The Taoiseach has spoken about representing the people who get up early in the morning. They are as entitled to be represented as anybody else. Language is very important, however, and insinuating this creates division. The last thing we need in society is for us to start pitting one group or cohort against another. The Taoiseach may not be doing this intentionally. It may just be the basis of his political ideology that the person who gets up early in the morning and works should be prioritised. People who get up in the morning and work should be rewarded for their efforts. Ultimately, wealth comes from those who generate it, namely, businesses that employ and people who work. Not everybody can get up early in the morning, however, and there is a huge group of people who simply feel completely removed from any chance of entering the workplace because of all of the poverty traps and obstacles that are put in front of them. It may be intergenerational - in the sense that they have poor educational outcomes or are in poor housing as a result of living in poverty - and they just cannot escape the net that sometimes keeps people at the very bottom. It is not that the majority of people on social welfare do not want to get up and go to work. There are many challenges in terms of their educational standards and the opportunities that present to people with those difficulties. Rather than trying to be divisive, let us move to the centre where we try to get everybody feeling they are part and worthy of political representation, and that they ought to be cared for equally.

As already stated, child poverty is endemic in our society. We have a major problem. We either pretend it does not exist or there is an idea that increasing lone parents' allowance and social welfare payments by a few cents here and there is acknowledging it. We may be acknowledging the problem, but we are doing very little to address the inherent difficulties in society that end up with a huge number of people in child poverty. A total of 11.5% of children were in consistent poverty in 2015 compared to 12.7% in 2014. Approximately one in nine children lives in consistent poverty. This is not something we should be proud of in 2017, when we speak about the country's economic recovery. These children grow up, and if they are in consistent poverty as children, the chances are they will find it very difficult to break out of that trap, so they will be in consistent poverty not only as children but potentially into their teens and beyond. We have to start breaking these cycles at a very early age. Do I have solutions? I would like to think we can come up with imaginative ideas to address this, but one thing I know for sure is that if we do not break intergenerational poverty, we are failing.

Family income supplement has been changed the working family payment. When this was being done, we were hopeful that the scheme - not just the name - might change. It has not been an imaginative change. I hope that the working family payment is an initial step. We must deal with the poverty traps and the perverse disincentives - not the perverse incentives - that often exist. Those disincentives stop people from making the leap to the next phase in terms of the number of hours worked and losing secondary benefits when they move up in income, when there is a definite cliff fall. That area must be examined.

In 2012, there was a change in how we assess pensions with the introduction of the averaging system. That has had huge ramifications for women in particular. That has been acknowledged but the situation must be addressed. It is simply unfair and unjust to have a situation whereby women who have worked and then remained at home to rear children, as was society's expectation at the time and also an obligation under some statute law, are penalised for that on reaching retirement age. They are being penalised for doing what they were asked to do. If we do not accept that it is unjust and unfair, we are failing a cohort of people who have served this country with some distinction and are not being rewarded for it. There is an acknowledgement that it must be addressed, but this must be done in a way that accepts that what is being done to these women is wrong and unjust, that there will be redress and that the matter will be resolved. They did what was asked of them in the context of the expectations of society at the time and even under employment law in terms of women having to leave certain forms of employment when they married.

With regard to the number of children who are in some form of emergency accommodation tonight and who will be in such accommodation over the Christmas period, we do not appear to accept that we are failing in certain areas. While we acknowledge that there is economic recovery, I believe we do not put enough emphasis on dealing with the real issues that will define our society and give the individual an opportunity to advance themselves and their family and to maximise their potential. Being housed in a hotel room is certainly not a great start for a child. The fact that there are thousands of children in emergency accommodation across the capital on any night is an abject failure of policymakers of all hues and none. We have simply failed. The idea is that we can wait for rapid builds, for the banks to start lending to developers and for the developers to start building houses. There must be dynamic, imaginative policy changes that obligate local authorities to use compulsory purchase orders, if necessary, and provide funding for immediate building. A child of four years of age cannot wait for five years in a hotel bedroom, by which time he or she will be nine years old. The damage will be done to the child if he or she is in such a position.

Not many of us are in emergency accommodation on any night, nor are many of the major policymakers in the Departments or many of the county or city managers. We have failed. It is an abject failure of catastrophic proportions that a country with a quite smart and dynamic people cannot build the number of units required to get the people who are in emergency accommodation into some form of permanent housing. We are talking about thousands of people, not tens of thousands. They are living in bedrooms, sharing a kettle in the same place where they sleep. It is simply wrong, but nobody appears to take a blind bit of notice. I urge a redoubling of the effort on building houses, as opposed to the amazing effort that goes into convincing us that houses are being built. There have been far more press releases than policy documents. Every day there is another press release about how dynamic the building programme is, how the Government is getting on with the job of building houses, how there will be more social housing and all that flows from that. When one drills down into the figures, however, one sees that very little is being done, to the point that in some local authorities one can count the number of houses they have built over the last three years on one hand. It is an abject failure.

We should recommit ourselves - both Government and Parliament - to facing into 2018 with vigour and determination in order that we might re-energise ourselves to ensure that the policy decisions that are made will result in houses being built and proper accommodation being provided for families who are currently in emergency accommodation. It will require some radical shifts and changes in thinking among policy makers and the Government, but it is essential. There is a belief that we have fulfilled our obligations and done enough as a society by putting people in hotel bedrooms. We have not. We have failed them. In a previous time, when the State had no capacity to fund itself and build, we were able to roll out massive building programmes across the country. Some of them resulted in social problems, but we can surely learn from the mistakes of that time in terms of house design, layout of estates and supports around them. Surely we have the capacity to do something similar in terms of a large scale house building programme funded by public funds and, if necessary, by private funds if the State cannot fund it directly because it is inhibited from doing so due to certain budget restrictions.

There is access to money. Money has never been so cheap. We are retarding the State's ability to build critical infrastructure in many sectors, primarily housing, at a time when access to money internationally has never been cheaper in recent history. Let us be imaginative and redouble our efforts. The Government should at least accept that if we are still here at the end of 2018 and there are still thousands of children - all a year older - living in hotel bedrooms and emergency accommodation, it is a sign that we are failing and certainly failing them.

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