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

The Deputy is dead right that there is no denying the facts. There is no dressing them up or hiding them. There are far too many people in this country who do not have a decent standard of living. The role of the Department is twofold. The first is to support people through the working family payment and the changes that I can and have already made to that scheme to help people to have a minimum standard of living. I hope to be able to improve that further when money allows.

More importantly, we all recognise that the real method to address poverty in this country is to provide people with employment. We have a national strategy to address jobless households. There is another strategy that will specifically address a cohort of people in households who are not working and are not seeking a job, and it will work with those people on a voluntary basis to allow them to have access to the services of the State. We must ensure that people who want to work are availing of the opportunities in the State, whatever difficulties they have or barriers they face, to enable them to get a job, and not just any job. I do not stand over a system that puts a hairdresser in a job picking apples. I want to get people jobs, better jobs and careers. The national strategy will determine how we will do that.

The jobless households strategy is under way. The specific pilot schemes we have for those under 25 and those over 55 are directly targeting those stubborn groups and parts of society where we have not been achieving the targets we would like to achieve. There is so much more to do and there is a long way to go before we get to where the Deputy and I will be satisfied that we have done the job.

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