Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Bill. It is a mixed bag in many ways. There are measures to be welcomed, measures that have been omitted and other areas where the Minister has not gone far enough. There is no doubt the situation this year is less tight than it was in previous years, and that is to be welcomed. More funding is available within the social protection budget, and that is a good thing. What I do not get from this budget is a clear strategy as to how the Government intends to proceed in respect of providing supports to people to ensure they are raised out of poverty and, to the greatest extent possible, facilitated and supported in getting back into the workforce and not only into any job but into a decent job. That is much more complex than simply the approach, which the previous speaker mentioned, we are seeing from Turas Nua and Seetec, which is more about box-ticking than identifying a young person's needs, particularly in respect of training and education.

From my experience of having spoken to people working in this area and following on from the experience of the Youth Guarantee initiative in Ballymum, the reality is that the level of need on the part of many young people who have dropped out of school is such that it is not just about sending them off to pack shelves in the local supermarket. The approach should be much more complex in terms of identifying the basic educational needs many young people have. Many young people who find themselves on a reduced rate of the jobseeker's allowance and without many choices in life are in a situation where their needs are extremely basic. They often have literacy needs and needs in terms of being able to get themselves organised to get up in the morning to get out, where they may be coming from a family situation or a community where it is not norm for people to get up and go to work or to have a longer-term ambition to develop a decent career. It is much more complex. It is essentially a reflection on our social policies, in particular our education policies in that many young people have been failed by the education system.

It is due to myriad reasons obviously. However, there must be a recognition of the basic needs of young people who are on jobseeker’s benefit at a young age. There must be an earnest attempt to match those people with the kind of training and education opportunities which exist. They may find themselves in a job where they are only earning money within a matter of months or even years. It can be much more beneficial to the individual concerned and to society if that person can be trained up and their educational gaps filled to ensure they are in a position to access a better paying and a more satisfying job. A mistake was made in forcing young people into situations which do not hold out much prospect of developing themselves and their careers into the future.

Getting back to the point about the lack of a strategy, at a point when we are close to full employment, it has to be recognised that children have borne the brunt of austerity over the past ten years. I welcome the fact that the Minister has managed to put the focus on children in this budget. That is a good development. The increase for a qualified child is important but should have happened a few years ago. It is good it happened this year, however. Improvements in the back to school clothing and footwear allowance are also good. The two weeks’ paid parental leave for each parent is good. I welcome the Minister starting a pilot programme in respect of hot meals for children in DEIS schools. It is quite incredible when one considers that all schoolchildren having access to hot meals has been standard practice in the UK for donkey’s years but we are at the stage of talking about a pilot project in some DEIS schools. It shows how far behind most other countries we are in that regard. I recognise it as a start, even if it is only a pilot, however. The focus on children is good but it needs be ramped up quickly.

Sections 5 to 8, inclusive, 15, 16 and 19 deal with payments and rate increases announced in the budget. The €5 a week increase across the board is to be welcomed. However, if we are serious about tackling the issue of poverty, a whole strategy needs to be pursued to address it. It has been a long time in this country since the issue of poverty was addressed in any serious evidence-based way, particularly regarding children. We know the rate of child poverty doubled during the recession and the years of austerity. That significant figure of between 8% and 9% is a terrible reflection on our society and the Government. It indicates the extent to which children and families got left behind during the austerity years and bore the main burden of austerity at a time when it could have been shared much more fairly and equally across society. That was a big mistake.

For many years to come, as a society and an economy, we will pay the price for the fact that so many children are now living in poverty as a result of government policies over the past ten years. We see that at its most dark in terms of children who are homeless. However, it is there in so many other ways such as lack of access to decent food and clothing, a warm house, as well as being able to participate in sports. These are all basic items which most of us take for granted. These will have a real, severe and lasting impact on children's lives to the extent that they lose significant parts of their childhood. The likelihood is that they will never make up for these. Whatever about adults living in poverty and putting up with hard times, when it comes to children doing that, they lose years, opportunities and learning periods which will never be recovered. That kind of child poverty leaves lasting scars on people, does lasting damage and has a lasting impact on society. The current level of child poverty is shameful. It cannot be described in any other way. We need a clear strategy to tackle deep ingrained child poverty which tends to be area based. We need clear strategies to deal with that through income support, as well as ensuring good quality services for children living in those circumstances. It is not just equality of opportunity. It is not just about the services available to every other child living in a family that is in a position to nurture and care for them. It is about compensating for the gaps in those children's lives. That must not just be done through income support but really good services. Unfortunately, poor children, in the main, have access to much poorer childcare, educational, housing and health services. We should be reversing that and ensuring children who are living in dire poverty have access to good childcare and health services in order to counteract and compensate for those other shortcomings in their lives. We have not done that, however.

That is why we need to develop quickly an ambitious anti-poverty strategy. We have waited too long for that. It should be all encompassing with an all-of-government approach. I recognise work is going on with early years but it has to be a whole-of-childhood approach to ensure that current levels of child poverty are eliminated. They also have to be eliminated in a short time. While governments might take that longer term view, that does not apply to children. We owe it to these children to ensure they are lifted out of poverty and provided with the kind of compensating services as soon as possible.

An issue which has been raised with me several times this year relates to increases across the board in social welfare payments, particularly where an individual or a couple have a State pension, an occupational pension and an entitlement to a medical card. Several people have spoken with me who are concerned that, as a result of the €5 increase in their State pension, it will take them above the income limit for a medical card. Medical cards for the over 70s involve gross income with no disregards. I have put down parliamentary questions on this but I have got vague responses from the Minister stating she would keep it under review. The likelihood is that it will be a real situation for people. The medical card income limits have not changed. As a basic, they should keep up with inflation and reflect increases in welfare payments. I am concerned that when the increases kick in that we will have this issue where some over 70s are in danger of losing their medical cards. Will the Minister address that issue?

We need to ensure the long waiting times for access to some social welfare benefits are eliminated.

They are extremely long for certain payments. For example, it takes 17 weeks to process a carer's allowance application which means a person must wait four months for a payment. It is similarly the case in relation to carer's benefit, the State pension and disability allowance. In this day and age, with computerisation and improved technology, we should be able to reduce those unacceptable waiting times.

For some time, there has been a dire need to increase the number of medical officers available to assess applications for medical-based payments. There is a very high rate of refusal for some medical-based payments but when those refusals are appealed, the appeals are upheld at a very high rate also. Something is critically wrong there. It is costing the Department in administration terms and it is also imposing a cost on the individuals concerned. This has been a stand-out area that needs attention and I urge the Minister to look at it. It is clear that something is wrong when payments are awarded at such a high rate on appeal. As such, the initial review appears to be merely a desk-top exercise before one has all this back and forth and paperwork. I ask the Minister to consider tackling that at its root source.

There are a number of anomalies in relation to pensions. People who attained pension age on 1 September 2012 or after are not entitled to a full State pension as a result of the yearly averaging method. The Bill seeks to amend this 2005 change, which is welcome but there is an issue. While the changes announced are fine and deal with a lot of the cases concerned, there is an issue about failing to backdate payments. If it is wrong now, it has been wrong over the years since 2012. It is going to be a real problem once the payments start and people are told about their entitlements. I would have thought we should be seeking to go back further. A pathway should be set out to restore most of that. As others have said, letters are going out and it is a matter that must be addressed very quickly. It was a real slap in the face, in particular to the women concerned who took time out of the workforce. I hope the matter will be addressed, that those letters will go out quickly and that people will be put on the payment. I also hope, however, that the Minister will review the matter of backdated payments.

Sections 10 and 11 close a loophole which saw those in State care receiving a lower level of jobseeker's and supplementary welfare allowance in certain circumstances, which is welcome. However, one must also ask why it has taken so long. There is a concern that the provisions do not address the scandal of the fact that, according to Focus Ireland figures, 15% of individuals exiting State care this year are homeless and face the myriad problems that involves. I accept fully that HAP is not within the Minister's area of responsibility but more work must be done to ensure that those exiting State care move into housing. There is a requirement for a much better level of co-ordination between the Minister's Department and Tusla and local authorities.

Section 12 of the Bill provides for domiciliary care allowance and its welcome continuation for three months after a child passes away in those tragic circumstances. It is a very important measure. There is some lack of clarity, however, around the respite care grant and whether it is payable for a person who passes away before the point in the year when it is paid. It arises now in respect of domiciliary care allowance, but there is also an issue in relation to other people because of the fact that the payment is claimed early in the year but is not paid until June or thereabouts. If a person dies in the meantime, there is a lack of clarity about the payment.

In relation to the earnings disregard for disability allowance, blind pension and SWA, section 17 ends the stipulation that those working part-time while in receipt of those payments could only engage in work of a rehabilitative nature. That is a very good thing as we should encourage people to get out and work without this back and forth to a GP. As such, I welcome the measure strongly. Section 18 deals with the one-parent family payment and this applies to some extent also to the working-family payment. The Bill provides for an increase in the earnings disregard for one-parent family payments and I welcome very much what the Minister has done in that regard. However, we also have a situation in respect of childcare. The Minister will recall that when a predecessor of hers was making those cuts, it was promised that they would not kick in until we had a Scandinavian style of childcare provision. Unfortunately, we are still very far away from that. This is something that needs constant attention. We must ensure people are supported and facilitated to return to work. A great deal of the work lone parents who return to the workforce do is low-paid yet they are expected to meet very expensive childcare costs. While a start has been made in that regard, a great deal more must be done.

While a number of measures in the Bill are welcome, the main thing is to ensure a strategy is put in place to tackle child and adult poverty. We must have a clear way to get from where we are now to a situation in which everyone is assured of support in work or on welfare such that their basic needs are cared for. I acknowledge the work of the Vincentian Partnership. I am sure the Minister is familiar with it. When one considers the basic things people need to live a life with dignity, we are still a way from providing them for certain categories of welfare recipients. The aim should be to reach those levels of provision.

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