Dáil debates

Wednesday, 9 October 2019

Financial Resolutions 2019 - Financial Resolution No. 9: General (Resumed)

 

7:25 pm

Photo of John BradyJohn Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

This year's social protection budget allocation allows for plenty of announcements and not much else. The increase in the fuel allowance, the change so that young jobseeker's receive the full rate of jobseeker's payment and the moves to deal with child maintenance warranted big announcements but the reality is that these three measures mean nothing.

The €2 increase in the fuel allowance will not offset the €6 carbon tax increase as the Minister has stated. It will not even cover the already rising costs for energy let alone that carbon tax increase. What it will do is push people deeper and deeper are into fuel poverty. The announcement was little more than window dressing. It is insulting to those who are impacted it by increased carbon taxes to suggest otherwise. I am still waiting for the Minister, Deputy Doherty, to tell me if the winter fuel payment from the UK, which was paid to more than 32,000 people living in this State last year, will continue to be paid in a deal or no-deal Brexit. If not, these people will have to pay additional carbon tax to pay without any extra support to pay their fuel costs.

Rather than simply ending age discrimination for young job seekers the Government has replaced it with discrimination of a different type with a new precondition. Those aged 18 to 24 years who live independently and are in receipt of housing support will see their jobseeker's payment increase to the full rate of €203. Those who do not live independently will remain on €112.70. How many jobseekers aged 18 to 24 years does the Minister think can afford to live independently on that? The money allocated to this measure suggests that the Government does not think there are many.

The establishment of a child maintenance service is urgently needed. At present, when lone parent seek maintenance, which they are obliged to do to maintain their social welfare supports, they must go through the courts service. I will outline one consequence of this. A briefing which I hosted here last week heard from a lone parent who bravely shared her experience of seeking maintenance for her children. Two weeks after she took her former partner to court for maintenance, he savagely attacked her and left her fighting for her life. That was her experience of our current system. Unfortunately, when it comes to maintenance payments, the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection is interested only in recouping the money it pays out in one parent family payment to cover its costs rather than to give children what they deserve or to assist lone parents. The Department cannot even get that right. From 2018 to date, the liable relatives unit has examined 18,078 cases of which only 2,174 began to make payments. The vast majority paid nothing. The Department will talk about its enforcement powers. They may as well not exist. Since 2016, 19 cases were referred to obtain an order directing that contributions be made. That is pathetic. We need a child maintenance service, not guidelines or regulations. I ask the Minister, Deputy Doherty, to publish the terms of reference for her new judge-led group which is being funded by her Department to research this issue so that we may know precisely what it will examine.

The silence around the increase in the minimum wage was not lost on people. It is a disgrace that workers here, the very ones who get up early in the morning and go to work, have been left waiting for the measly 30 cent increase.

Sinn Féin made different choices in its alternative budget. This included a decision not to increase carbon tax, to have a living wage of €12.30 for workers, full equality for young jobseekers regardless of age or where they live, and to establish the statutory child maintenance service, something which lone parent families deserve.

This is a regressive budget. One must question whether the Minister, Deputy Doherty, showed up to participate in its negotiations as our elderly, people with disabilities, young job seekers and the most vulnerable in society have been completely forgotten in the budget. In the words of Social Justice Ireland, the budget betrays the vulnerable and many are left further behind.

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