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

I thank all of the Deputies who contributed yesterday evening and today. I am grateful for the positive comments they have made about the small number of initiatives that are in the budget and the changes that they will effect. I thank those who spoke today and yesterday.

I attempted to reach the most vulnerable people with the small amount of money I had. Everybody has mentioned how disappointed they are that this year's budget is different to what we have seen over the past number of years. We have, as the economy has recovered, been able to give back to the people who potentially suffered the worst effects of pay freezes and cuts over the preceding few years. I wish this year was different but it is not. It is what it is. I attempted to try to take a small amount of money and spread it to the people who would be most affected because of certain changes next year. That is why we concentrated on the living alone allowance for those people who have only one income, as opposed to some pensioners who have two, but we all recognise that we would have liked to have done an awful lot better. It does not take much time to spend the €140 million available. I acknowledge what the Deputies have said and I hear it.

I will talk about some of the particular issues that were raised between last night and today and will try to respond to them. Deputy Curran welcomed that we have moved away from a practice in the past number of years of introducing increases at the end of March, as opposed to what was historically something that would have been brought about at the beginning of January. I did that this year to acknowledge, as everybody else has done in the past couple of days, that any of the positive or negative tax changes that are brought in commence on 1 January. We should be attempting to make social welfare rates changes happen at the beginning of January and I think the only reason that they started coming in later a number of years ago was because it would not have been possible give people the €5 increase they have come to welcome and accept in January over the past number of years. We were trying to juggle balls and come out with the best possible outcome. It is a good idea for that practice to go back to January and I hope that happens, no matter who is privileged enough to be in this position next year, and it could be any of us.

Deputy Brady raised concerns over the outstanding issues about adoptive leave that had not been carried in the Parent's Leave and Benefit Act 2019 that we passed a number of weeks ago. At that time, my colleague, Deputy Stanton, indicated to the House that work was under way to include those amendments in the earliest possible item of legislation to be brought forward to the House. This is it. I mentioned in my Second Stage speech yesterday that the amendments are currently being drafted. If they are ready to be brought in on Committee Stage next week, I will bring them. If they are not ready for Committee Stage, I would ask the House's indulgence that I could bring them on Report Stage, although I do not like bringing amendments on Report Stage because it seems as if it is sneaking things in at the end of a Bill. I would make an exception in this case because it is so hugely positive and it is well accepted by all of us that it is something we want to do. Consequently, I ask Members' indulgence to bring amendments on Report Stage, if they are not ready for Committee Stage. That is to remedy the legislative defects that existed in a previous Bill.

Almost everyone who has made a contribution in the past couple of days has spoken about the minimum wage. I do not know whether there is a misunderstanding as to what I said, which happens a lot, or people are being deliberately mischievous. The Government decision was to accept the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission in their entirety. That is exactly what we did two or three weeks ago in Cabinet. A recommendation of the Low Pay Commission was, in the event of an orderly Brexit situation, to introduce an increase in the minimum wage to €10.10. When I have knowledge that we will have an orderly Brexit situation, that is exactly what I will do. There is not one person in this House who can guarantee that, despite all of their protestations, particularly those from Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin Deputies give the impression that they think they are the only people who care about people on low wages. That is genuinely not true and others can attest to that. We will bring the minimum wage up to €10.10. We are only four years into a five-year programme to bring the minimum wage to €10.50. The increase in the minimum wage will only happen when I get knowledge that there will be an orderly Brexit. Everybody seems to think that we are in limbo now but just because the prospect of a no-deal Brexit on 31 December is off the table, that does not mean it is off the table for good. The Government accepted in their entirety the recommendations of the Low Pay Commission. We will increase the minimum wage to €10.10 when we have the knowledge that there will be an orderly Brexit.

I listened carefully to Deputy Penrose when he talked, last night, about the amendment that is in this legislation to enable me to bring forward an order. In particular, he expressed his concern that the amendment, as written, means that we could change the Low Pay Commission legislation every year thereafter. That was never my intention. This is an exceptional year and I hope the country never again has to face making decisions in the uncertainty created by Brexit. With the acceptance of Deputy Penrose and all the Members of the House, I will change the amendment I have brought forward in the legislation on Committee Stage so that it is fundamentally clear that this is a once-off and will not reoccur in coming years. That was never my intention. I hugely respect the Low Pay Commission, which was introduced and established by the Labour-Fine Gael Government, driven by then Deputy, now Senator Ged Nash. We would never want to undermine any future deliberations of the commission. I will agree that with Deputy Penrose to ensure we are all okay with that.

Deputy O'Dea spoke yesterday evening about the cost of disability research that I have undertaken arising from the few bob we got last year. I genuinely hoped we would have an interim report well in advance of this year's budget so that I could start to give a signal and a sign to all of those people who are living on fixed-income disability allowance or invalidity payment and we could start the ball rolling.

The interim report will probably not be ready for another couple of weeks. It has not been possible, therefore, to get it to make any changes to it. The interim report will be ready in a number of weeks. A Deputy suggested that we are not serious about the report because it is being put on the long finger. I want the report, which will include a national survey of 30,000 people who are living with disabilities, to be as comprehensive as possible because I do not want some expert to do a desktop survey, which says that people with a certain disability should get a certain amount and that people with a different disability should get a different amount. I want to hear about the lived experiences of people who are living with physical disabilities and are thereby incurring additional costs because they need extra technology. I refer, for example, to people who incur additional transport costs because they cannot just hop on a bus. The lived experience is more important in any qualitative research. We will get that information next year when we survey 30,000 people. I am adamant that everyone will see the interim report in due course. I hope we can all go in the same direction as we consider what any future Government should do, and hopefully will do, to change the related payments for people who are living on disability allowance and invalidity payments.

A number of Deputies referred to the research on the reduced rates of jobseeker's allowance. I appreciate that it is long awaited. I still have not received it. I am nearly embarrassed at this stage to have to keep saying the same thing. I am informed that the research will be with me very soon. When it arrives on my desk, there will be no speed lost in turning it around and giving it to the joint committee. I was keen to try to signal an intent. I know we have had differences of opinion here over the years. I have not changed my views. I believe that people between the ages of 18 and 22 should not be on the live register. They should be in training or in employment experiences. There are various ways in which such people can be brought into retraining or reskilling programmes. Their needs can be reasserted in a variety of ways that are better than sitting at home in receipt of an equal payment. While I appreciate that equality is terribly important, we should have more ambition for our younger people. We should not say that they should be given the same payment as a 40 year old and be done with it. I want to signal my intent regarding the direction we hope to go in.

The maintenance review is a complex area. Deputy Brady spoke yesterday evening about the money I have ring-fenced for research on future conditions and on the future management of maintenance payments. The people who have gone through the current system will say how heartbreaking it is to go through it. That is why we need to change it. I am not 100% sure what the best outcome will be and I am not sure what we should change it to. Many Deputies are of the view that the establishment of a maintenance agency would fix all of the problems currently experienced in our courts. If we were to establish such an agency, all it would do is move the adjudication rows that are currently happening in our child and family courts from one agency of the State to another. I have said on a number of occasions that I do not have the authority to establish a maintenance agency because such an agency would be under the remit of the Department of Justice and Equality. I have the authority to establish a system, however. Approximately 60% of the maintenance cases that are currently before our courts involve a fight about the movement of a portion of a social welfare payment from one side of the table to the other. We all recognise that people on social welfare are probably living at a minimum standard of living anyway. I hope to research what that minimum standard of living should be, to determine what the minimum maintenance payment should be in respect of children under and over the age of 12 and to set a bar, perhaps in the form of a set of rules or guidelines. Legislation may need to be passed by the Oireachtas. We can determine that after the research has been done. I hope to be able to announce who will do that research in the next couple of weeks. I genuinely hope everybody will support me in this regard.

Deputy Calleary spoke about changes that were made recently. They are not so recent anymore; they were made in 2012. We all know how devastated people were as a result of those changes. The interim arrangements we made satisfied many women, but they did not satisfy some of the men. There are very few people left to be adjudicated on. I have always said that we will keep them open. There will be continuous confirmation and communication with those people, as long as they give us the information we need to do a recalculation for them. We have done a tremendous volume of work. I am close to bringing a memorandum to the Cabinet. I expect to be able to do it in the next number of weeks. I will seek the permission of the Government to give all Deputies the new suggestions for the total contributions approach that I will propose for 2020. I genuinely hope they will see that I want this State to have the fairest system it can have. Any new system that is announced will have to be adjudicated on by every Member. Deputies will be able to propose amendments to it if they wish. I want a system that treats everybody equally. The number of contributions that people make to the social insurance scheme should be directly proportionate to what they can take out of the scheme. I acknowledge that there are gaps in people's lives. This is a caveat that we must all make in the common good. The gaps to which I refer emerge from the lived reality of having to look after our children or parents at certain times. In the past, we were able to give people credits for being on the live register, but we never gave them credits for caring. A change is fundamentally needed in this regard. The memorandum will be introduced in the coming weeks. I hope the Deputy will like it. He will give constructive feedback on it. We will change it if needs be.

Deputy Calleary also mentioned the application time for carers' appeals. This matter has probably not been the subject of a parliamentary question. It might be helpful if he were to ask me to provide these details as a response to such a question. We have added significant resources to our carers' section in recent months. I have stood here over the past couple of years as Deputies have asked me about appeals times and application times. Even though we have a 12-week timeframe from the point of application for carer's allowance to the point at which a decision is made, unfortunately it has never been 12 weeks. It has always been 17 weeks and it has gone to 26 weeks on appeal. Two significant things have happened in recent weeks. As a result of the achievement of some efficiencies in one scheme - we were able to move people from that scheme into the carers' scheme - the turnaround time for carer's allowance applications has decreased to seven weeks. I will shoot myself in the foot next week because it will go back up again. There is a direct correlation between the number of people who are administering the applications, the number of medical assessors, which has also increased significantly in recent weeks, and the outputs. We still have a little work to do on appeals because it is genuinely difficult to get people to provide the information in the exact way that is required. Perhaps we could help people by telling them what kind of information we need, without putting words in their mouths. There is a body of work that could be done to help make the application process more simple. We have done some work with the Carers Association to make the form more simple. It would be helpful to get the message to the carers. We might do that next year.

I met representatives of the men's sheds movement a couple of weeks ago. I would be shot if I tried to take them over as well. Our collaboration with this incredible organisation has allowed us to reach particular men of a particular age, to whom we might never have had access. While they might not be particularly in search of work, they still need social inclusion and may need other ancillary services. We might not reach the younger men who are learning from the older fellows because they might be on a long-term payment. Anybody who wants to be activated, retrained or reskilled should have such options, and knowledge of those options, made available to them. We are working closely with the men's sheds to bring that information to them.

At a meeting this morning, we signed off on the interdepartmental group review that I established eight or nine months ago with a view to making changes to the CE scheme and, potentially, some other schemes such as the rural social scheme and the Tús scheme, which may be honed or owned by a particular Department. The report was signed off this morning with a number of recommendations. It has to go to a Cabinet sub-committee in the next couple of weeks. I will publish it at that stage. If I say I am very pleased with the recommendations that were given this morning, I hope that will give hope to Deputies who know what I tried to achieve before I set up the interdepartmental group with regard to the changes that are coming. Over recent years, Deputies have been asking me to make changes to the restrictions associated with the old rules, which did not reflect the people we were serving and working for. I hope this approach brings about a change in how we work with people as we go forward.

I have been told in recent days that the talks between a number of unions and two representatives of CE supervisors have broken down. I want to state clearly that the talks, with which I have engaged, absolutely have not broken down. I can only assume the suggestion that they have broken down represents an attempt by the unions to help me in some way in my negotiations.

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