Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

Before I speak to the Bill, I want to counter a couple of points that have been made by the Minister and Government representatives about inequality. It has been pointed out that inequality has been falling in Ireland over the past couple of years, which is true, but I want to speak to those trends so that it is not further misconstrued. The at risk of poverty rate, also known as the relative income poverty rate, has been falling gradually since peaking in 2012 at 16.7%. In 2019, it was 12.8%. The deprivation rate peaked in 2013 at 30.5% and fell fairly quickly to 15.1% in 2018. It increased to 17.8% in 2019, so while we can talk about lowering inequality rates, the deprivation rate increased last year according to the most recent figures that we have.

Despite these falling rates, the number of people in Ireland experiencing genuine poverty, as reflected in the indicators, has remained very steady over the past decade, and has not reduced due to a combination of rising population and a lack of genuine interest in addressing it. Some 637,000 people in Ireland were living in poverty and 193,600 were children. Some 98,100 people were living in poverty while in employment and they are the working poor about whom I will speak more shortly. Some 886,000 people were experiencing deprivation of whom 293,200 were children. These numbers are unacceptable in a developed country. Deprivation increased by nearly three percentage points in 2019, and that is despite the strong performance of the economy. When we talk about lowering inequality rates, whether it is a Government Minister or articles in The Irish Timesarticles published during the week, we should not neglect the deprivation rate and the lived experience of those experiencing poverty, who are not counted in these statistics.

There is much merit in the Bill and with some caveats, the Social Democrats intend to support the Bill as it progresses through its various Stages. It is our ardent belief that the essence of what it is to live in a republic can be found in how a state values its systems of social welfare and the pride that it should take in the knowledge that when it is needed by its citizens, there is a societal safety net which can provide comfort, assurance and, above all else, dignity to its citizens. I believe that decisions taken in March this year to provide a pandemic unemployment payment of €350 to almost 600,000 people at its height were essential to the spirit of societal togetherness that embodied the early stages of the pandemic. It is often said that crises enable us to focus on what is truly important.

Although it is not long ago, it seems like an entirely different world when Ministers of the political centre-right would stand on ceremony and herald an Ireland of almost full employment without in any way acknowledging the precarious nature of the work or the cruelty of a low-pay economy which left so many of that workforce living in poverty and without basic protections or provisions, such as access to a home, childcare, or even healthcare when necessary.

Most importantly, it has shown us what it means to be a society. A society is much greater than that which can be measured in economic growth alone. It has shown us that it is not full employment alone that we should crave but in an ever-changing world, our focus should be on the nature of our work, which must be secure, paid appropriately and which recognises that we are all part of a collective that is vulnerable to the various ebbs and flows of all that is outside of our control. When that work is threatened, the State must be prepared to step in and provide appropriately for our citizens.

Those involved in the making of the figure of €350 per week, from the then Minister, Regina Doherty, to the Department officials and to the various Deputies across the Chamber and the political divide, who found common ground back in March of this year in that figure being a suitable amount of money in which to pay a person in order that they might live a life of dignity, should be commended. That was a pivotal moment for our democracy in that it was the first time that the full apparatus of our State recognised that social welfare rates in this country were simply too low. That realisation came as no surprise to those of us who have read report after report from organisations such as the Society of St Vincent de Paul, Single Parents Acting for the Rights of our Kids, SPARK, and from other one-parent family organisations, from Social Justice Ireland, or for anyone who has met the nearly 637,000 people who, according to the Central Statistics Office, CSO, figures of 2019, were living in or at risk of poverty.

It was very telling that during the time of total crisis, when people throughout the country from all backgrounds and demographics were forced, through no fault of their own, to seek social welfare support from the State, it was immediately acknowledged that the basic rate of €203 per week was deemed an unsuitable amount on which a person could live a life of dignity. In light of the Bill we are discussing at present, it is particularly important that we reflect upon that learning, which is that our basic rates of welfare payments are simply too low. If that statement was not true then there would be no distinction in payments, regardless of whether one had lost one’s job through the pandemic or in any of the many other uncontrollable factors which so often leave a person unable to re-enter the workplace and condemned to a life below the poverty line. This is a central failure of this Bill and of the budgetary measures that were announced in October. It seems ludicrous to say this, given that we will spend €25 billion in 2021 through our systems of social welfare spending but there will be little contained within that which will prevent an escalation in poverty or a growth in deprivation. As long as our State continues to view such occurrences as individual failures rather than what they really are, namely, a constant recurrence of structural indifference, if not structural violence, which has failed generation after generation in this country since the foundation of our State.

We all fully appreciate the extent to which the realities of the pandemic have necessitated the State to deal with the short-term demands made on the Exchequer to maintain jobs, businesses and to support individual incomes to the extent that we have. Surely we can be more ambitious for ourselves as a republic and view the eradication of poverty in its cruellest form as a goal worth pursuing. Nothing in this Bill would present that impression.

There are, of course, some worthy aspects to the Bill but there is nothing contained within it that recognises that household income inadequacy - the type that renders too many children to poverty in this country while their parents skip a meal to offset the very worst of it for a child - can only be fully addressed when the minimum needs of the entire household are considered and provided for. In that regard we fully welcome the increases in the targeted supports for children, the fuel and the living alone allowances, and, of course, the maintaining of pension ages at 66. We commend the Stop67 campaign and all of the organisations who campaigned so valiantly to ensure that that was on the political agenda.

This is the second year in a row that there will be no increase in the minimum rate of social welfare payments. Rates are already set below the poverty line and well below what is required to meet even a basic standard of living. In this regard we should not forget the indicators of how such a measurement is quantified. It is a mother who does not have access to a warm coat or a child without a second pair of shoes or a household in 2020 unable to pay their electricity bill in a modern and relatively wealthy country. Surely, that must be viewed as being entirely unacceptable and worthy of a greater collective effort on all of our parts in this Chamber. Alas, once more, that does not seem to be the case.

We do not for a moment underestimate the cost of such an endeavour and once again we acknowledge the fact that the Government has allocated €25 billion to the social protection budget as a reflection of genuinely good intent in this regard. This week alone, the State will distribute €390 million in Christmas bonus payments to some 1.6 million citizens. For that, we commend the Minister and the Department officials, and say what a fantastic boost that that will be, both to the recipients of the payments and for the local economies through every town, village and city in Ireland that will benefit from the State’s investment in our citizens.

Social welfare spending is inherently expensive but so often what is lost in this debate is just how beneficial this investment is to the State and to the economy. None of that €390 million that will be paid out this week in Christmas bonuses and very little of the combined €25 billion budget for next year will sit in anyone’s bank account. It will swirl around the economy and come back to the State coffers in VAT, taxes, and through the jobs of those whose livelihoods will be sustained by it. That level of State investment should be a source of pride and is it is only the question as to whether it is enough and will go far enough that should be a source of any debate. There is of course an old conservative trope that the problem with socialism is that eventually one runs out of other people’s money. To those who would respond to my previous statements in that manner I would reply with two short points. First, what has been proven throughout this crisis is that it is in fact the private sector that cannot survive without the State. Second, as a Social Democrat, we have never shied away from the difficult conversations about how we should fund our public services and provide a stronger system of social protection.

Equally it should be acknowledged that the politics of “same old, same old” has a cost. A low tax base has a cost and the type of perennial auction politics that undermines our tax systems to the public, as practised by our two medium-sized parties and by Fianna Fáil in February’s general election, should be consigned to the past if we are to ever have a mature conversation about how we adequately fund our social infrastructure. Poverty in and of itself has a cost. That is felt not only in the corrosive effect it has on the person experiencing it but a very real and stark economic cost accrues to the State.

Earlier this year a comprehensive report carried out on behalf of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul estimated that the cost to the State in dealing with the consequences of poverty came in at an annual figure of €4.5 billion. While there is always a strong moral argument for confronting poverty, this study placed in very stark economic terms the hidden financial burdens to the State of its continual failure and ignoring of this issue. It is also clear that poverty impacts disproportionately across gender lines and is especially cruel to those with a disability or a caring role for another person.

The Deputies and the Minister will be aware that the Citizens’ Assembly was told by Professor Mary Murphy from Maynooth University that there will be up to 100,000 invisible women in the social welfare system. The assembly was told, and it is incumbent upon us to listen and respond to it in a legislative manner when possible, that the set-up of Ireland's tax and social welfare systems around the concept of a male breadwinner was more likely to leave women in poverty when they become pensioners. The chair of the assembly, Dr. Catherine Day, in reference to our systems of social protection said that some laws and policies still bear the stamp of yesterday’s Ireland when it came to the role of women. In the vast majority of cases, the man was the breadwinner and had a stay-at-home wife who had no independent income and whose years of family care were never valued economically. Women were left in poverty later in life in some cases, where they had left school early, taken multiple career breaks or predominantly worked part-time due to care and responsibility. I argue that it is high time that the State placed a value on care and responsibilities and that it be reflected throughout our social protection systems.

There are other groups who have been missed and could have been accounted for in this Bill and who have not been. In the context of people with a disability, while the rhetoric was that the budget protected the most vulnerable, this is not borne out by any analysis undertaken by the many anti-poverty groups. A number of disability rights groups have expressed a worry to me that the needs of the broader population, mainly around Covid-19 and Brexit, will lead to the supports for the people with disabilities being further de-prioritised. Services and supports have yet to fully recover since the last economic recession and the poverty rates for people out of work due to illness or disability have more than doubled from a rate of 19.8% in 2010 to one of 47. 7% in 2018, which is an incredibly alarming figure. People with disability constantly face the highest poverty rates of any group analysed by the CSO, which is often more than three times the rate of the general population. What is missing both from this Bill and from the 2021 budget is an acknowledgement of the additional costs borne by people with disabilities.

Many groups have been calling for a €20 cost-of-disability payment as an interim measure to start to address the many extra costs of disability. Once again, this has not been included. Indecon is due to submit its report on the costs of disability to the end of 2020. I sincerely hope it will make recommendations on how to deal with the costs because the number of people with a disability living in poverty is, quite simply, shocking and an affront to a modern democracy. For the second year in a row, there was no increase to the disability allowance. In a year in which the Government has, in practice, acknowledged that €203 is not an adequate amount on which to live, this is disappointing given that people with disabilities usually face higher living costs than most others.

Provisions on employment are welcome, especially the income disregard, but this is hitting low-hanging fruit and those already in employment with a disability comprise a small percentage of those with a disability overall.

The increase for carers is insufficient. According to most carers who have contacted my office and, I am sure, all our offices to date, a €150 increase to the annual carer's support grant will not be sufficient to cover additional costs as a result of the pandemic. We should remember that many services have been shut for most of the year, leaving carers to deal with extra costs, from the cost of additional heating to the costs of personal protective equipment and sanitation.

Carers have often been totally disregarded when it comes to mitigation against the negative impacts of carbon tax increases. The increase to the living alone allowance is of little use to carers who live with the person they care for. The carer's allowance is not a qualifying payment for the fuel allowance. This leaves me wondering yet again where the Government has heard of the concept of a just transition. Most disproportionate of all, for the 13th year in a row, there has been no increase to the income disregard for the carer's allowance.

I look forward to taking part in the rest of the debate on this Bill.

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