Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the increases to social welfare rates in this Bill and the additional one-off payment. Yet, neither are near enough to cover inflation, never mind lift people out of poverty. As People Before Profit said at the time of the budget, inflation is not a once-off. Poverty is not a once-off. Increases to social welfare must not be once-off either.

Inflation is still running at more than 5% after two years of record-breaking increases. The latest figures from Kantar show that annual grocery price inflation is close to 10%. The biggest increases are in staples, such as pasta, rice, vegetables and potatoes. According to the CSO, the price of pasta has gone up 13% in the last year; rice is up 11.4%; vegetable oil is up 11%; potatoes are up 12.8%; and vegetables are up 10.8%. This is causing working people real hardship. Families who are on social welfare and who spend the biggest proportion of their income on food and staple foods are the worst affected. It is no wonder that so many are forced to rely on food banks. It is no wonder that one in seven children in this country, which is one of the richest countries in the world, are living in poverty. Shame on the Government for allowing that injustice to continue year after year.

Responding to the budget, Social Justice Ireland criticised the paltry €12 increase in core social welfare rates for “falling short” of the €25 needed to begin to address income adequacy among the poorest families. They also pointed out that the Government has yet again reneged on the commitment it made in the programme for Government to protect core social welfare rates.

People Before Profit would go much further than that. In our alternative budget, we outlined how a left Government would increase all core social welfare rates to €300, plus an additional €50 cost-of-disability premium for those on disability benefits. These are the minimum levels needed to provide everybody with a decent standard of living and to make poverty in this country history. The Government has the money to do all of this. It is awash with cash. There is a €65 billion surplus. It is fighting, using public money, to say that Apple should keep at almost €14 billion in taxes that should be owed to us. Yet, it refuses to spend this money on improving people's lives and investing in public services. Instead, in the Green Paper on reform of disability payments, it is proposing to subject people with disabilities to the kind of degrading and dystopian system of welfare reform pioneered by the Tories in Britain. It seems that the Minster and the Taoiseach might have watched I, Daniel Blakebut, rather than being appalled by it like any normal, decent human being, the Government has taken inspiration from it. I hope you will reconsider and not go down a road that has caused hundreds and probably even thousands of people to die in Britain from suicide, starvation, hypothermia and utter despair.

The now Taoiseach kicked this off a number of years ago when he was in the Minister of Social Protection’s position with his disgraceful “Welfare cheats cheat us all” disinformation campaign. The Minister is now continuing it with her disability reform proposals. Another reform proposal is the reintroduction of pay-related unemployment benefits, which were abolished by the parties that are now in government in the early 1990s. We welcome any increases in social welfare but are concerned that the level of pay-related benefit is still far too low. Workers will still only be entitled to a maximum of 60% of their pay for the first three months falling to 55% for the second three months and then 50% before falling back to €220 per week or the current average wage replacement rate of 23% after nine months. Compare that with Denmark, where workers still have 82% of their wages covered after one year or with Belgium, where 79% is covered. We are also concerned that this reform will be used in future to justify cutting the base rate of jobseeker's benefit and allowance. This could be done openly or it could be done by simply not increasing rates in line with inflation, as is already being done with core social welfare rates.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have always been fond of divide-and-conquer tactics and of pitting the so-called deserving against the so-called undeserving to justify cuts to social welfare and public services. They did this with the welfare cheats campaign and with council housing by allowing income limits to fall in value until most workers were excluded. Then they renamed it “social housing” and massively cut the number of homes provided, leading to the housing and homelessness disaster we face today. The reason for all of this penny-pinching is to shield big business and the wealthy in this country from paying taxes. Our People Before Profit alternative budget outlines how billions of euro more in tax revenue could be raised every year by taxing profits and wealth. A 2% wealth tax and a millionaire’s tax on the top 5% wealthiest households could raise €5.9 billion. Increasing employer's PRSI to European levels rather than increasing PRSI for workers during a cost-of-living crisis, as the Minister plans to do, could raise more than €2.5 billion. A 4% levy on the profits of pharmaceutical companies and private health companies could raise €1 billion. A proper windfall tax on the super-profits being made by energy companies could raise another €1 billion. Insisting that corporations pay the same rate of tax on their profits as ordinary workers do - 20% - would raise €20 billion. All of that money could transform social welfare and provide quality universal public services for all, but this Government will never do that no matter how much money it has, because they serve the interests of big business and the wealthy, not working people. That is why we need to get rid of this Government. It is why we need a left Government. We need a left Government that is not just “left” in name, but that is committed to taking on the big corporations that dominate in this country, taking on the speculators and taking on the big private landlords. We need a left Government that is willing to fight for eco-socialist change.

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