Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I will not be taking the full 20 minutes for once. I welcome any increases that have come through this Bill and the once-off payments, and I know the hundreds of thousands of people depending on social protection welcome them as well. I welcome the change in the policy around carers and around teenagers at 18 holding onto child benefit when going to university. That has a huge impact on families.

The €12 addition to core social welfare rates is better than nothing but with this increase the Minister has made a political decision to push more people who rely on fixed incomes into poverty. All the different groups told the Government we needed a minimum increase of €25 to €30 just for people to stand still. This increase amounts to a cut, strangely enough, not just in income but also in living standards for everyone who relies on core social welfare to get by. I would highlight in particular the damage to older people. Three in ten people over the age of 66 rely on social protection for 90% of their income. Yet the Minister decided in the middle of an inflation crisis and a cost-of-living crisis to increase rates well below inflation. The Minister made a political decision to cut the living standards for older people. This Government has failed to make any real progress on the promise to benchmark pensions to average earnings. It set out in the Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025 that pensions should be benchmarked to 34% of average wages. This is not just because pensioners need an increase in their rates and living standards but also so that, as the economy grows, they are not left behind. That commitment would have seen pension rates increase to €318 a week. Instead, pensioners got a €12 increase, which is over €40 behind the Government's promise.

This promise now seems totally empty despite the Government presenting a roadmap for social inclusion as central to our progress on UN sustainable development goals this summer.

I received a response from Age Action with regard to budget 2024. That organisation is part of the Pension Promise campaign and said the top rate of State pension was €265, just 29.2% of average weekly earnings, in quarter 2 of 2023. It would need to be €44 per week higher today to meet the benchmark of 34%. Average earnings next year will be higher so the gap will be even larger at €53 per week, according to Age Action's calculations. While the €12 increase from January 2024 is better than nothing, it will not close that gap. While once-off payments have been welcomed by many older persons, not everyone gets them or the full value of them, but everyone on the State pension has seen their pension fall in spending power since 2020.

Once the once-off money granted in 2023 is spent, the gap in weekly income will be starkly obvious to many older people. Age Action goes on to say officials of the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, provided input into the budget 2024 process to explain what benchmarking the State pension against average earnings and inflation would require but this has not resulted in any change in policy.

This is a time bomb coming down the tracks. Once the cost-of-living once-off payments end, old people and anyone relying on core social welfare will find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. We may not see another budget from this Government. It may have lost its last chance to keep its promise to older people. This was another budget in which the choice was made to push more older people into poverty. The Government needs to take immediate action to fulfil the promise it has made or older people will find themselves in a dire situation when the once-off payments end and they are back on core rates, which have been left in the distance by inflation and the cost of living.

I am dealing with the case of an elderly lady in older persons’ accommodation in Dublin. Her electricity bill built up to €1,254.50. She challenged it initially because she could not understand how her bills were so high. She did not realise the cost of electricity had gone up so much. We are working with her and with a community welfare officer, MABS, etc. There are many people like her in debt built up over last winter and they are trying to come to terms with that. Electric Ireland made a proposal that she pay at least €40 per week on top of her regular bill. She is on a pension of €248.50. It is not possible for that lady to survive on that and come to that deal. We are dealing with the case and hoping to get it resolved. How many older people or people on low income are in that situation that I or other TDs have been in contact with, or maybe older people who will not approach anybody else with their private business? We know many older people are very proud in that respect.

There is disappointment the €400 lump sum did not include pensioners. That is the feedback I have got from many people in my area. One woman who only puts on her heating for half an hour in the morning and half an hour in the evening and has layered her clothes to try to stay warm during the day was very disappointed with that because she is feeling the impact as well.

The Disability Federation of Ireland, DFI, was disappointed with the budget in relation to disability. It said that “it is devastating to see the sidelining of disability and the tokenistic attitude to disabled people in Budget 2024". Its CEO, John Dolan, said: "The measures introduced today do not come close to meeting the needs of people with disabilities. It is difficult to understand how the cost of disability payment, acknowledged and introduced for the first time in Budget 2023 at €500, has not been continued." The DFI also said: “These costs were acknowledged in the Indecon Report, and the recent Green Paper, at €8,700 to €12,300 per year and yet there are no such cost of disability measures in Budget 2024.” There was huge disappointment in the disability sector concerning the budget.

This was an opportunity for the Government to look at increasing employer's PRSI to the average level in Europe. I think we are 40% below. SIPTU did a recent report that if it was brought up to that, there would be €10 billion extra in the coffers. I am not calling for it to be introduced overnight but it should have been over a number of years where we used employer's PRSI, like in Europe, to pay for childcare and public services. Employees pay the highest tax in Europe in relation to PRSI. That should not have been increased at all.

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