Dáil debates
Tuesday, 5 July 2016
Topical Issue Debate
Poverty Data
8:55 pm
Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Members may have read the Social Justice Ireland report today on the poverty figures. It makes for quite frightening reading, when one looks at the spike in poverty levels in recent years and sees that today more than 750,000 people in a country of 4 million live below the poverty line.
We must ask ourselves what is the poverty line. It is important to realise that the poverty line is set at 60% of the median income. The median income is not the typical average of industrial wages. It is the middle level of income of the entire society. Sixty per cent of the median income represents, at 2016 levels, €209 a week. If one is earning below that amount, one is officially in poverty. We should also note from the report that one in five children officially lives in poverty. It scares the life out of me when I hear somebody, such as the Minister, Deputy Varadkar, talking about making work pay because it is code for going after social welfare. Instead of lifting people out of poverty, we have driven them further into poverty over recent years.
Being able to afford a new pair of shoes once a year or having a hot meal daily are examples of how we can measure the real human suffering that goes on. We all know of old people who make choices in the winter between heat and eat. We also know that young people are being really penalised in this society. When they had more than €100 taken off their social welfare payments during the recession, it was never re-established. Young people are really suffering and are living €30 per week below the poverty line. We are hitting the young, the elderly and lone parents and we are doing nothing, according to the Government's plans for the future, to reinstate this.
Social Justice Ireland has done us all a justice by pointing the finger, fairly and squarely, at the inequality in Ireland. It is outrageous.
9:05 pm
Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Ar an gcéad dul síos ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil leat. I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing Deputy Smith and I to raise this Topical Issue. Deputy Smith has outlined the matter, which is serious. I am glad the Minister is here to deal with it. In spite of all the recovery, there are 750,000 people in poverty in Ireland today. There is much talk of boom and recovery but there has been no recovery for those people. It is very sad that 18% of adults living in poverty are employed: they are the working poor. That is a new type of poor, and it has become evident not since the Minister came into office but in the past ten years. These people are not even all employees, as many are self-employed and not included in any statistics.
I compliment Social Justice Ireland on today's report, and it is apt that the Ceann Comhairle allowed the Topical Issue. A job of work must be done on this. I know the programme for Government has commitments and I negotiated with the Minister long and hard about those. I look forward to working with the Minister in trying to make improvements. With the overall share of income being divided, too little is going to the bottom percentage of people and too much is going to the top 10%. There is a major imbalance that must be corrected. There are different steps we can take but work must be rewarding, as Deputy Smith mentioned. The Government must address the issue and ensure policies can be poverty-proofed. This must be done with rural Ireland in mind as well as there are many people affected there. As the Minister of State, Deputy Corcoran Kennedy, knows, many small farmers are very poor and too proud to admit it. They will not even go to community welfare officers. A few have come to me because they cannot get family income supplement. They are embarrassed about being in that position and they do not want to be.
I know the Minister is a reforming Minister. I appeal to him to make reforms and look after these people. There are hundreds of thousands of children facing poverty and it is very hard on them going to school or anywhere else. We must look after our elderly and the new working poor.
Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputies for submitting the subject of poverty as a Topical Issue debate. Tackling poverty continues to be a priority for the Government. It is important to point out the figures mentioned by the Deputies are from the survey on income and living conditions for 2014 and are neither new nor recent, although the report by Social Justice Ireland was published today. They relate to the number of people who are "at risk of poverty", meaning they are living in households whose income is below 60% of the median income for all households. Measured in this way, the "at risk of poverty" rate, as a percentage of the population, was 16.3% in 2014. Being "at risk of poverty" does not mean the same as living in poverty or living below the poverty line. Deputies might use the analogy of being at risk of losing one's seat being different from losing one's seat.
Relying on a relative measure during periods of rapid economic change can be misleading and may misrepresent the scale and nature of the challenges facing us. Put simply, when the median income is increasing, this can result in more people being "at risk of poverty", although their real income and living standards have not deteriorated. This was the case in 2014, when there was rise in real median disposable income of 3.5%, driven mainly by higher rates of employment and some pay increases. The Government's poverty targets have been set in terms of "consistent poverty", where a household is both "at risk of poverty" and lacking in two or more of 11 basic necessities. This official measure is designed to identify the population with the greatest needs both in terms of low income and lack of resources.
The "consistent poverty" rate as a percentage of population was 8% in 2014. This was a small decrease compared with 2013, the first such fall since the recession. The consistent poverty rate among children was 11.2% in 2014, down from 11.7% in the previous year. We expect those positive trends will have continued in 2015 but we do not yet have those statistics. The full impact of the strong economic recovery was not fully reflected in the 2014 figures. The unemployment rate was 11.3% in 2014 on average but has since fallen to 7.8%. As unemployment is strongly linked to poverty, we can expect further decreases in poverty as the figures for 2015 and 2016 become available.
The updated national action plan for social inclusion identifies a wide range of targeted actions and interventions to achieve the overall objective of reducing poverty. The social welfare system has proven crucial for poverty alleviation and reducing income inequalities. This policy is effective. Using data from EUROSTAT for 2014, Ireland’s performance in reducing poverty through the tax and transfer system, at 58.1%, was far in excess of the EU average of 34.1%. Ireland was the best-performing EU member state in reducing poverty through social transfers.
Income support is only one aspect of the policy response required to reduce poverty. The other components are inclusive labour markets and access to quality services. Growing employment and providing access to work is important for tackling poverty, particularly in welfare-dependent households, where often no person is working. The new Pathways to Work 2016 - 2020 strategy focuses on ensuring jobseekers can access good quality work, training and education opportunities. It continues to prioritise the activation of the long-term and young unemployed people, with supports provided through the network of Intreo offices. Welfare payments cannot and should not substitute for the salary or wages from a good well paid job.
Services are also important. Affordable health care, education and child care reduce poverty by reducing the cost of living and making work more attractive. More broadly, the updated national action plan for social inclusion reflects the multidimensional nature of poverty. The policy goals include a focus on early childhood development, youth exclusion, access to the labour market, including measures for people with disabilities, migrant integration, social housing and affordable energy.
Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Jobs alone are not going to solve the question of poverty, as the Minister knows well. He knows three quarters of all those living in poverty are outside the jobs market, as this morning's report indicates. They are people with disabilities, pensioners or young people who cannot work. There is no point in saying we have created X number of jobs and are resolving poverty.
I will contrast this with the other end of the scale just to demonstrate the inequality that exists. As Deputy Gino Kenny noted this morning, the top 300 wealthiest people in this country are now worth €84 billion between them and have added €13 billion in recent years. That is an extraordinary amount of increased wealth in the hands of a tiny number of people. Our top 1% of earners have experienced the biggest real income growth of any European Union country so how can that inequality be explained or justified? All the measures indicate that the greater the inequality in any society, the greater the levels of ill health, mental health problems, imprisonment and alienation. Inequality by itself brings by its nature a vast number of problems in society. That is gross and sick inequality.
Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Saying that the figures are from 2014 is not a big help. Most people know that much poverty is not reported for various reasons. The figures could be much more telling. Without social welfare payments, more than half of Ireland's population would be living in poverty, which is a frightening statistic. Inequality is rife and we must deal with it, as Deputy Smith noted. For example, we must address zero-hour contracts and low-paid workers. As an employer, I might often be against raising the minimum wage but there must be reasonable remuneration for people trying to work. We cannot have working people in poverty. Social welfare rates must take into account the number of children, siblings and dependants on a main income earner. These people are trying to survive and eke out a living, with some modicum of respect for themselves within society.
Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I will pick up on the points on rural poverty mentioned by Deputy McGrath. Rural poverty is clearly different from urban poverty, although both are equally problematic and need to be dealt with. There is a review of the farm assist programme, with a view to reversing some of the cutbacks from previous budgets. That may help farmers, particularly in the west, who are struggling to make ends meet from their smallholdings.
The first paragraph of Social Justice Ireland's press release today indicates that more than 57% of those in poverty are not connected to the labour market. That is a valuable point.
There is one issue on which I agree with the Deputy, namely, it is not just about jobs, although she did not mention jobs at all in her initial contribution. Dealing with poverty requires three things, effectively a trident approach. It requires good jobs that pay - that is what Making Work Pay is about - and it is about good services, because there is no point in having an income if one has to spend it all on things that people do not have to pay for in other countries, like health care, child care and other things. Services are very important. I do not think the Deputy mentioned them in her contribution.
9:15 pm
Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I cannot mention everything. The Minister gets more time than I do.
Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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There is also the whole issue of transfers. If one compares us with other European countries, some of which are more equal than us, we do pretty well on transfers. Our welfare payments are higher than they are in Northern Ireland, in Britain or in many other countries that have higher Gini scores than us. Where we are really falling down is on services - people on very low incomes having to pay for things they would not have to pay for in other countries - and employment. There is a high number of families in which nobody is working, compared with other countries. That is a big problem and no amount of welfare payments will compensate for good, well-paid jobs. I would like to hear people from the Deputy's party and her group talking a little bit more about jobs and job creation.
Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Very low-paid, precarious work, very expensive services and stealth taxes.