Results 13,041-13,060 of 40,550 for speaker:Joan Burton

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: It is €475 million. The plan Fianna Fáil would have put-----

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: Sorry-----

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: Section 3 provides for limiting the payment of disablement benefit in the case of assessments of loss of faculty of less than 15%. Existing disablement benefit claimants who have qualified for payment before 1 January 2012 on the basis of assessments of less than 15% and cases where the accident occurred before 1 January 2012 but because they are incapable of work and claiming injury benefit...

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: Section 4 provides for discontinuing the current entitlement to the payment of a half rate qualified child increase, where the spouse, the civil partner or the cohabiting partner of the beneficiary has a weekly income in excess of a prescribed amount, with effect from 1 July 2012. With regard to the incapacity supplement payable under the occupational injury benefit scheme, it extends the...

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: The majority of claimants affected by this measure will be those with a spouse or partner who is in full-time employment with earnings considerably in excess of the €400 threshold. That is the data available to the Department.

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: This directs available resources towards the families at the lower end, which is what the Deputy indicated he wanted to do. Where there is a spouse or partner who is not earning or is on low earnings, below €400, the conditions relating to the qualified child increase are not affected and the payment continues. This measure facilitates the introduction of a single social systems payment...

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: The Deputy implied there was a cut to existing claimants. In case people are listening in, it does not affect any existing claimants. It applies to new claimants next year.

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: What I said is that the data available to the Department indicates that this is used where people's partners, spouses, cohabiting persons are in full-time employment and the earnings indicators are significantly in excess of €400 a week. In the context of how Fianna Fáil left the country - Deputy Ó Cuív was a member of that Government and sat in on the bank guarantee and so on - we,...

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: -----they want to oppose everything. The amendment will affect new claimants; it will not affect existing claimants. There was scaremongering in some of the contributions I heard rather than giving the good and positive message that all basic rates will be maintained, unlike what happened in the past two years. There is not a cut of €8 or €8.30 a week, the size of the cuts Fianna Fáil...

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: Does the Deputy want to cut pensions? That is a new Fianna Fáil policy.

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: We are.

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: I agree with Deputy Creed. A key issue with the interaction between the taxation and social welfare systems is that the two sets of computers do not speak to each other. The basis on which income tax is calculated and the household is identified differs greatly from the way in which the household is described for social welfare purposes. One way to address this problem is to move to a...

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: We have succeeded in preserving the basic rates of contributory and non-contributory pensions. Deputy Ó Cuív's suggestion about rich pensions, as he described them, was interesting.

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: Most pensioners are not rich, so I disagree with Deputy Ó Cuív and Fianna Fáil's position.

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: If a spouse in a family earns €400 per week, the annual total is €20,800. A person in receipt of jobseeker's allowance earns approximately €9,776, leading to a combined income of €30,576. If that person has two children, he or she would receive €34,000 or more. That is a tight amount of money, particularly for someone with two children, but we had to draw the line somewhere and...

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: This is a different section. The qualifying condition for the State pension contributory and State pension transition increases from 260 paid contributions to 520 paid contributions and comes into effect in April 2012. This was legislated for in 1997. I am introducing a saving clause into the legislation to ensure existing pensioners currently in receipt of the State pension who have less...

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: We made a briefing available to the Opposition, including Deputies from the United Left Alliance. I did not do the briefing but the officials did and they were available to any Deputy who had a query on any section of the Bill.

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: The officials gave a briefing and made it available.

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: This is the legislation from 1997?

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Committee and Remaining Stages (9 Dec 2011)

Joan Burton: The new conditions would be applied retrospectively to existing pensioners who are already retired and on a pension. We are introducing a saving clause to make sure their entitlements are not disturbed in any way.