Sheila Terry (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. His speech was very well read — 45 minutes is perhaps a record. That does not leave much time for the Members of the House to speak on Second Stage, but hopefully everybody who wants to speak will get the opportunity to do so.

The Bill is welcome. It is difficult to be critical of many of its provisions. It would be churlish of me to criticise the many good provisions which deliver benefits to many people. I welcome the increases in child benefit, maternity benefit and carer's benefit. The fact that a carer in receipt of another welfare benefit can now receive an additional payment up to half the rate of a carer's allowance is particularly welcome, as we have called for this over a long period.

I also welcome the increase in State pensions and thank the Minister for listening to what we have been saying in the House on the matter of qualified adult allowances. For several years I have called for that payment to be made directly to wives as giving it directly to husbands was inequitable and made it seem as if women were not entitled to receive a payment in their own right. I am glad the Minister has recognised that right. There is still provision for a woman to choose to allow the payment to be made to the husband, but I would prefer if the payment was given directly to women so as to leave no doubt that it is her payment. Some women could be left in difficulty where a husband receives the payment. I welcome, however, the progress that has been made.

Increases in child benefit, respite care grants and many other areas must be welcomed. However, the Government should not clap itself on the back for disbursement of taxpayers' moneys collected by the Government on benefits for those less well off, young children and older people. That is its job and it is only right these moneys should be well spent.

Despite our great economy, some people still live in poverty. It is sad that in the year 2007 and despite the Celtic tiger we still have children living in poverty. The Minister of State must also be aware we have a new poor, husbands and wives struggling to keep jobs and family together and to pay a mortgage. If we are to tackle the issues of low incomes and child poverty, the best way to do it is to educate and retrain parents. I wish to mention the Minister's proposals for lone parents in this regard.

The Minister has been good at commissioning reports, but we have not seen delivery of any of their findings or recommendations. Why has there not been more progress on proposals in respect of lone parents? Why has there not been progress on pensions? We have seen report after report from the Pensions Board and now we expect a Green Paper on the issue. The Minister did not grasp the nettle as I thought he would. I welcomed his appointment to the Department as I felt he would deliver in many areas. However, he has not delivered, particularly with regard to occupational pensions or for lone parents. I do not like some of the recommendations that compel lone parents to go back into the workplace, especially when there are no support services for them. The Minister soon may not be in the Department of Social and Family Affairs, at which point we hope to have a change of Government which will review many of these recommendations. We cannot force lone parents back to work unless we can provide local child care and flexible work practices for them.

The community employment schemes worked because they were flexible and provided child care. We should follow that model. Anyone who has worked on one of those schemes has been upset when the three years has ended because he or she has been trained into the job, has liked it and has found it difficult to get a job that provides child care and offers flexible working hours. Educating and retraining parents is the key to tackling child poverty and providing support services for children in schools, smaller class sizes and so on. This Government has not delivered on these services.

Child care is one of the many important issues for parents. The Government's action on child care has been inadequate. The money given for this service would scarcely pay one month's child care. Providing more places in the community has had little impact. While the Government has done a great deal, many areas remain that have not been adequately addressed after ten years of this coalition Government.

There are some amendments to this Bill which do nothing to address the issues I have highlighted in the House in recent years. I have been too soft on the Minister up to this point in the hope that he would deliver but now I want to criticise him. Sometimes he agreed with me but said things were difficult to do. It is coming to the end of his term in office, however, and he has not delivered for the people who paid into pension plans for years and who have either retired or are approaching retirement only to find their pensions worth very little. These people have deferred pensions with frozen benefits and have had their plans changed from defined benefit to defined contributions with charges and companies dipping into the pension funds.

I have asked the Minister to address these problems that have stretched back over decades but I cannot get answers. I hope that many of these issues will be addressed in the Green Paper but I will not hold my breath. I think there is a cover-up on many of these issues. I have been trying for almost ten years to get answers. I do not have time to list the number of occasions on which I have written to the Pensions Board and the Minister asking questions only to be told a study will be done or the answer will come shortly, which it never does. Why not? Why can I not be told how many people in the country have deferred pension benefits? Why has that question not been answered for ten years?

The Pensions Board appeared before the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs last November and Mr. Kennedy, the new chief executive, informed me he would have the answer at the end of January. Each month since then I have received a letter saying he cannot get this information because he does not have the power or authority to compel companies to give the information. Why did the Minister not give the Pensions Board the authority to compel companies to give that information? Why was an amendment not included in this legislation to get the information? There is a cover-up.

The Minister does not want that information to come into the public arena when he is trying to encourage young people to take out pensions. This is driven by the pensions industry, of which this Minister is a puppet. Why would any young person pay into a pension plan when he or she can see that his or her father or grandfather, forced by a company to pay into a plan, received nothing on retirement? I have heard the Minister say recently that we must get young people to take out pensions or what will we say to them when they come to retire and have little or no pension. How dare he say that when he cannot address the people who are retiring today with little or no pension, having paid into a plan.

There is a cover-up. This Government does not want the figure released. I would say the figure is well over 500,000, but I am only guessing because I am not in a position to give the figure and cannot get any kind of ball park figure from the Pensions Board or the Minister. Why? What is the Minister hiding?