Dan Boyle (Green Party)

The reality is that we have so much to provide and we will provide it to the same extent that the payments that had been determined would be paid to those people.

The real problem is not direct payments. In the context of welfare traps the real problem is in terms of secondary benefits. Let us focus on people in a certain category of social welfare. Individuals with an adult dependant and a number of children find themselves relying on social welfare and secondary benefits. They are not able to go into paid employment because of the loss of income that would result. That is not the purpose of social protection or a social welfare payment. We need to ask ourselves hard questions about that.

I raised an issue on the Order of Business today with Senator O'Toole about the avoidance of debate on pensions and their future in this country. I was shocked when medical cards for people over 70 was raised in the budget of October 2008. While the intention of that was to get around the overpayment to doctors for people over 70, there were obvious victims in what was originally proposed because of the lack of specific information on people over 70 benefiting from medical cards. What shocked me was the revelation in the statistics that the average income of people over 70 was €270 a week, little more than the State pension. That is the context in which we are dealing with large sections of society. The Government was dependent on making a decision and protecting pensioners in the first instance. It is a growing sector of society and one that needs most protection.

The other elements of the Bill that are causing controversy relate to young people and the payment of jobseeker's allowance. Again, that is a debate we are avoiding. My preference would be not to have age restrictions for such payments. We should not allocate payments for 18 year olds to 19 year olds or for 21 year olds to 24 year olds. We should say it is a first-time jobseeker's payment that applies to people who enter the job market after the junior certificate, the leaving certificate, post-leaving certificate college, or university. The idea that someone's first income when he or she makes himself or herself available for the job market is a full-scale welfare payment is a wrong approach. There should be a scaling up of those payments. Younger people do not have the same outgoings as older people with dependants.