Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I do not propose to accept these amendments. The normal cycle of social welfare legislation involves the enactment of at least two social welfare Bills per year. One Bill is enacted in December each year to give effect to the various social welfare budget measures which are due to take effect from early in the following year. A second Bill is enacted around spring or early summer to give effect to any other social welfare budget measures and to enact a range of other miscellaneous amendments to the social welfare code. In order to distinguish the budget Bill from the spring or early summer Bill, the Bill enacted in December each year to give effect to the main social welfare budget measures is normally entitled the "Social Welfare Bill".

The Department of Social Protection is a very significant Department which will next year spend more than ¤20.2 million providing direct income supports to almost 4 million people in the population, one way or another. "Social welfare" is the title that people use for the receipt of those payments so I do not fully fathom why Senator Cullinane would object to the Title.

With regard to his comments about Sinn Féin's desire for an amnesty, is he proposing that it would be the social welfare and amnesty Bill, to which I would have a grave objection? Since I became Minister, Sinn Féin has been putting forward, for reasons it has never explained, proposals around a social welfare amnesty. I believe people who are paying their PRSI, rather than seeing an amnesty, would like to see in regard to everybody who is required to pay PRSI, who was overpaid or who defrauds the social welfare system, that all of those moneys due to the social welfare system properly would be received so the money can be spent to the benefit of other people who rely on social welfare, in particular, pensioners. I do not understand why the Senator wants the framework of the Bill expanded to include a Sinn Féin amnesty.