Ivana Bacik (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister to the House. I apologise that I was not present for the early part of the debate, but I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly on the Bill. My colleague, Senator Moloney, who is far more expert in this area than me, has spoken eloquently and comprehensively on it. She made the point clearly that the Bill represents another step in the Minister’s reform programme in terms of seeking to move the social protection system from being a passive one to an active one with the focus on reactivation. The Minister referred to the need for social protection to be not just a safety net but also a springboard. For far too long the safety net aspect has been emphasised and we have not placed enough emphasis on the springboard element.

Colleagues on both sides of the House have paid tribute to the Minister and I wish to add my voice to theirs. She is a genuinely reforming Minister who is putting the emphasis on the springboard aspect of social protection and on activation measures, which is important. That is to be very much welcomed by everyone. In particular at a time of high unemployment, especially high youth unemployment figures, it is important that the emphasis is on upskilling, retraining and ensuring people get a foothold back in the labour market. In the boom times we used to talk about getting a foot on the property ladder, but I always think the far more relevant and important ladder is the career ladder and allowing people to get a foothold on it, especially when they have fallen off it or have not had an opportunity to start on it. My students are in quandary now as they graduate and are looking for the first step on the ladder. That is where internships and the JobBridge programme can help people to get a start.

The main provisions contained in the Bill, some of which address the activated element of the social protection scheme, have been addressed by previous speakers. There are five areas of change, namely, changes to the jobseeker’s payment schemes, changes in liability for PRSI contributions, measures to tackle social welfare fraud, including identity authentication requirements, which everyone has welcomed, and the debt recovery aspect, including the attachment of earnings orders which, from the criminal justice side, has been quite contentious. We must consider moving towards that as a way of recovering debts more efficiently. There are also changes in the governance structure of the Pensions Board. Section 16 contains provisions for the facilitation of online access to index information from the register of births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships. That will be very important to people tracing their ancestors and for genealogy purposes.

I wish to focus on the changes in section 10 that seek to help lone parents back to work. I am one of the many people who lobbied the Minister following the changes to the one-parent family scheme. I was very much persuaded by her own words when she introduced the changes about the history and context of the introduction of what was then the unmarried mother’s allowance. The payment was hugely progressive at the time because it brought lone mothers out of a poverty trap and enabled them to rear their children by themselves. One cannot underestimate the hugely progressive impact the introduction of the payment had, but decades on, it was timely that we would examine the issue again because, more recently, the lone parent’s allowance has not succeeded in lifting lone-parent families out of poverty. It is clear there was not enough of a springboard element to the payment. Many of us spoke to the Minister about how best to change the measures relating to the lone-parent family allowance to ensure that was the case.

The measures in section 10 are important because they will help lone parents to transition actively to the labour market and support them to get back into work. The advocacy groups to whom I spoke at the time were very keen that there would be the type of modification the Minister has introduced to ensure lone-parent families would be exempted for a transitional period from the full conditionality of the jobseeker’s allowance scheme. That is exactly what the Minister is doing with the introduction of the jobseeker’s transition payment, which is important. Jobseekers who are lone parents and who qualify for the lone-parent allowance must no longer fulfil all the other criteria in terms of genuinely being available for full-time work. They can now seek part-time work rather than full-time work if that better suits their family circumstances. They will also be able to access existing child care supports. Work is ongoing to ensure better access to child care, not just for lone parents but for all families. This is a progressive pathway back to work for lone parents and their families. It is an important reform for the Labour Party in government and I very much welcome it. As the Minister said, the change has been welcomed by many of the advocacy groups.

Colleagues referred to section 9 which relates to retained firefighters and the changes in jobseeker’s benefit and jobseeker’s allowance to allow persons working as retained firefighters to be exempted from certain conditions to access the schemes. Again, there is cross-party support for that important change in recognition of the enormous social good retained firefighters do.

Senator Moloney asked me to mention pensions, which she did not get an opportunity to speak about in detail. I said she spoke comprehensively but that was the only omission. I welcome the changes the Minister is making to occupational pension provision, which give effect to recommendations that were made. On behalf of Senator Moloney I welcome the changes, which, as she said, will strengthen the governance of pensions and will give consumers greater input into pensions policy.

I echo the words of Senator Mullins who spoke about self-employed persons and access for them to social security entitlements. Something that was raised with me on many doorsteps during the 2011 general election, and many other colleagues will also have heard the issue, is that people who employed a number of others in small and large businesses during the boom times and whose business have failed find their employees qualify for social security entitlements such as redundancy but they do not. That is a real omission and it is something we must examine and address in the future.