John Kelly (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. I heard she was at the ploughing championships and that she had been very well received, which is great to hear. I welcome the great work she is trying to do in overhauling the social welfare system. I will not quote all of the statistics she has given for the schemes available, as Senator Hildegarde Naughton has already done so. We need a change of culture because for some going on social welfare is a job for life. This has always been the case. Once somebody is in the system, everything else is free. This has frustrated taxpayers for years.

As the Minister knows, I was a community welfare officer for 28 years and I have worked with all of the various types of people who are unemployed. The ones I feel most sorry for are those who have been affected by the recent Celtic tiger crash as they are suffering more than anyone else. The reason for this is that, throughout the Celtic tiger era, we kept increasing social welfare and we could not get the long-term unemployed of the day to take all of the jobs that were available - we did not even ask them. No effort was made either by civil servants or the then Department of Social and Family Affairs to take people off the live register. It was simply the case that we would bring in the workforce from Europe. That was grand and we welcomed them all. However, the problem now is that we still have in excess of 100,000 who were unemployed back then on all types of social welfare payments, and we also have all the foreigners now on social welfare payments as well. That is the problem. I will repeat the point. No effort was made to deal with that problem at that time. If Deputy Burton was Minister at the time and had been trying to achieve what she has tried to achieve today, that problem would have been solved.

Another point is that, as the Minister noted, more and more people were becoming unemployed during the Celtic tiger years. Again, I credit that to the fact we were encouraging people to stay on the dole because we were promising that in every budget there would be an increase in social welfare. It was a giveaway during that time and the problem was not dealt with.

On another point, there are all kinds of poverty traps and welfare traps, and things we sometimes see and sometimes do not see. Senator Landy raised an issue this morning in regard to 18-year old children who are told they cannot get child benefit although they might still be going to school. During my time as a welfare officer, I witnessed many children who had just left school and who, on their 18th birthday, were down at the dole office. In an effort to take on board what Senator Landy was trying to achieve this morning on the Order of Business, we should look at issues like this. It might encourage people to stay in school until such time as they do their leaving certificate if they were able to keep their child benefit.

The Minister's targets under Pathways to Work are exactly right, namely, to ensure that every job goes to a person who is on the live register and to ensure that work pays in order to avoid welfare traps. I appreciate what she is trying to do with the rent allowance and the many other good initiatives undertaken by her. There are critics of the internship scheme and, of course, they will say that employers are milking it. However, I believe employers use that scheme to evaluate employees better than if they had just interviewed them. We all know plenty of people who are brilliant at interviews but then they will not pull their weight. I am glad to point to the proof that this scheme is working, which is that 60% of those who went onto it have now been employed.

With regard to the JobsPlus scheme, I have been beating this drum since I joined the Labour Party, as the Minister is aware. It is ridiculous to be paying social welfare to somebody to stay at home when half of the amount could be offered to an employer to take them off the dole. I appreciate Senator Mary Ann O'Brien's point and we need to get the message out there because I do not believe many people know about it. I have made the point repeatedly in recent years that if we created 100,000 jobs on that scheme, this would save €1.1 billion per year. It is there for everyone to see. There are also tax breaks for employers on top of the JobsPlus scheme.

I am glad to see that over 2,000 jobs a month are being created in the private sector. Senator White raised the issue of the 3,000 jobs for which we do not have the skills in this country. If I am not mistaken, there are as many under-skilled people in Europe as there are unemployed people in Europe, so it is not just an issue in Ireland but right across Europe. There is only one way to deal with it, namely, to upskill people.

As far as I am concerned, there are very positive signs out there. We can certainly see this in the cities and larger towns, and it is rural Ireland that is mainly hit, in particular through migration, although people do not mind that as long as there is a job at the end of the road for them.

Finally, I ask the Minister, as I ask her before every budget, to please look after the carers and not to consider any cut to the carer's allowance. That is another area where people are doing a job that we could not pay for, given the amount of work they put in while saving the Exchequer money.