Trevor Ó Clochartaigh (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I am afraid I am not as upbeat as some of the previous contributors in regard to Pathways to Work. If one talks to most unemployed people in Ireland, when they think about Pathways to Work it is about the route through terminal 1 or 2 of Dublin Airport to get off the island. We cannot congratulate a Government when the unemployment rate has remained almost stagnant and we still see almost one in four young people unemployed in this State, even though we have seen 400,000 people leave the island in recent years. I believe that is an abject failure on the part of this Government to create employment.

I also feel very strongly for the personal stories. Families are being split up by the economic policies of this Government. My cousin's husband is at this moment in Christchurch in New Zealand, having had to leave a couple of months ago because there was no work for him here. He had to leave his wife and two young children behind him as they could not go with him. He was not eligible for social welfare because he had been self-employed and he had no other choice but to leave. It is a disgrace this kind of thing is happening.

On the broader picture, the austerity policies of this Government, which are being driven by Fine Gael but totally embraced by the Labour Party, have been proven by international commentators to be the wrong way to go. The fact is that our economy is still flat-lining, as we hear from all the different sectors, including the business and retail sectors. People are just not spending money. The Government has decided to cut the income of people on the lower income brackets, who use all of their disposable income, and this has not helped at all. It is very important that we reiterate those positions.

It is true that a tiny amount of employment growth has been recorded by the CSO but it is a long way off the Minister's own targets and far behind the scale of the job recovery that is needed. As in previous years, Sinn Féin's prebudget submissions will be seeking more investment in capital and infrastructure in order to kick-start the economy once more. I hope the Minister will take that on board. Numerous international commentators now say that if we had gone that route a number of years ago, the austerity would not have kicked in as hard as it has.

Pathways to Work talks about deeper engagement with jobseekers and a greater emphasis on activation but that is very difficult to achieve without significant additional staff. What is happening is that the Government is redeploying staff from one Department to another but, without significant additional staff, it will not be possible to cope with the huge caseload that exists. The OECD economic survey of Ireland report, which was just published, correctly makes the point that the number of case workers supporting long-term jobseekers must be increased. However, the OECD and the Government are wrong if they think they can do that through redeployment rather than significant recruitment. As a solution, redeployment is a non-runner because it will exacerbate delays in the processing of payments of other schemes. It is robbing Peter to pay Paul to move staff from one scheme to another.

I take umbrage with a number of the statements made by the previous speaker, and I found one of them bordering on racist, that about foreigners on social welfare. I think it is appalling to make a sweeping statement of that type. The fact Senator Kelly mentioned that social welfare is seen as a job for life for many people is, again, a very dangerous and sweeping statement to make. There are many reasons that people can be long-term unemployed, such as historic, geographic and socioeconomic reasons. However, to try to tar everybody with the same brush is extremely wrong, and appalling coming from a Labour Senator.

I agree with Senator Kelly on the issue of carers, and people with disabilities are also being forced to wait an inexcusable amount of time for support. I agree that no cuts to carers should be introduced in the next budget.

Since the Government took office, some of the waiting times have actually worsened for people on the different schemes, and we can see that many of the schemes have been abused in recent years. A Minister came into the House last year and told us that people on JobBridge schemes were being used to clear the Garda clearance waiting lists. To me, that is not the reason the scheme was set up. We have to be very careful that meaningful schemes are set up and that meaningful employment is provided.

Between June 2011 and May 2013, the waiting time for carer's allowance doubled from 17 week to 34 weeks, while for the disability allowance it increased from 17 to 23 weeks.

Does the Minister intend to recruit or redeploy staff and, if so, in what numbers? Has the Department conducted an assessment of the impact on other schemes of redeploying staff to undertake the work on these activation schemes? There are not enough Intreo offices and there are not enough departmental staff to work in the number of one-stop shops that are needed, given the scale of unemployment and the growing numbers of long-term unemployed.

I draw the Minister's attention to the fact that since the CWOs have been subsumed into her Department, the services provided previously have been withdrawn from Connemara and most other rural areas. The Department is now asking unemployed people from places like Carna, Cill Chiarán and Leitir Mealláin to travel to places like Clifden in Galway to these Intreo offices. In many cases, there is no public transport available. This places an additional burden on those unemployed people. They will either have to pay for transport, get a hackney or hitch a lift. That is absolutely disgraceful. This issue has already been raised in this House on the Adjournment and I ask the Minister to review that policy because it simply will not work.

Pathways to Work plans to privatise support for jobseekers. The term "contracting out" is being used, perhaps because more appropriate terms such as "outsourcing" have negative connotations for a Labour Party Minister, party members and supporters. Indeed, one wonders what profit margin private companies will be taking on those contracts. In the final analysis, "pathways to poverty" would be a more apt title for this scheme because the Government is not creating jobs for the unemployed to move into. Without new training places, new investment in education and new jobs, the plan really is no more than spin. It is aimed at building up the hopes of those languishing on the dole queues, only to dash them when it cannot deliver. Pathways to Work is dependent on work being available and this Government is failing miserably to create the jobs we need in this State. If we took a much more proactive approach, such as that put forward by Sinn Féin in its pre-budget submissions, we would not be in the current situation. Austerity is not working and I hope the Minister will impress that on her Fine Gael colleagues, in particular, at the Cabinet table in the run up to the next budget so that we do not see a further exodus of our young people and those who are unemployed.