Terry Brennan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire go dtí an Teach. I read recently that a family of two adults and four children could be €4,000 per year better off while in receipt of social welfare than a similarly sized family in which one parent took a job on a minimum wage. This beggars belief and I must ask whether it should not be the other way around. It still is more attractive and more beneficial to claim the various State benefits than to take up a low-paying job on the minimum wage.

I also read recently that in the case of a family of four in which no one was working, social welfare entitlements including rent supplement and so on would deliver an annual income of €33,185. I met a young businessman who told me how he offered a job to a man who was on the dole, as was his wife, and who had four children. I have mentioned this in the Chamber previously but the businessman offered him a job at €40,000 per year. In addition, he stated he would give the man 5% of the anticipated profits in the company he envisaged he would create. He was a good man and he wanted the man in question to work for him. When I asked him to quantify the aforementioned 5%, he replied it could mean a further €10,000 to €12,000. In other words, the job would yield an annual sum of approximately €50,000. However, that young man with four children did not take up the job. The businessman would not tell me who he was - he was not from my native county - but this was an example of situations in which small and medium-sized enterprises offer men and women jobs of such significance, €40,000 is no mean wage, that are not taken up. Thankfully, the jobless figures are falling and as the Minister noted last night, 34,000 jobs were created last year. Moreover, 3,000 jobs per month have been created subsequently, all of which is to be applauded. The issue of social welfare fraud has been mentioned previously but I must ask whether enough is being done or can be done to identify those who fraudulently are taking social welfare payments. One may ask how successful are the initiatives in locating such fraudsters. Rent supplement is paid to more than 82,000 households at a maximum rate of €823 per month, which amounts to almost €10,000 per year to those in receipt of it and that is a significant amount of money.

The Minister, Deputy Burton, who has left the Chamber, stated recently that responsibility for rental assistance would be transferred from her Department to local authorities with the new rental subsidy system, in order that people would not lose out when moving from welfare to work and this is to be applauded. I had intended to ask her when she hoped to transfer this new system to the local authorities.