Feargal Quinn (Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Minister is very welcome. This is a very interesting Bill. I found it very interesting to hear the Minister's words about An Post, which seems to have taken more attention than anything else among the speakers here. I was involved in An Post for the first ten years of its life and like everybody else I have a good feeling about it. However, I want to ensure we are getting good business quotes from it. Having the Minister watch over with a big heavy stick if there is any misbehaviour is very worthy because we need good value.

I also have a query on cash payments through An Post, an issue Senator Mooney raised. I recently spoke to someone in the Central Bank and was told that we are one of the worst in Europe for using the old-fashioned cash and cheques rather than plastic. To what extent are we getting close to overcoming that, particularly using the post office network?

The Minister's efforts to run the Department of Social Protection more efficiently are very welcome. It is much more on a business-model as far as I can see. The Bill furthers this goal by measures such as ensuring a person is resident in the State and allowing the Department to recover overpayments, which the Minister has explained very well.

From a business perspective, I welcome that social insurance will be extended to cover spouses or civil partners of a self-employed contributor in cases where that spouse or civil partner is participating in that person's business and earning more than €5,000 a year. These people were previously not covered so this will address a big failing in the current system.

We have had some very positive figures recently, with 33,000 fewer people on the dole compared with this time last year and it seems we are making real inroads into unemployment. I ask the Minister to comment on the live register, as the CSO website states this figure is specifically not designed to measure unemployment, contrary to the public perception. The truer figure comes from the CSO quarterly national household survey, which gives the number of unemployed persons at approximately 258,000, not the 400,000 figure we usually hear.

Can we get any estimates on how many people simply do not want to work? We have an unemployment rate of 11.8% according to the CSO, but even during the boom years, our unemployment rate was around 4% to 5%. It has been argued that at least some of these 4% to 5% of people did not want to work even during the boom years and this figure is likely to be even higher now. Can we exclude some percentage from our unemployment figures to get a more accurate unemployment rate? Am I right in saying that the 12.6% figure is not really a true representation of our situation? Perhaps it would be useful to get some plain speaking and clarity on this area from the Minister or whoever can provide it.

We have heard figures quoted previously that one in seven people on the dole have never worked a day in their lives. The UK Government has been trying to tackle the problem by requiring that people out of work for, for example, ten years have to work for six months before they can go back to receiving payments. The concept is to provide some sort of - what it calls - "shock" for them to get back into a working mentality and to also give something back to society. Would the Government consider a similar scheme here? Long-term unemployment is a big problem and such a concept may form part of the solution. I would be interested to get the Minister's views on this idea.

I was very concerned to hear again from the ESRI this month that many people are better off on the dole than in work. It is very concerning to me, coming from a business background, to see people making a choice not to work, albeit for purely financial reasons. The ESRI points out that an estimated 15% of people without children and 44% of people with children would be better off not working given the high costs involved. When things like jobseeker's allowance are added with additional payments for a spouse or partner and children, child benefit, fuel allowance, back-to-school allowances and rent supplement, it seems to be better than getting a low-paid job with many attendant work-related expenses, such paying for travel to work, lunch costs and child care. I cannot believe that this area has still not been tackled adequately. I ask the Minister to touch on this because I believe it is a big problem. Does the Government accept that if all the associated benefits that go with being unemployed are added up, then there is a big difference compared with the salary of a low-paid job? Are we doing anything in that area?

On the Order of Business today I raised the issue of child care. Has the Minister considered what other countries are doing in terms of child care which gives people an incentive to work? In Denmark, families pay up to 25% of the cost of day care, with those on low incomes or single parents paying between nothing and 25% of the cost, with discounts for siblings. The government makes up the difference. At the very least we should consider a tax-credit for child care, which would encourage people back to work, especially women, and may even get highly-experienced older women back into work as childminders. This would have the effect of reducing the amount of people on the dole. Has the Minister considered the example of the UK where parents can claim up to £100 a week to cover child care?

The item I brought up this morning was tax credits for hiring household help to get people back to work. On a related point, Sweden introduced tax credits for household help and specifically encourages more people to return to work, especially women after having children. The scheme boosts the economy by getting households to hire people at a much-reduced rate. This could play a huge role in Ireland in lowering child-care costs, something which we desperately need in order to get people back to work.

The specific services eligible for the tax breaks under the Swedish model include cooking, cleaning, gardening and child care. The Swedish scheme also cut the number of illegal workers, who are often paid cash in hand.

In an article by Tim Ross, published in The Daily Telegraphon 9 February 2012, a Google employee in Stockholm was quoted as saying:

It's possible to buy help with housework, like cleaning, baby-sitting, gardening and so on, at a very reasonable tax rate. The actual cost is halved, which makes it easier to promote people to get help at home.

A similar system in Finland resulted in 92,000 people taking up the scheme in one year alone, with the total tax deduction amounting to nearly €43 million. Has the Minister heard of this idea and would she be willing to discuss and study it to see if it is viable? Our population is similar to Finland's and if we were to get anywhere near 90,000 people back to work, it would be of massive benefit in cutting the unemployment rate. We should give that a real try.
I have several other points to make but I will cover them on Committee Stage. I congratulate the Minister on her speech today and the detail she provided which gives us a much better understanding of where we stand. I look forward to the Committee Stage debate.