Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

There has been a certain amount of political scaremongering about post offices. Post offices are important not just in rural areas, but in city centres and disadvantaged communities in urban areas. Anyone with a bank account tends to use that facility to receive a retirement pension or child benefit payment. Much and all as one may admire and like one’s local post office, the convenience of the electronic fund transfer is very alluring. The critical issue for An Post is how it will identify how it will offer, in effect, a banking service. Obviously, it has a very popular savings service. The Department of Social Protection generates a significant amount of business for An Post. Mail, for example, comes to over €10 million to the company every year. The over-the-counter payment service is worth more than €50 million a year, as well as services such as the household charge which can be paid through the post office. I have improved the legislation to give An Post the possibility of providing a greater service in this regard. Along with the suite of services An Post provides, however, it needs to provide better banking type facilities on a current account basis. As broadband rolls out to remote communities, the electronic fund transfer becomes more of a possibility. That is a matter for An Post and it is not my job to tell it how to do its business.

During the debate in the Dáil, Members there - not so much here today - suggested changing the legislation to reflect the requirements of public procurement regulations. The changes being made in this legislation are to ensure An Post and the awarding of the contract, which was done in open competition, is not subject or put at additional risk of being attacked. People have to make a judicious choice there. An Post is referred to widely in the regulations.

Senator Quinn spoke at some length about people going back to work and the calculation of the numbers unemployed. The critical point is that the CSO, Central Statistics Office, quarterly national household survey gives a better picture of the total number of people who are entirely without work. The difference between that and the live register is people signing on for credits and people in part-time work. If one deducts the numbers signing on for credits and in part-time work, it comes to approximately 100,000 people. That is how the quarterly household survey came up with the figure of 250,000 without work.

The critical point is that they are people without work. Many of them are in jobless households. Jobless households cover a variety of households but all the international research suggests that in jobless households the outcomes for the children can often be much poorer than in a household where either one or more adult participates actively in the workforce or in self-employment. That is why it is a vitally important issue.

Senator Quinn asked whether people were better off on the dole and not working. The statistics show, and the CSO has confirmed it, that more than 75% of people on the live register get a social welfare payment of €188 or less a week. The minimum wage is €8.65 an hour. If people have a job, even if they are on a starter minimum wage, and they work, say, more than 30 hours a week it is self-evident, if one does the mathematics, that they are significantly better off and the further they go above the minimum wage, and the more hours they work, the more they earn. We can compare somebody working, say, 37 hours a week at €10 an hour to someone on a social welfare payment of €188 a week.

The complications in our system, and I have mentioned it previously, are where people are in receipt of rent supplement. In our system we pay just under €30 to each family with a child where the individual parent is on a jobseeker's payment. I refer to a family with a large number of children or if one is on rent supplement which, even in a rural area, might be worth €600 a month - in the Dublin area, particularly in the case of a large family, it could be worth up to €1,200 or €1,300 a month. That is why my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, is changing to the new housing assistance payment, HAP, in the housing legislation. In that case, in a family with children where one of the adults is unemployed and on rent supplement they lose that rent supplement if one of them gets a job. If, say, they are in the Dublin area they need a job that pays not just in excess of what they get on social welfare but also what they get in rent supplement. That would greatly increase the figure, whereas if one is in a social housing situation with a local authority, as Senators know, they are on a differential rent. Their accommodation is not taken once they get a job but they pay somewhat more for their accommodation as their income rises in terms of differential rent. It is very important that we go ahead with that reform in the current housing legislation. I believe that will be fundamental to getting more families housed. A relatively small number of people on the social housing lists are in that employment trap and it is critical that we help as many families as possible to get out of it.

On family income supplement, currently we have three supports to individuals going back into employment. They are JobBridge and JobsPlus, which pays employers €300 cash a month for every month they employ somebody more than one year on the live register and €400 a month for somebody more than two years on the live register. In the six or seven months since JobsPlus started, almost 2,500 people have participated. In addition, we have family income supplement. We are increasing the amount spent on family income supplement. It is approximately €100 a week for the first child and further payments for subsequent children. Those are the main points raised.

On the issue of fraud, we have widened the measures in this legislation and we will take on up to 20 gardaí who will bring their expertise, along with remaining members of the Garda but also the staff of the Department, and literally beef up the amount of work we do, particularly in the detection of fraud, and, if appropriate, subsequent prosecution by the gardaí.