David Cullinane (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have a job to do, to critique the Social Welfare and Pensions (No. 2) Bill 2014 and to critique the Government's approach to social welfare. This recommendation goes back to 2011 and asks for a review of all the reductions that have taken place and the impact they have had on citizens.

The Minister of State said in response that getting people back to work is the best way to lift people out of poverty. I agree with that. In reality that should be the case, but in Ireland it is not the case because many in low paid employment are in poverty. Many people in work are in poverty and cannot afford to pay basic bills. They fall into poverty traps. They may have an income up to €300 a week but they do not qualify for any of the benefits they would qualify for if they were on social welfare. We end up paying family income supplement and so on, which can be called corporate welfare because it subsidises employers who do not pay their staff enough. We have a significant difficulty with low pay and the Minister of State should be reminded and should be aware of the recent OECD report that showed that of all of the OECD countries, Ireland had the second highest number of people in low-paid employment. That is another international report which has indicted this State in terms of pay. We have a significant disparity in pay from those at the top to those at the bottom, both in the public and private sectors.

This is an issue that the Minister of State, when in Opposition, would have been talking about as well. I am sure if the Minister of State were standing where I am, and a Sinn Féin Minister were sitting in the Minister's chair, and we had done what the Minister of State's party has been doing for the past four years, he would be criticising us. He would not be doing what he is doing now, which is looking for credit. The Minister of State says that it is the responsibility of his party and the other party in Government to rebuild the economy. We are all interested in rebuilding the economy and the country. Unfortunately, what we have been left with is a country that has deep and structural inequality and more people living in poverty. We have a two-tier economic recovery and all of the evidence that we pointed out to the Minister of State has shown that to be the case. There is something fundamentally wrong with rebuilding the economy on the backs of people on welfare and at the expense of people in low-paid employment, with the people at the top benefiting the most. There is something fundamentally wrong with that. I am in favour of fairness in our economy. I want to see the issue of low pay dealt with. I know there is a commission on low-paid employment which will publish its report.

I brought to the attention of the Minister during the Second Stage debate that I took on the responsibility of drafting a report for the Joint Committee on Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, acting as a rapporteur to look at the concept of a social wage, that is, a living wage and the relationship between low-paid work and access to public services. The Minister of State made this point when responding to the ESRI report. There are people who might earn €250 per week working full time. I met 17 people who work in a crèche, looking after children, who earn €250 a week. They had taken an 8% pay cut because of cuts in funding to the crèche. It costs them more to work, but they are prepared to work because it gives them dignity. Let us not suggest that those people are better off in work. They are not better off in terms of their access to services. They do not qualify for most of the benefits. They find it difficult to get access to health care for themselves or their children. They must pay for education at primary, second, third and fourth level.

We do not have access to services. We have a housing crisis, as I am sure the Minister of State is aware. All of these issues are important in the context of the recommendation before the House.

I would like to speak about the rebuilding of the country. In recent years, some €90 billion has been put into the banks so that bondholders could be repaid. They have got their money. They are away on their toes. That is them paid. We borrowed the money from the troika. We emptied the National Pensions Reserve Fund. All of that money is gone. It was spent on putting it into failed banks. Some €30 billion of it was put in by this Government. On the other hand, we have all the cuts about which we have just spoken, including those that are affecting older people. I will give a final example. The Minister of State spoke about how older people will benefit from this budget. The bin waiver that was in place in Waterford city for many years has been abolished by the local authority. When the waiver was in place, older people had to pay €50 to have their bins collected, but they now have to pay €300. That is another example. I suggest that the conservation grant that is being applied to the water charges will go the same way. Older people know they have not benefitted from this Government, which has cut many of their allowances since 2011. Older people and their families feel those cuts in their pockets. There is something fundamentally wrong when all of these cuts are being imposed, and inequality is deepening, after €90 billion of our money was put into the banks to pay back bondholders.

Members of the Government have said they do not care about their seats. People do not care about anybody's seats, but they care about fairness. They see something fundamentally wrong with all of these cuts. I am sure the Minister of State sees the poverty and the suffering out there. All of this is happening after money was being pumped into the banks to pay back bondholders. There is something fundamentally disgusting about what is happening in our society. It does not matter to me who is in power. If there are people dying on the streets, children going to bed hungry and people living in poverty, it should not matter who is in government. If Sinn Féin was in government, I would be here criticising them as well. It is wrong that we have such a two-tier society. As I have said, all the evidence shows that the Minister of State, his party and the Government as a whole have deepened that inequality. In James Connolly's famous phrase, the quality of a nation should be judged on how it treats the poorest class. The Government has treated the poorest class in this State very shabbily. I hope the Minister of State will support this recommendation, which gives us an opportunity to provide for some sort of poverty-proofing of previous decisions made by this Government, including when it cut social welfare.