Paschal Mooney (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

One has to welcome in principle any increases in social welfare but they have to be put in context. We believe that the measures contained in this Bill fall far short of what is required to ensure that low income and vulnerable households are protected from poverty and social exclusion. The small-scale measures contained in the Bill are not sufficient to offset the regressive budgets introduced by this Fine Gael-Labour Government since it took office in 2011. The Government has been responsible for 40 deep and wide-ranging cuts, the effects of which will be felt by households throughout the country next year: cuts to the household benefits package and fuel allowance; abolition of the telephone allowance and the bereavement grant; reductions in jobseeker's benefit and child benefit, which is still not back to its original level; reductions in the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance and punitive changes to the eligibility criteria for the one-parent family payment. These are the hallmarks of the two-tier recovery overseen by this Government. It has also failed to address the issue of rent supplement. The gap between market rents and rent supplement ceilings is widening at an alarming rate and the Government has completely ignored this.

The Social Welfare Bill 2015 only underscores a lack of commitment to the less well off in society in the Government's pursuit of an agenda that punishes the vulnerable and rewards the better off. The at-risk of poverty rate has risen from 14.4% in 2008 to 15.2% in 2013, the last year for which figures are available. The consistent poverty rate has risen from 4.2% to 8.2% in that five year period and the deprivation rate has risen from 13.7% to 30.5% in 2013. Any small gains in the budget must be considered in the context of previous budgets. To provide the context in which these increases are being legislated, data from the Central Statistics Office reveal that between September of last year and September of this year, prices rose for the following essential goods: overall education costs by 5%; bus fares by 2.7%; travelling by train by 4.6%; house insurance by 6.5%; car insurance by 26.7% and communications, postal and telephone costs by 2.4%.It is interesting to look at the response of various organisations and associations involved with the more vulnerable in our society. The commentary on the measures announced in the Bill has been mixed. Some stakeholders have welcomed improvements in the rates. Others noted the Bill has not yet restored the reductions to which I referred and seen in recent years and that the improvements provided for are too limited. In this context, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul welcomed the thrust of the budget but noted that it was only giving back a small element of the losses people endured in recent years and could have been better targeted.

Social Justice Ireland stated, "Budget 2016 failed to deliver an increase in the minimum social welfare payment - which remains at €188 per week". As detailed by it in its pre-budget document, Budget Choices 2016, this payment has remained at this level since January 2011. Since then inflation has eroded its value, as I pointed out in the earlier statistics.

Age Action, in its reaction to the budget measures, some of which are in the Bill, welcomed the first increase in the State pension in seven years, although anecdotal evidence suggests the general reaction to an increase of a modest €3 has been that it has not gone down well universally. Before the Minister of State in his reply reminds me that Fianna Fáil proposed a €5 increase in its budget submission, I suggest that a €5 increase would not have gone down all that well either. A spokesman for Age Action stated that since 2009, an older pensioner on the State pension has seen his or her weekly income cut by more than €13 a week.He noted that all of that cannot be fixed at once. However, he said that what we have seen would indicate that much more should be done in this regard.

In response to the proposed increase in the income thresholds for receipt of the family income supplement, Stuart Duffin of One Family said:

Government has not listened to the calls of many organisations in the voluntary sector to target resources at the poorest children in Ireland rather than giving a pre-election €5 to everyone on Child Benefit. What low-income working families need is the Family Income Supplement adjusted so that it makes work pay by reducing the qualifying hours to 15 hours per week and tapering the payment; as well as recognising the value and costs of shared parenting by providing the Single Person Child Carer Tax Credit to each parent.

This is a laudable aspiration.

Children and families have not been protected in the Bill. Despite the budget increase of €5, which is welcome, child benefit is still €10 lower than what it was in 2010 when Fianna Fáil was in government. The budget increased the thresholds for the family income supplement by €5 for the first child and €10 for each subsequent child to apparently offset the increase in the national minimum wage, but the increase in thresholds is not enough, given that a 50 cent increase in the national minimum wage means a €20 increase in gross income based on a 40 hour week.

Lone parents, for example, have not been referred to. The change to the eligibility criteria to qualify for the one-parent family payment was a particularly callous move which was opposed by us. There is little in the budget from which lone parents can take comfort. We proposed to increase the maximum child age of the one-parent family payment scheme from its current threshold of seven years to 14 years. I know the argument put forward by the Minister at the time was that we were trying to come into line with European best practice, but we are our own country with our own individual problems that need to be addressed.

I welcome the Government's initiative in respect of the increase in the carer's grant, which has been renamed the respite grant. This has proven to be a popular move and one that is wholeheartedly welcomed. However, it was only because of the continuous and persistent criticism on the original decision to reduce it by Fianna Fáil in both Houses, allied with all of the various organisations across the country, that this was taken on board by the Government.