Marie Moloney (Labour) | Oireachtas source

However, cutting benefits by €18 a week is pretty hard to take.

Does the Minister of State believe invalidity pensions should be included in section 3? It is payable over the age of 66 if the recipient does not have a full old age pension. Perhaps this could be brought forward on Committee Stage.

I welcome the restoration of 75% of the Christmas bonus. However, I am concerned that not everybody on jobseeker’s allowance will get it. Some recipients have spent 312 days on jobseeker’s benefit and have moved on to jobseeker’s allowance but will not get the Christmas bonus because they are not considered long-term unemployed. Everyone on jobseeker’s allowance should get the Christmas bonus as they would have been in receipt of a payment for a year. Will this be examined? I am delighted we have been able to reverse the cuts we made to child benefit and we are back where we started. Hopefully, whoever will be in government next year will be in a position to continue that trend.

The issue of carers has always been a hobby horse of mine. The Minister of State knows that I have fought long and hard for carers. Despite Senator Mooney’s claim that it was due to Fianna Fáil that this cut was reversed, I can assure him that I have spent the past several years fighting against this cut. I have worked with the Carers Association and have done my best to get the respite care grant restored. I am glad to say my work has come to fruition. I am delighted the respite care grant has been renamed the carer’s support grant. I have listened to people ask why the State should pay for somebody to go on holidays. Why should the State not pay carers to go on holidays? They blooming well deserve it and work hard.

We spoke this morning about hold-ups in accident and emergency departments. If we did not have carers, the accident and emergency departments would be worse. Many more people would be in need of beds in hospitals and long-term facilities. Carers are invaluable. I have always said, and will say it until I leave this House, that carers are one of this country’s most important assets. I welcome the fact the carer’s allowance will now be paid for 12 weeks after the death of the person being cared for. This gives carers time to come to terms with the loss of their loved ones and to reassess what they will do with themselves. There are 187,000 carers but only 80,000 get the respite care grant. That means many carers go unrecognised. Hopefully, we will be in a position to recognise them. The means-testing for carers should be totally abolished because they are saving the State a fortune. What is €204 a week to maintain a person in their home? I had hoped the telephone allowance would have been restored to carers because it would be invaluable to them to maintain contact with the person they are caring for if they do not live in their home.

I commend the Minister of State for taking steps to ensure the increase in the minimum wage makes an impact on employees, particularly for families. Up to now, when a person reached €352 a week, he or she would then enter the PRSI bracket and pay 4% on all his or her income. This would have resulted in a payment of €14.08. However, with the introduction of the €12 credit, it means they will only pay €2.08. This is a good saving for people on low incomes. I am glad the Minister of State took time to listen to one parent families and increased the disregard for parents on jobseeker’s transition payment from €60 a week to €90 a week, along with the reduction of the assessment of the balance from 60% to 50%.

Take the example of someone doing 18 hours’ work a week. I use this example because a person working 19 hours can avail of the family income supplement, which is probably more beneficial to him or her. For somebody working 18 hours, instead of being assessed at €62.82 per week from the minimum wage income, he or she will now be assessed at €37.35, giving him or her an extra payment on the transition payment of €25.47 a week. Someone working two days, who was being assessed at €51.84 from his or her income of the minimum wage, will now be assessed at €28.20, giving him or her an extra payment on the transition payment of €23.64 extra a week. That is a good help to parents. I am sure if their income were being cut by that amount, we would hear all about it. I am delighted this measure will help them in some way.

I welcome the increase in the family income supplement. Families benefited most from this budget with increases in child benefit, family income supplement, changes to jobseeker’s transition, the Christmas bonus for in receipt of the domiciliary care allowance and the increase in the respite care grant and the fuel allowance.

I would like to have seen payments to the under 25s fully restored, however.After all, a 25 year old could be married and have children. They are only being paid €140 by the State. Hopefully, we will be able to deal with that.

Senator Mooney mentioned the women going back to work. I agree with him; this is something I have fought for over many years. It is not a problem for the women who want to go back to work now. They will be fine because on 6 April 1994, a home-maker's credit was introduced. They will be able to add that credit to whatever contributions they have paid. It is the women who were affected by the marriage bar and those who had to give up work before 1994 who are affected. They are coming up to pension age now and are not going back into the working environment. They are the women I have fought long and hard for both in committees and here. I would have liked to see the home-maker's credit extended to those women, although it has not been so far.

There are a couple of issues I would like to raise with the Minister of State, although they are probably not related to this Bill. We always avail of the opportunity to do so when we have a Minister in here, particularly from the Department of Social Protection. A kind of anomaly exists for people who do internships. I dealt with a man who was long-term unemployed, who did a couple of years on a community employment scheme and then went on an internship. All was going well, there was a promise of a job at the end of it and he was absolutely delighted but then he had a massive heart attack. He had to go on illness benefit because he had contributions from his community employment scheme. First he lost his free fuel allowance, then the special top-up rate of the SUSI grant and finally the Christmas bonus. I got him the disability allowance, with a fight, to make sure he did not lose those payments. It should not happen to anyone who has been unemployed for five or six years. If the Minister of State is going to tell me that working on a community employment scheme is considered work, then people on those schemes should be entitled to draw the family income supplement, FIS. We cannot have it both ways. It has to be one or the other.