Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and wish her well. I had the privilege of working with her on the health committee for five years and she made a huge contribution. The experience she gained there will stand to her in her new role. It is great that she has come to the House today to talk about a budget that includes increases, which have occurred directly as a result of the number of new jobs that have been created and the number of people back at work. We now have over 250,000 more people at work than there were in 2011 and 2012 and, as a result, we can give support to the people who need it, whether they are retired people or people in health or employment difficulties.

It is important that we recognise the contribution social welfare can make to a person's life in helping them to get back onto the rung on the ladder they were on before and then onto better things. There has been criticism of JobPath and other measures the Department took but they were the correct measures. It is about making sure everyone gets the opportunity to do things they are good at and acquire the skills to enable them to fulfil their aims in life.

The Minister went through the various increases in the Bill, such as changes to maternity benefit, increases in paternity benefit and additional support for families where there has been a premature birth, when there is an immediate loss of work in many cases. She also increased the one-parent family allowance disregard, from €110 to €130 from 29 March, which is welcome as it assists people to get back into long-term employment.

One issue on which we need to work relates to the self-employed. We have brought about important changes in this area and will continue to do so but a person who has been self-employed for some time and who runs into major health problems finds that the social welfare process is a slow one for them. Often, they do not have insurance against their business folding or against losing work because of the cost involved. I know of one person whose application has taken quite some time to process. I do not blame the Department as it is complying with the rules and regulations but we need to look at it. These people took the risk of trying to provide for themselves through self-employment and when it goes badly wrong, as it does from time to time especially in cases of major health problems, they do not have the back-up support and we need to be able to respond to genuine cases in a timely manner. I know changes cannot be made on this occasion but, in the long term, I would like to see some in this area.Overall, we are going down the right road in respect of the way we have dealt with social welfare and the way we are dealing with it now. The other big challenges we have in social welfare are in respect of elderly care and the long-term cost of both the contributory and non-contributory old age pension. I mention this issue with regard to the increase in the number of people over 65. That number is currently 637,000. It will be more than 1 million within ten years. That is a huge challenge for us and we need to start planning for it in many different areas. Figures released in the last few weeks show that life expectancy in this country has continued to increase. Since 2000, life expectancy has increased by something like five years. This is evidence of the contribution being made by people who are in receipt of social welfare and are better able to care for themselves and of the contribution of the health services. While we might criticise the health services, this increase in life expectancy indicates that we must be getting something right.

This increase poses a challenge in respect of the costs of servicing the increased number of retired people. It is important we plan for that. The one good thing is that the numbers coming into employment continue to increase. I have worked out that the ratio of working people to retired people is now 3.1:1. If the number of retired people increases to 1 million, we would have to achieve huge job figures to maintain that ratio. It is a challenge on which we need to work. Overall, I thank the Minister for the work she is doing. I thank all of the officials in her Department. Like Senator Boyhan, I thank those who respond to the queries we raise. I appreciate the help I get in that regard and how efficiently queries are responded to.