Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Senator has given me enough work for about three months by herself. I will start with Senator Higgins and work backwards, if that is all right. I thank the Senators for the valuable contributions that have been made today.

In response to Senator Higgins, I thank her for her support, not just for this Bill, but also in general. I know she knows where I am trying to get to and I appreciate it. I will look at the requirements for hours versus days. I will not do it within the confines of this particular Bill, because that concern does not actually relate to it. However, it might be worthwhile, because the people the Senator is talking about are not small in their numbers. I was not focused enough, or conscious enough of the difference between 19 hours and 15 hours with regard to the family income supplement but that will form part of our review of the working family payments.

The whole purpose of the Department is involved here. It is not my money or our money, it is your money. It is the people's money. The reason we do what we do is to make people's lives different; not just some people's lives, but all citizens' lives. We do not set out with an ideology that we will look after certain groups of people. The only reason the Department exists is to look after people during times of their lives when they cannot look after themselves. There has to be a minimum standard and that is where we are going to. However, I acknowledge that all Members recognise that the minimum standard does have limitations because if we did not have limits, I would have everything much higher than it is. We do have limits and we have to work around those limits. I will come back to Senator Higgins on the question of hours versus days. I ask her to give me a couple of months. Between now and next week I will find out how long I will need, and maybe I will come back to her before next week and let her know.

We are looking at changes in the European Youth Guarantee Fund with regard to some of our youths, who are removed from the marketplace for a variety of reasons. There are not just one or two reasons, there are many reasons. As some people in rural Ireland may be affected differently than those in urban areas, let us have a look at that.

I refer to people who are unemployed for a small or a medium amount of time. The whole reason that activation is there is because we activate them either through training, re-training, change of skills or education. There is not one exclusive path of just putting somebody on a scheme to give him or her work experience. If suitable education and third level education is more suited to that particular person, there is no reason not to do it. I came across a barrier with some schemes, as I am sure the Senator did, whereby there is only a certain amount of courses one can go on. Who decided that someone cannot be a physicist just because he or she has a child under the age of seven? I am going to examine those. There should be no barriers and I believe there should be no pre-conditioned courses. We should not say that someone can only be A, B or C. They should have the flair and the imagination to be able to follow whatever course they want to, and particularly to be able to aim higher during those seven years. That particular scheme obviously has conditions but there should be no limits to anybody with regard to educational resources and support from my Department or from the Department of Education and Skills.

On the topic of voluntary access to schemes, I did not think we deprived people of that access but I will have a look. There is a new plan for jobless households, for people who are qualified adults and do not appear on any register anywhere. Perhaps they are precluded from going on to community employment, CE, schemes, Tús or into JobPath. I will have a look at that. If they are, they should not be. I will see how we can fix it, but if we can fix it and if what the Senator has said is true, of which I have no doubt, that might put pressure on the already over-burdened CE scheme. They are nearly at capacity. Some people will tell one that they cannot fill places because of particular reasons but there are waiting lists and over-capacity on other schemes. That will form part of the review that we are doing between now and the new year.

The UN disability rights convention was mentioned. We are going to sign it. The Minister of State got approval at Cabinet on Tuesday. Whatever we need to do to make sure that we conform to that charter is what we are going to do. That is why the public consultation is going to take place in the beginning of the new year with regard to the deprivation of liberty.However, if other legislation needs to be passed to enhance the rights of people with disabilities, either in the workplace or to allow them access other supports, it is our job to ensure that we pass it. Specifically, it is an issue for the Minister of State, Deputy Finian McGrath, but I will give him whatever support he needs.

To allay some of the fears expressed by the Senator, the Data Protection Commissioner did have some concerns. The commissioner asked a very large number of questions of us - 49 in total - in the context of allaying those concerns. We have answered all of the questions comprehensively and we are awaiting a response from the commissioner's office as to whether it is either happy or not happy with our replies regarding the practices. If it is not happy, we will deal with that at the time. This is not my baby, so to speak - it started ten years ago - but I do not want anybody believing that there is a problem with the data we are holding. If there are concerns, we have to address them and we will make sure we do so. If the Data Protection Commissioner comes back to us with concerns, I will come back to the House, or to the joint committee in order to discuss them.

I am happy to be able to answer the question regarding tax relief on pensions because it is €2.6 billion every year. That is a phenomenal amount of money. After Christmas, we will be engaging in public consultation on the new auto-enrolment pension scheme we are proposing to roll out. The parameters of that scheme will be very much determined by the responses we get from the public consultation. In that context, the Senator should not wait for somebody else to make a submission. There is a view that we should have a lower limit and an upper limit. To my mind, those limits might be €20,000 and €65,000, but the position in that regard will be determined by the public consultation; it will not be determined by me. The €2.6 billion will be going into that pot. That is what I think. Obviously, what Senators think will be very much shaped by what will be the auto-enrolment policy. I hope that the public consultation will be carried out in the first three or four months of next year. We will then come back to committee to discuss the new auto-enrolment policy because I want to roll it out from the beginning of the year after next, and we need space to be able to consult the public insurance bodies and those in the private sector. In addition, the Department will need time to create an IT platform that will be able to manage it. This is not something that can be done in a couple of months, but we can agree the parameters in the first couple of months of next year. The Senator should hold her whisht and come back to me at the beginning of next year.

I thank Senator Ardagh for her support. I appreciate that she will probably table additional amendments next week and I am very happy to discuss them.

I thank Senator Boyhan for his lovely comments, which are not directed at me because I do not do any of the work. The people in our Department are genuinely some of the most talented and committed individuals I have ever come across. I do not say that lightly but they are that. I know I am a fusspot and I sign all my own letters but that is only because I cannot have somebody else sign letters for me. I thank the Senator for that particular compliment.

Senator Boyhan specifically mentioned the increase in the farm assist payment. There was also an increase in the number of placements on the farm assist programme this year. It is probably our most successful scheme because it is got a 99% application rate whereas many of our other schemes would have a participation rate of less than 99%.

I acknowledge Senator Colm Burke's contribution. I am very glad he acknowledged that the only reason we have had money to give over the past two years - and I would love to take the credit for the payments that are being given - is because the economy is generating it. If the economy was not in a place where we could generate money, we might have seen a return to what were awful years between 2009 and 2015 when cuts of up to €4 billion were made. We all have our differences in terms of the reason the economy is recovering - and it is recovering better in some places than others - but all I know is that it affords me the ability to give people who have to rely on fixed incomes on a weekly basis a few bob extra. It is not as much as I would like to be able to give. I would love to be able to give more. I hope that as the economy continues to recover next year, we will be able to do the reinstatement of the disregard for lone parents because they are one of a group of people I know are one of the hardest working people in this country. If I do nothing else for whatever length of time I am Minister in this Department, I will break that stereotypical image that some people have of women in the main who are rearing families on their own because it is wrong. We need to work together, continuously and collaboratively, in order to ensure that we break that stereotypical image because they are some of the most hard-working people. When I was at home I came to work for a rest because it a very hard job to be at home with one's children. Most of the women, and men, who are rearing families are actually working so they are only getting to keep more of their own money. I want to continue to do that.

I acknowledge what Senator Colm Burke said to the effect that caring is something we need to examine. I stick my nose into many areas that are not my business but our Department provides income supports. It is not my responsibility to devise the carers' strategy but I will make whatever input I can in respect of the Department of Health. That conversation has started and been regenerated based on the "Prime Time" programme this week, which was exceptionally difficult to watch. Mark Fitzpatrick is a good pal of mine from our DCA Warriors days, so I will do whatever I can to recognise, reward and assist those people, many of whom are not getting carer's allowance or carer's benefit. Many of them are doing that work for nothing because their husband or wife is earning so much money they would not fall within the means test to be able to receive carer's allowance. However, we need to recognise that 6 billion hours of care are being given on a weekly basis by those people who are staying at home and providing those services in the absence of any other State intervention. We need to have a serious conversation about that and it might be worthwhile for the Joint Committee on Employment Affairs and Social Protection and the Joint Committee on Health examining that in the future.

I thank Senator Warfield for his support for the good items in the Bill. I acknowledge that if we had more money, he would be supportive because we would be providing larger increases. All I can say is that if and when the economy recovers and as long as I am here, I will make sure that a sizeable chunk of the money that is available to spend will be spent in my Department. I know that probably irks other people, some within my own party and some outside it, but for as long as I am here, I will always recognise that it is very difficult to live on a fixed income. It is very difficult for people who have no recourse other than that income. They do not have the ability to go out and work for ten or 20 hours to supplement their income. As long as I can increase those people's living standards, I will do so. However, people have to recognise that there are some major shifts in policy that we could do if we did not have to give everybody of a working age an increase every year. To that end, it might be a valuable exercise to have a body examine social welfare increases along the lines of what is done in the Low Pay Commission and to take the politics out of it so that I would have more money to increase the qualified child payment. I would have increased it by €10 this year if I had the money, but €2 was the most I could do. When we look at fuel poverty, I only got one week this year. I would love to bring that back up to where we were before the cuts were made. When we talk about the family income supplement, the position regarding the 19 hours needs to be addressed. When we look at the hours versus days, it would be wonderful to be able to do that but all of those shifts in policies, which I know would be welcomed by all the Senators, does not come cheap. As long as we have to keep giving €5 to every scheme every year, that will take off €350 million, which does not leave much left to try to address real policy changes. I hope the Senators can read between the lines in the context of what I am saying. There is nobody who is not deserving of any small increase we can give every year but because there are so many people reliant on the payments they get from our Department, even a small increase adds up to tens of millions of euro very quickly.

I thank the Senators for their support. We will have exchanges next week and whatever I can do I will do. It is not a case of not accepting amendments just because I am not a nice person. If we can take amendments and I can do reports on them, I will be very happy to talk to the Senators and to do them. Ultimately, I want to have proper based data so that I can use it next year when I am fighting for more money. If the Senators can help me do that, it will be welcome.

I commend the Bill to the House.