Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 10:

In page 11, between lines 25 and 26, to insert the following:

“Report to Oireachtas

18. Within 12 months of the passing of this Act, the Minister shall prepare and lay before each House of the Oireachtas a report to include a comparison of the methodology, calculation and application of— (a) the guidelines on Reasonable Living Expenses as developed by the Insolvency Service of Ireland under section 23 of the Principal Act, and

(b) the Minimum Essential Standard of Living as developed by the Vincentian Partnership.”.

This amendment calls for a report to be laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas. I hope the Minister of State might consider taking on board this amendment and seeking this report. The nature of reports is that we cannot put them into legislation but he has the scope and prerogative to indicate that he will produce them anyway. I would be very glad if he would indicate that this is something that will be examined. It is a report to the Oireachtas in respect of the reasonable living expenses standard as they are calculated. It is notable to me that the minimum essential standard of living developed by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice, the basics of life, contains the 2,000 items that families might need to live. The Vincentian partnership did a detailed piece of work for the Department of Social Protection in establishing a minimum essential standard of living for different household types including individuals, families, lone parent families, larger families and those who have retired. The Vincentian partnership looked in great detail at the shopping list for a week and the costs that are involved. It is a point of disgrace for the State that many social welfare payments do not bring people up to the minimum essential standard of living. We are talking about people who are relying on social welfare payments. They are not receiving enough to meet the minimum essential standard of living yet at the same time another group of people, and I do not begrudge them this but the concern is that it does not apply to everybody, have guidelines on the reasonable living expenses that are applied to them.As an example, the minimum essential standard of living for a lone parent is €1,300 to €1,400 a month and many will not reach that figure. One of the websites gives the example of a man who may be parenting alone with half-time custody of a child and who can have €2,600 regarded as reasonable living expenses under the calculation of reasonable living expenses. There is a generosity of approach in the document and the review of reasonable living expenses was just published in August. It states the kinds of things that people are not used to hearing from these calculations, which is that, of course, one would need a car, otherwise how would a person get anywhere? Of course, a person should maintain his or her mortgage in the apartment in which he or she is. If a person has a child in university, there are significant extra costs in that. It recognises reasonable living expenses for a category of persons.

We are coming back to those people on social welfare and whether they meet the insolvency payment criteria or not, but it recognises an expectation of what it is to live decently. Sadly, that expectation and understanding of the realities of what people might need is not reflected in the social welfare payments that we make to them in this State. One may be a person on social welfare payments and may not go for insolvency and may just be on the working family payment, doing one's best, continuing to make payments and go without some of those essential standards whereas a person who is in a different safety net system, whereby he or she had a large debt, in some cases credit card debt, and has become insolvent, will have a different experience. The reason these are comparable is that they are the two safety nets that we have. How we treat and think about the people in those two safety nets is very different.

I am not proposing an amendment as this is a report. I do not want to disimprove the position of people who are in insolvency and receiving reasonable living expenses. I urge, however, that the State would reflect and engage with the fact of how differently we approach our consideration of achieving even the minimum essential living standards for those in our social welfare system. These are two different safety nets and people come from different contexts. In some cases, persons who will access personal insolvency payments will have come from a position of having been wealthy. They can maintain an income, which is effectively above the median average income in some cases whereas those who may be struggling and in the social welfare system, who have not sought insolvency but are trying to go ahead, and, similarly, have aspirations for their children, face all of those different obstacles. For example, we are having a review of the SUSI grants right now. Does someone lose social welfare basic payments for his or her family if that person accepts the SUSI grant? This is compared then to the section recognises the importance of college education under the reasonable living standards calculation.

I am urging the Minister of State to consider and take from this that it would be very useful, as we are we are going to have, I hope, well-being budgets in the near future, to look at these kinds of contexts. What is well-being and what are decent ways of living? What do we expect as the basics of life for all those around us? We want to know about every person on the street with us is having as the basics of life. Can the Minister of State consider just a conversation to examine the minimum essential standards of living, the reasonable living expenses, and, specifically, the methodology, calculation, approach and assumptions that are applied in each case and how they are applied or are achieved for different households?