Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I thank the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, for the Bill. I commiserate with her on the recent death of her mother. I presume that is the reason that she is not here today.

I would like to pick up on the Minister of State's last point. Regardless of the age at which a person draws down his or her pension - it may be 66 or 70 - if a person has ten years of contributions and draws the minimum at pension age, is his or her ten years calculated when he or she is 70 years of age? Is that pension based on the age of 66 years or is it based on the age of 70 years at that stage? Is it based on the higher rate or on the lower rate?

The Bill is designed to give legislative effect to a range of social welfare measures announced in the budget of 10 October 2023. We heard the Minister of State outlining all the various increases here today. We must have the best social welfare system in the world. Looking at other countries, I cannot come up with any country that has as good a social welfare system as we have here in Ireland. I suppose that is down to this Government as well as other governments over the years. We have a very generous social welfare system. We see that with the number of immigrants who want to come here from other countries. They do not want to go to other countries. Do they want to come here because of our social welfare system? It certainly is not for the weather that we are getting at the moment.

The Bill also provides for an interaction between the Sick Leave Act 2022 and the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005, the main purpose of which is to ensure that illness benefit and injury benefits are not paid on days for which statutory sick pay is paid by a person's employer. The Bill also provides for certain reforms to the State contributory pension, provides in certain circumstances for long-term carers to qualify for the State contributory pension and introduces flexibility to the State contributory pension to allow a person to defer claiming the State contributory pension up to the age of 70. That relates to the question I asked the Minister of State to clarify, on whether a person will draw the minimum pension because we know that some people only qualify for the minimum in certain circumstances; for example, where they did not pay contributions when they were younger for one reason or another.

I raised an issue here last year in regard to jury service and I have not got any decision on it yet. That is where a person is between jobs, leaving one job to go to another job. It does not happen in many cases. This may be the first case where it happened, whereby a person left one job and went to another job and during the week in between was called for jury service. There was no obligation on the previous employer to pay that week's wages and there was no obligation on the new employer to pay it. There was hardship involved for the person in this case. They have household bills and a mortgage to pay but they were left out of pocket for the week. Will the Minister of State see what has happened in such cases previously because there was hardship in this case? Social welfare should make some contribution towards the person involved.The person went to the Courts Service and put their case, but they were not excused and had to attend for jury service.

Another issue that has been raised on numerous occasions by several Members of the House relates to K class contributions. Very few people now pay such contributions. Local councillors paid K class and a previous Minister for Social Welfare changed the K class to the S class, which resulted in issues for people benefiting from paying K class. The only people now paying K class contributions are Oireachtas Members and judges, as far as I understand it. There are no benefits. One would wonder why Oireachtas Members and judges pay K class contributions. Civil servants no longer pay these contributions. They have been removed from the system. I ask that the Minister take a look at this before we come back to Committee Stage next week.

The Minister has brought in very generous increases in the budget. There has been an increase from €262 to €274 for maternity, adoptive and parental leave. The old age contributory pension has been increased on a pro ratabasis. The Minister has outlined a raft of other increases and benefits for people that were introduced in the budget. We have a very generous social welfare system. It is great that the State can afford to pay these generous benefits. The double allowance is very welcome for those who will receive it this month. Another double allowance will be paid in January. There are payments for electricity. All of these payments are very welcome.

There is a lot of hardship out there and we are living in an economy with high inflation, which, thankfully, is now under control. As I have said, we have a very generous social welfare system. I wish the Minister well. We can go into more detail on Committee Stage next week. I welcome the Bill and look forward to Committee Stage next week.