Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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279. To ask the Minister for Social Protection his plans to reflect and deliver on a public duty (details supplied) in his Department's statement of strategy due to be published in October 2016; the way in which his Department is engaging with the programme for a partnership Government commitment to equality and gender proofing in the departmental and budgetary process; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28309/16]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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The Department has engaged in a consultation process to help inform the new Statement of Strategy 2016- 2019. A considerable number of submissions have been received from external organisations including a submission from the Equality Rights Alliance which focussed on the provisions of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act 2014. All submissions have been considered as part of the development of the Statement of Strategy, which will be published when finalised. The Department has regard to its public sector duty in its activities as provided for by Section 42 of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission Act, 2014. The Department’s primary role is in the provision of social welfare payments and access to these are governed by social welfare legislation and guidelines. All individual’s applications for social welfare payments are examined on its own merits and assessed on a case by case basis in accordance with the relevant legislative provisions contained in social welfare legislation. Should an individual satisfy the relevant legislative provisions they will be awarded a payment. Individuals who are not satisfied with the decision in relation to their application for a social welfare payment are of course free to appeal the original decision to the Social Welfare Appeals Office.

The Department undertakes ex-ante and ex-post social impact assessments (SIA) of the main welfare and direct tax budgetary measures. It uses the ESRI tax and welfare model, SWITCH, to simulate the impact of budgetary changes on a representative sample of households from the CSO Survey on Income and Living Conditions.

SIA is an evidence-based methodology which estimates the likely distributive effects of these policies on household income. It also measures the poverty impacts of these policies on family types, life-cycle groups and gender.

The Department publishes the SIA of the main welfare and tax measures soon after Budget Day, in order to inform public understanding of the distributive impact of budgetary policy.

It should be noted that the papers prepared for the Tax Strategy Group were published on the Department of Finance’s website in July, at the following link:. In this regard, the Social Protection Package paper includes social impact assessments of a range of illustrative social welfare Budget measures.