Social Welfare Bill 2011: Second Stage

Social Welfare Bill 2011: Second Stage

Tuesday, 13 December 2011

Senator Ivana Bacik: I welcome the Minister to the House. I had not quite anticipated that there would be no Opposition speaker between Senator Hayden and me. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak about the Bill. I listened very carefully to the debate, including the Minister's earlier speech, which was very strong. She is to be commended on preserving the basic rates of benefit in the face of such an enormous economic crisis. As other speakers have said we face an unprecedented crisis and in the face of that it is a significant achievement to have preserved basic rates and indeed to have taken less out of the Department of Social Protection budget than had been anticipated. I am grateful to Senator Moloney who pointed out that Fianna Fáil proposed to slash social welfare spending by an additional €665 million in 2012 compared with the €475 million adjustment in the budget.

As the Minister has pointed out, the Fianna Fáil-led Government made cuts in the last budget to social welfare spending worth €873 million, which is a great deal more than is being cut in this budget. It must be said, the Minister said it herself, that no Minister and no Labour Party Minister in particular has any desire to make the cuts she was obliged to make. Moreover, when introducing his statement to the Dáil last week, the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Howlin, stated that as a Labour Party Minister, he found it hard to make the speech he made. However, in the face of the economic crisis and under the constraints within which the Government is operating with regard to the IMF-EU-ECB deal, it is conscious it must try to preserve basic rates and must try to ensure a certainty for families in receipt of welfare benefits that the basic rates will remain the same. Moreover, the Government must try to protect, in so far as it can, the most vulnerable and those who are most disadvantaged in society, which is what it has done. While many Members personally would have preferred a different balance between taxation and cuts, the compromise reached in the budget reflects the balance in the Government and, in particular, reflects the numbers we of the Labour Party have in the Cabinet. Given the economic constraints, it has been a remarkable achievement to keep the cuts in social welfare to the level announced, to retain the present rates and to preserve the basic rate of child benefit.

Another positive consequence to which the Minister referred is her commitment to reform of social welfare and the principles thereof, which is of huge importance. The move from a dependency culture to a culture of enablement and empowerment is something of which everyone in the Labour Party and everyone on the left should be strongly supportive. This budget commences an attempt to streamline allowances, to move towards a one person-one payment position and to align different rates of payments to ensure consistency. This is something to be supported and all Members must regret it did not happen during the boom years, when more money was available to do it. For example, other colleagues already have spoken about the one-parent family payment and I have received correspondence in this regard from organisations such as OPEN and the Irish Feminist Network, the aims of which I fully support. However, over the years in which it has been in operation, the one-parent family payment has not had the desired effect of tackling poverty and social exclusion for single-parent families. It is time this payment was examined and efforts made to reform it.

I note that under the previous Government, the age up to which the payment was made already had been altered. Until 27 April 2011, the payment had been given until children were aged 18 or until 22 if in full-time education and that had come down to 14. The proposal in this budget is to reduce progressively in phases the maximum age from 14 to seven between now and 2014. The idea behind this measure is that the best route out of poverty for lone-parent families, as for anyone else in receipt of welfare benefits, is through paid employment. This is a very important principle that Members must support. In addition, the effect of the one-parent family payment has been negative in a couple of other ways. First, by stereotyping parents and children into a particular compartment or box in society and, second, it has had the extremely negative effect in some cases of keeping fathers away from children and keeping people in a one-parent family when they might otherwise have moved to a two-parent unit. This has had highly negative social consequences and is a matter of which we on the left must be conscious when seeking reform. However, one must ensure that supports are available for single parents who are affected by this budget. In particular, as other colleagues have noted, one must ensure that supports are available in respect of child care provision. This country has always been very poor in respect of securing adequate child care provision for parents and families.

While there is plenty more to be said, Members will have an opportunity to speak further on the budget during the extended Committee Stage debate next Thursday. In conclusion, I again thank the Minister and look forward to the Committee Stage debate next Thursday.