I move:
That Dáil Éireann requests the Government to amend the Social Welfare (No. 2) Act, 1985, to ensure that no family, or individual, will suffer a loss of income as a result of this implementation of the Equality Directive on 17th November, 1986.
The EC directive on equal treatment in social security ruled that women and men be treated equally in employment and related social security schemes. Now, almost two years after the deadline for its implementation — 22 December 1984 — the Government are finally completing the process for implementation of this directive in a shabby and disgraceful fashion which totally distorts the spirit underlying the principle of equal treatment in matters of social security between women and men.
It is intolerable that some 20,000 families who are barely existing with the help of social welfare payments should suffer a loss of income because of the means chosen by the Government to implement the Equality Directive. The Government's abysmal response in this matter has stripped away the mask of social concern and enlightenment assumed by the posse of poseurs who make up the present Cabinet.
The directive, in the true spirit of equality as envisaged by the Treaty of Rome, provides for regulations to be drawn up to protect low income families who might otherwise lose out when the directive comes into effect, especially families who would suffer a significant loss of income due to the revised conditions relating to dependancy. Yet the Government have shamefully failed to provide adequate measures to ensure that low income families will not be disadvantaged further as a result of the coming into force of phase 2 of the equality provisions relating to social security.
The austerity policies pursued by the Government in relation to social welfare and the social services, in general have led to an increase in poverty, social deprivation, and delinquency, with all the consequences these imply for society. This further blow to 20,000 of the most vulnerable families on this island represents a further erosion of the social welfare system by the Government and further marginalisation of the have nots in our society.
The Government are under no obligation to implement the directive in this miserly fashion. The European Commission lays down the principles of the directive, leaving it to the discretion of each member state to implement the legislation, the only stipulation being that the principle of equality be respected.
This Government have attempted to confuse the public and even some of their own backbenchers about the Equality Directive, they have misrepresented and confused the issue so as to imply that whatever losses that may be incurred are not of their own making; that it is an essential part of the Equality Directive; that the EC are to blame and not themselves. This is not so and it is high time that this misrepresentation and misconception was finally nailed.
Since May of this year the essential equality elements of the directive have been in operation but now this Government, in typical sleight of hand, three card trick style are, by labelling the next stage the second stage or phase 2, attempting to claw back some $17 million from social welfare recipients in a full year. This has not been the accepted procedure in other EC countries but this heartless monster of a Government will resist no means to inflict their penny-pinching policies on our shattered society.
The Court of Justice of the European Communities has ruled that the principle of equal treatment is one of the fundamental principles of the Treaty, but the improvement of living and working conditions is equally a fundamental principle of the Treaty. If both are to be observed, then it is only right that governments seek to attain equal treatment along with social progress.
The action of the Government in relation to implementing equality in the social welfare code ignores this option and, as a result, it is clear that the financial distress being experienced by thousands of families will increase.
During Committee Stage of the Social Welfare (No. 2) Act of 1985, which aimed to give effect to equality of treatment in social security, amendments tabled by myself, as spokesman for the main Opposition Party, in an attempt to protect the incomes of vulnerable households were disallowed.
I think a majority of Deputies will agree that where a wife works, part time or whole time, for a very low income, her husband, if he is in receipt of any type of social welfare benefit, should not lose his dependancy claim for her. There are some 3,000 families where the income of the wife is on or below £50 a week. This leaves 9,000 families, where the wife is working and the husband is receiving welfare payments of one kind or another, with an income of £50 or upwards. In at least 50 per cent of these 9,000 families, the wife is earning between £50 and £100 per week, which by any standard is a relatively small amount. Yet the Minister, in setting the parameters of this legislation, ruled that only a spouse whose weekly wage is less than £50 per week would be regarded as a dependant. This figure, as I pointed out in the debate last year, is much too low and as a result many families will be severely hit with the introduction of the Government's phase 2 operation.
Fianna Fáil, in tabling this Private Members' motion, are giving the Government the opportunity to minimise the hardship which will affect some 20,000 families with the introduction of phase two in its present form.
From July 1985 I pointed out to the former Minister for Social Welfare that the changes should not be made in one fell swoop, since it had taken since 1978 to implement the directive. I pointed out that it would not be unresonable to expect that a loss such as that which will be incurred could be compensated for, in a percentage fashion, on a phased basis over perhaps a six year period, which would constitute a real mitigation. Such a course of action would moreover reflect the spirit and intentions behind the equality directive.
Some 8,000 families will lose from £20 to £30 per week as a result of these provisions. This is a considerable number. These are families where both parents are on social welfare payments in one form or the other and the husband will now lose his wife's dependancy allowance. To force them into a position in which, for one year, they will incur an average loss of £10 to £20 per week, after which they will have to bear the full brunt of what would be a loss of £20 in real terms is not availing of the provisions of the directive in its fullest meaning. The Minister should aim the measure to fully mitigate the loss resulting from the implementation of the directive in all of those cases where both parents are receiving social welfare payments.
During the debate on the Second Stage of the legislation implementing the equality provision in social security, the then Minister commented last June that "the resolution of inequalities can be approached in a number of ways". Unfortunately, as we know, equality can be brought about in a number of ways. This Government sought to do so by bringing the standards of living of families downwards rather than by bringing them upwards. I pointed out last year, that the redefinition of dependency adopted in the legislation piloted through by the Minister's predecessor, unless stronger alleviating measures were taken, would result in misery and suffering for a large number of families, to whom each pound note is urgently needed.
In a large number of cases, where the earnings of the wife are very low, the reduction in the benefit entitlement of the husband will represent a substantial loss of income to the household. The former Minister, in referring to this state of affairs on 25 June 1985 pointed out that the legislation "contained the necessary power to enable me to provide alleviation in such cases". The losses will be quite staggering for literally thousands of families unless the Minister is persuaded at this late hour to increase her use of such powers.
A man on disability benefit with three children will have a cut in his dependants' allowance of £24.15 per week. Even if his spouse receives an increase of £4.50 per week, that will not compensate for the loss. In the case of an elderly man whose children no longer live at home his depenant's allowance will be cut by £27.50 per week, whereas his wife's increase may be only £5.10 per week. A man on disability benefit with three children, whose wife's take home pay is £50 or more, could see a reduction of £40.90 in his flat rate welfare payment. Where the husband is on benefit and the wife is at work, with a family of three children, the result could be a loss in flat rate benefit of up to £37 per week. The effect of such a loss where the wife is low paid will be traumatic.
In the case of a disabled man, in receipt of an invalidity pension, with four children, and a wife at work whose take home wages are £80 a week, the pension entitlement of such a person will be reduced by about £48 per week in respect of his wife and children. This will mean a reduction in the household income from about £200 to £150 a week. The bottom line is that families will suffer enormous losses of between £20 to £60, if the Government go ahead with implementation of the directive as planned.
It is therefore highly regrettable that the progressive implementation suggested in the EC Equality Directive on social security at the outset should have been ignored, and that the Government should not have availed of the past four years to gradually effect the reforms. Instead low income families will be expected to bear relatively very heavy losses overnight. What we seek is a mode of equalisation which causes the minimum hardship to social welfare families. We cannot accept the Government's chosen means of implementing the directive. The fact that it will cause enormous financial hardship to thousands of families at present in receipt of social welfare payments distorts completely the fundamental principles underlying the Directive and the Treaty of Rome.
The concept of equality between the sexes is fundamental to Fianna Fáil. We aim to end discrimination towards women in all areas, including social security and employment. Especially in relation to the latter, there remains considerable room for improvement. It was in this spirit that we unreservedly welcomed the implementation of the directive last May. It is only right and proper that women in receipt of social welfare payments, in particular married women, would receive the same payments as men and for the same period of time, and that women have gained admittance to the unemployment assistance scheme, subject to means testing.
Let us not forget however that the extra benefit to some 46,000 married women since May is quite small. The figure amounts to some £4.75 increase per week. This benefit must be set against the fact that some 9,000 families will not receive compensation for the loss of social welfare payments, which will result from the redefinition of dependancy as defined by the Government. The plight of social welfare families has been documented exhaustively. It is increasingly difficult for them to live on the existing level of payments as is clear from increasing recourse to supplementary welfare payments to cover the minimum requirements of life.
All of us have been shocked and horrified to hear that in recent times many families on social welfare payments had to seek the aid of the lowest forms of reptiles in the money lending business to help them to finance essential family needs. I am sure the Minister is aware of that. I ask you how many more families will now be forced because of absolute necessity and dire financial need to have recourse to such methods with all its consequent hardships.
I would ask the Minister to pause and reflect on what a loss of between £20 and £60 a week in social welfare payments will mean to families who are on the brink of destitution and at present are barely able to provide the necessities of life. I would ask the Minister herself, the mother of a family, to consider the implications of going ahead with the introduction of this claw back phase of the directive, as planned, and to consider what it will mean for many thousands of men, women and children.
The Minister must be all too well aware of the impact of the Government's approach to social welfare on the population. On the one hand, the Government has given paltry increases in social welfare since it came into office. On the other hand, the Government take away these benefits by halving the food subsidies and by increasing VAT on clothes and fuel. This year this heartless Government gave absolutely no increase at all to child dependants or families dependant on social welfare. This was another sorry saga in this Government's anti-family policy. They cruelly, callously and unapologetically made a saving of £10 million in this year's budget and the sufferers were families with child dependants. One has to wonder where will the assault on family income support end. This Government seem to be obsessed with the introduction of methods and measures specifically designed to create family destruction and social deprivation. This Government are shameless, arrogant and totally irresponsible. Now, with the implementation of the EC directive we see a repetition of this pattern.
The Government are running true to the form displayed over the past four tragic years. Underprivileged families are to suffer a further erosion of their incomes. Poverty and destitution are rampant and this Government have heartlessly pursued in relentless fashion their policy of making the poor poorer. With this savage attack on the less well-off, this calculated further erosion of the supports provided by the State, where lies the credibility of the present Government on social issues? Where is their much vaunted commitment to social justice?
The Minister commented on 20 June of this year during the debate on the 1986 Estimates of her Department, that improvements in expenditure "ensured that the incomes of those dependent on the social welfare system are maintained in real terms". That is fiction. Not alone have the Government failed to halt and reverse the upward trend in unemployment, they have failed miserably to provide adequately for the families suffering from the consequences of their failure. The losses currently facing thousands of families as a result of the Government's draconian and savage approach to the implementation of the equality directive on social security is the last straw.
On 14 November 1985, in a wide-ranging public lecture entitled "Ireland and Social Reform Today", in the Milltown Institute, the Taoiseach commented that "dignity of the individual is central in the delivery of public services whether social welfare payments, hospital care or psychiatric care". He stated:
The very depth of the recession can intensify social problems and exacerbate inequality in our society. Large scale unemployment creates a society where poverty, alienation, crime, drug abuse and marriage breakdown are likely to increase... So, social reform becomes more, not less urgent in harsh economic times.
One can concur with the sentiments expressed by the leader of the Government that any worthwhile social reform programme must involve serious efforts to tackle the jobs crisis, a redistribution of income and wealth, and increased resources for some individual social programmes.
One can only point, however, to the yawning gap between aspiration and achievement and the failure at the most basic level of this Government to protect the most vulnerable and the weakest sections of society. Once again, the Taoiseach as his colleague. Deputy McGahon, once said of him, "in racing parlance has flattered to deceive". The Government's approach has been in stark contrast to the achievements of Fianna Fáil in this area.
The long-term unemployed with families remain at the lower end of the social welfare spectrum in terms of benefit levels. Despite the Taoiseach's pious platitudes on increasing the standard of living of such families, they are to be savaged by the Government's blunt and unimaginative approach to equal treatment under the social welfare code. Disallowing the adult dependant allowance for married men who are on social welfare if their wives are working only part-time must be seen in the context of a situation where women are unequal in the employment sphere. They enjoy neither equality of opportunity nor earnings. At present, women's average earnings in industry are still only two-thirds of men's earnings.
In the debate on this legislation on 25 June 1985 the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach stated that only 44 per cent of the married women at work are in full-time, jobs: nearly 40 per cent of all female part-time labour is accounted for by catering and cleaning industries and retail businesses, with very low basic pay levels. Such families will suffer an enormous loss in incomes if the Government proceed as they have been proceeding.
In an election document entitled "Where Labour Stands", it was stated:
Labour utterly rejects any policy that makes the poor, the unemployed, the sick, the homeless and the young bear the brunt of corrective measures.
The Labour-Fine Gael programme for government stated:
Unemployment and disability benefit will be kept in line with take-home wages and salaries. Expenditure on social benefits will be maintained in the light of inflation, so that even if a drop occurs in the immediate future in the purchasing power of better off groups in the community, the living standards of the sections of the community dependent on social welfare payments will be maintained.
What is happening? These pledges have turned to ashes as the most vulnerable sections of society have constantly been disadvantged by the policies of the present Government. The Government are now being given an opportunity to retrieve themselves somewhat by amending the Act.
The Department estimate that the cost of implementing equal welfare benefits would be £18 million in a full year. It seems to me that this Government are fiddling these figures as they have done in the past, particularly in their projections earlier this year for next year's budget deficit when they stated that the overrun would be just £60 million and when they underestimated the cost of unemployment payments last year by £40 million. Their credibility in the figures department leaves much to be desired. Some of them should go back to school and learn to add.
I believe that the total cost of increased payments to married women, some 46,000 of them at £5 per week, will be in the region of £11 million, that the cost of paying the extended duration of 13 weeks to some 19,200 married women on UB will be in the region of £10 million and that this Government intend this scheme to be almost self-financing by clawing back some $17 million or more from families on social welfare payments from 17 November next. It is a classic example of robbing Peter to pay Paul and in this case of robbing the family to pay the mother.
The Minister has been throwing around figures like peanuts in an attempt to confuse the issue. The suggestion that it would cost £100 million to implement our demands is quite wrong and misleading and is a deliberate falsification of the facts.
