Dáil Éireann debate -
Friday, 11 Dec 1987

Vol. 376 No. 8

Supplementary and Additional Estimates, 1987. - Vote 46: Social Welfare.

Minister for Social Welfare (Dr. Woods)

I move:

That a supplementary sum not exceeding £10,500,000 be granted to defray the charge which will come in course of payment during the year ending on the 31st day of December, 1987, for the salaries and expenses of the Office of the Minister for Social Welfare, for certain services administered by that Office, for payments to the Social Insurance Fund, and for sundry grants.

The Supplementary Estimate of £10.5 million I am asking the House to approve today for my Department is essentially to provide part of the additional funds needed for the payment of the Christmas bonus to social welfare beneficiaries. This is the net additional cost for social welfare services which I am seeking from the Exchequer.

The gross Estimate would be considerably greater if it were not for the substantial savings achieved in 1987. We had to cope with an increase of 6,200 in the average live register figure at a cost of £16 million. A shortfall of £10 million occurred in PRSI contribution income and £2.5 million had to be found to continue the alleviating payments under equal treatment which, under the proposals of the former Government, would have ceased on 17 November. Finally, we had to find the resources needed to meet the cost of the Christmas bonus of £20 million, of which £18.8 million arises on the social welfare schemes.

Taking all of these factors into consideration, I should now be asking the House to vote an additional £47 million for my Department. That I do not have to do so and the fact that we are almost in a position to meet our commitments within our original allocation is due in large measure to our policy of making the social welfare system more effective and more efficient. We have improved the efficiency in the delivery of services to clients and strengthened the review and control procedures to ensure that the scope for abuse of the system is minimised, and that the services are provided to those most in need.

The original Estimate for my Department passed by Dáil Éireann on 11 June 1987 was for £1,595,945,000. The additional sum now required — £10.5 million — will bring the total Exchequer provision for the social welfare services this year to £1,606,445,000.

This Supplementary Estimate represents a series of excesses and savings on a number of subheads. The additional £10.5 million I am now seeking is a net amount needed essentially to provide the balance of the money required for the Christmas bonus. Of the full cost of the bonus of £20 million, £18.8 million arises on the social insurance and social assistance services provided by my Department. The occupational injuries benefit scheme, £0.2 million; health allowances, £0.8 million and certain AnCO and CERT courses for long term unemployed, £0.2 million are the other areas affected.

It has been possible to find part of the social welfare cost of the bonus — £8.3 million of it — from savings in other areas of my Department's spending. This has been achieved through decisive action to eliminate fraud and unwarranted claiming.

In relation to the £10.5 million sought in this Supplementary Estimate I can assure the House that this money has also been found from savings in the Government's overall expenditure allocations. The payment of the bonus will not consequently result in any overrun on Government expenditure. Indeed, but for the shortfall in PRSI contribution income it would have been possible to fund the Christmas bonus fully from savings within my Department's area of expenditure and the question of a Supplementary Estimate would not have arisen.

In keeping with the Government's commitment to protect those dependent on social welfare, we are maintaining the Christmas bonus at last year's level of 65 per cent. The provision of £20 million for the bonus this year, as against the £18.5 million last year, is a considerable achievement in the current extremely difficult financial circumstances.

Over 570,000 beneficiaries have received the bonus as compared with 508,000 last year. The bonus was paid in the first week of December to ensure that beneficiaries received it well in advance of Christmas. If we include dependants, the total number of people who benefit is well in excess of 900,000.

Some examples will serve to illustrate the effect of the bonus for social welfare beneficiaries. A couple on an old age contributory pension received a bonus of £58.60 bringing their total payment for that week to £148.80. A couple with three children on long-term unemployment assistance received a bonus of almost £60. Payment of the bonus will help people on social welfare to cope with the extra financial commitments they have coming up to Christmas.

The features of the Supplementary Estimate involve additional expenditures or deficiencies on seven subheads amounting to £22.36 million, offset by savings amounting to £11.76 million on a further nine subheads. The net additional requirement is £10.5 million.

The Social Welfare Estimate is complex because, while total expenditure this year will amount to £2.6 billion, only about £1.6 billion is accounted for through the Estimate for my Department. This is because all of the PRSI contribution income is paid directly into the social insurance fund and all social insurance benefits are paid directly out of that fund. The only element of the social insurance code which is paid through the Vote is the deficit on the fund which is paid out of subhead E. This year that will amount to just over £401 million.

The size of social welfare expenditure and the sheer volume of transactions involved means precision in estimating is difficult. This year, however, if provision had not to be made for the bonus, we would have been able to live well within our allocation. Even allowing for overruns on some schemes arising from increased numbers claiming, we were on target to save £8.3 million. We would have saved almost the full cost of the bonus were it not for the shortfall of £10 million on PRSI contribution income.

The major savings arose on the disability and unemployment benefits schemes largely as a result of the intensification of control and anti-abuse measures.

When I introduced the original estimate for my Department in June I expressed my concern then that, in the light of the vast amount now being spent on social welfare, it was more important than ever that every social welfare programme be examined to ensure that the resources involved are directed to those in greatest need. In that context I am determined to take whatever steps are necessary to eliminate social welfare fraud and abuse.

I accept, and I think there would be general agreement on all sides of the House to this, that the vast majority of those claiming benefit are entitled to their payments. My philosophy as Minister for Social Welfare is to support and protect the poor and needy and to ensure that they are provided with a speedy accessible service. At the same time, I am aware that the size of the social welfare system exposes it to certain risks of fraudulent claiming and this must be eliminated so that all of the available resources are targeted to those in most need.

This year special measures were directed towards suspect claims and I would like to give the House some examples of our successes in detecting abuse; of 7,000 claimants called for special control interviews to review their entitlement to unemployment payments, 1,900 left the register, 1,300 of them voluntarily and savings of £2.7 million have accrued to date this year; of 6,145 unemployment claims investigated by our special investigation unit following allegations by members of the public of working and drawing the dole, 1,622 were disallowed and savings of £4 million will result from all SIU activity this year; of 14,000 inquiries sent out to employers to check if the claimant was working or on holiday leave while claiming disability benefit, 1,100 cases of possible abuse were revealed and overpayments of £460,000 have been detected to date and of 88,000 disability benefit claimants referred to a medical referee, 22,000 had their claims ended because they were found capable of work or voluntarily ceased to claim.

The weekly number of claims for disability benefit has been reduced from 81,619 in February last to 72,528 in November 1987. This has resulted in a net saving on disability payments in excess of £8 million.

As a result of PRSI surveys of employers, arrears of £3.3 million have been reported to the Revenue Commissioners.

In this regard the Jobsearch programme calls for particular mention. The purpose of this programme is to help those on the live register, especially the long-term unemployed, in their search for work. An important side-effect of the programme is that many of those who should not be on the live register leave it voluntarily. The initial savings target set for the Jobsearch programme was £11.5 million. The latest indications now are that savings of the order of £18 million will be realised this year from the programme.

The figures for the numbers participating under the programme are equally striking. Up to 4 December this year 135,115 persons were interviewed by the NMS under the scheme of which 29,137 received places in schemes or programmes and a further 4,025 were placed in jobs. Of those who failed to avail of assistance under the programme, 1,785 were disallowed following review of their entitlements while 11,445 left the live register voluntarily.

A survey of participants has shown that a staggering 79 per cent had never participated in a scheme or programme for the unemployed. Of those who left school at primary level 57 per cent were unemployed for over three years.

Looking briefly to the detailed features of this Supplementary Estimate the main components are: a substantial increase of £7.3 million under subhead F for old age pensions because of the bonus, £3.8 million and increased numbers claiming; a net increase of £6.4 million on the Unemployment Assistance Scheme. This allows for the cost of the bonus, £4 million, and increased numbers claiming, and is offset by savings arising from the application of the control measures which I have spoken about; savings under various administration subheads through the application of good management housekeeping, and substantial savings under subhead E — the State contribution to the Social Insurance Fund — arising mainly on the disability and unemployment benefit schemes through the application of controls and anti-fraud measures, and despite the shortfall of £10 million on PRSI contribution income.

In the time available it has only been possible for me to give a brief outline of the features of this Supplementary Estimate. However, if any Deputy wishes clarification on any specific point I will, of course, be happy to elaborate.

This year has been a particularly difficult year for the social welfare finances and our additional requirement of only £10.5 million is an indication of the success of the policies we have pursued. The provision of this additional money for the Christmas bonus at a time of such acute financial pressure is an indication of the commitment of this Government to the needs of those on social welfare. The coming year will be no less difficult with increasing numbers of the elderly to be catered for. I will be seeking ways of making the system more flexible and adaptable, particularly for the unemployed, with the ultimate aim of a social welfare system which is in tune with the changing needs of our community today.

I commend the Estimate to the House.

An Ceann Comhairle

Deputy Barnes.

Mrs. Barnes

May I allow Deputy Kennedy to speak ahead of me?

Miss Kennedy

Because of the time I spent in Ballymun I know how much this Christmas payment will mean to the people on long term social welfare. At its most basic, it will provide that little bit extra to make Christmas different from any other time of the year. I endorse the Government's decision to continue with the policy of paying an extra week to all social welfare recipients for Christmas. This payment has become an expectation and it has gained almost the status of a right in a social welfare system which is creaking at the joints from complication and bureaucracy. After nine months as a TD I still have not found out where the system begins and ends. The Christmas bonus is just another ad hoc payment in a social welfare system badly in need of fundamental reform.

We have been advocating the streamlining of the social welfare system to ensure that those now benefiting from the Christmas bonus will have an adequate income for the 52 weeks of the year. At the same time, the major disincentives for people to work or to make any effort to help themselves should be removed from the social welfare system.

I am one of the few TDs who appreciates what it is to live even for a very short period of a week on social welfare. When I was in Ballymun I lived on £21.50 for five days. It meant that everything was governed by money. The lack of money led to an extremely limited existence: I could not call it a living. Far worse than the poverty level in Ballymun is official policy to create a whole culture of social welfare in the 3,000 odd flats in the Ballymun area. About 70 per cent of the people there are living on social welfare, half of the unmarried mothers of Dublin city are put into flats in the area which comprises only 10 per cent of Dublin's housing stock and psychiatric patients are now being released to live without proper medical attention in the flats. The whole Ballymun complex is officially being designated as a social welfare ghetto. This is extremely unfair to the settled families who take pride in the Ballymun flats built 21 years ago.

I take this opportunity to give some information about my experience in Ballymun. The Dublin Corporation official policy, obviously backed by successive Governments, is a scandal. I have no hesitation in saying that Ballymun is the most deprived area in Dublin. I say this unapologetically as a TD for what is regarded as one of the better off constituencies in the country.

Mrs. Barnes

It has its poor areas as well.

Miss Kennedy

Granted there are public housing problems in Dún Laoghaire but they bear no relation to the deprivation which is officially condoned in Ballymun. There is no need, as has been confirmed to me by community leaders in the area, for Ballymun to be the social welfare ghetto, the no-go housing area that it is. I had never seen the Ballymun flats before I went there, except from the air. They are fine flats and I would tell Deputy Barnes that if they were built in Ballsbridge, Monkstown, Dún Laoghaire or Dalkey they would be netting a high rental for the State.

Mrs. Barnes

Deputy Kennedy does not have to tell me anything about advantage or disadvantage in this country.

Miss Kennedy

I am just mentioning something about Ballymun. The Ballymun flats should be an asset to the city of Dublin in terms of housing: yet they are being officially abused, they are being allowed to be vandalised and they are being designated for the current rejects of the capital city. A change in policy for Ballymun could net great benefits for the State. The flats in Ballymun should be privatised. I know the word "privatisation" tends to have ugly ideological connotations and tends to raise the hackles of politicians. In this context the Ballymun flats should be handed over to the residents with the existing corporation budget. Having met the community leaders I am confident they would make a better go of managing and maintaining the Ballymun flats than do the corporation officials from their fine offices in Wood Quay. The local community conducted a study of the flats called A block of facts and I would recommend it to the Minister. The community are anxious to have a different housing policy implemented. They want to restore the mix of old and new communities. They want to have the normal social mix in the area.

I thank the many people from around the country who sent secondhand clothes through my office to the community enterprise project in Ballymun. These clothes are being renovated and restored and given to people in the community there. I thank all the families who brought their secondhand toys to all Masses in Dalkey village last Sunday for the people in Ballymun. Their action is much appreciated. I assure the Government that the public response to such projects carries with it a lesson we should not forget. There is a genuine consensus in the community that spending cuts are needed for the next few years, but people want to see them implemented fairly. They want to see the poor and needy being properly looked after.

I am afraid that the axe has been wielded so swiftly by the Government that the genuine poor are not always uppermost in Ministers' minds. There are great injustices in the social welfare system and the feeling of injustice is compounded by the complexity of the system. There are 37 cash and non-cash schemes administered by different Departments and agencies, for practically the one purpose. There are about 80 different payment rates for children. The social welfare services have been allowed to develop on an ad hoc basis by successive Governments and there is little or no coordination between the different bodies or agencies.

The view has wrongly been fostered that the expenditure of more and more money leads to a better level of service for the public. The Progressive Democrats believe this is a fallacy. Across the board increases have merely added another layer of bureaucracy and red tape to a service already choked by administration. Expenditure on our social services has developed in many cases into an industry serving the needs of those employed in it rather than the public in general. The taxpayer is certainly not getting value for money and the most vulnerable and marginal groups in our society have not had a chance to catch up or improve their position. Our universal approach to social policy, giving a little to everyone instead of being selective and focussing attention on those in genuine need, has resulted in people on low incomes being as badly off, relatively speaking, as they were 15 or 20 years ago.

The Commission on Social Welfare set out to address these problems but unfortunately their report was rather disappointing since it called for huge expenditure in these straitened times. The amount of money involved cannot be afforded. For this reason I appeal to the Minister to take a fundamental look at our social welfare system during the next year. Nowhere is a selective approach to public expenditure more urgently required than in the whole area of social welfare. I thank the Minister for telling the House that he is now examining all the schemes in this context.

Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach (Mr. V. Brady)

Could I have a copy of the Deputy's script?

Mr. J. Mitchell

It is out of order to read from a script.

Miss Kennedy

I typed this out myself. I will send it to the Minister later. I welcome the payment of the Christmas bonus but I believe that the whole system of social welfare should be reformed rather than these extra ad hoc payments being written in year after year. I support the Supplementary Estimate.

Mr. McCartan

I am obliged for the opportunity to comment on this Estimate. One could not let pass the chance to make some comment on the most unbelievable intervention on behalf of the Progressive Democrats. The high water mark of their contribution appears to come from someone who comes down from the clouds to have a look at Ballymun a bit more closely for five days and who comes in here to thank the people of Dún Laoghaire for sending renovated second-hand clothes and toys as a means of dealing with the problems there. To suggest that what is needed in Ballymun is the introduction of the private racketeer to deal with the housing there is unbelievable in the extreme and must be condemned out of hand. It is an incredible contribution from a party which would profess national standing with some notion of how the country's problems might be dealt with and disposed of.

Any member from The Workers' Party would welcome any additional expenditure in that area but the point must be made that it is too little. When one looks at the trend which commenced in this year's budget, it is to be welcomed that there is not even an extra penny to be found for persons on long-term social welfare who are in need of a decent living. During the budget debate we talked about the fact that people in the poorest areas of this city were merely being afforded the price of the bus fare to town and back, nothing more and nothing less.

It is quite clear that this Minister for Social Welfare does not have the best interests of social welfare recipients at heart. He is another apostle of the cutback, a person who believes that the economic stringency advocated by this Government should be visited as heavily and as uncaringly on those who can least afford it as on all other sectors. A Minister in that Department should be fighting against the tide, using arguments that cannot be answered. Those who live below the poverty line should be positively aided and not subjected to the stringent cutbacks which are the hallmark of this Government.

The Estimate affords us the opportunity to reflect on the findings of the Commission on Social Welfare. Their report recommended a minimum income of £60 per week for a single person. We are very far from achieving that. Reference has been made to the Christmas bonus, which was once known as the Christmas double week. When the Minister visited Darndale, as he has very often done in my company and that of others, he said that the Christmas double week would be restored as soon as Fianna Fáil returned to Government. That has not happened. The bonus represents 65 per cent of the payment for a second week. It is far short of the original concept. If the Minister has to bend to the cutback whip this time, I hope he will commit himself to pursuing the restoration of the full bonus payment to long-term recipients in 1988.

During his first year in office the Minister has missed the opportunity to deal with some of the anomalies which exist in the social welfare system. An example is the anomaly which differentiates substantially between a widower and a widow.

We must also reject out of hand the findings of the OECD report with regard to our economic future and the prospects for job creation. We must create jobs for the long-term unemployed so that we can move them, not hound them, off the social welfare system. The Minister cannot talk about the effectiveness and efficiency of the social welfare system. The Jobsearch programme has not yet brought home the full picture of those who were hounded out of the system and are now appealing to get back. That figure was not given in the Minister's contribution today, but I believe it to be substantial. How many of the 30,000 or so who have been hounded out are now appealing their cases? They are coming on a daily basis to advice clinics in my constituency and explaining the tortuous workings of the system. Married women are being declared unfit or unavailable for work simply because they are married. Recently I sent the Minister details of a case of a constituent who was found to be unavailable for work one week and denied upwards of four months entitlements, that being the time it took to have her appeal heard. Within a week of that finding she took up full time employment, as she had had for upwards of five years preceding that incident. Within a week of the Department saying she was not available for work she was back working full time. There is a saving, there is inefficiency for you.

Mrs. Barnes

That is not even legal any more.

Mr. McCartan

Well, it is happening on a weekly basis and I should like to hear the Minister's view on it.

The system is not operating in the caring way the Minister would have us believe. The savings are not achieving the justice he would have us all believe. There is this constant reference to fraud within the welfare system. In the overall budget it constitutes a minute element, a minute percentage of overall claimants. I would respectfully submit that the savings are not achieving justice at all, that this procedure is victimising far more people than it is dealing with effectively. It must be operated much more carefully and caringly in the future.

In the context of savings one aspect of the Supplementary Estimate being presented here today is the incredible fact that under subhead N — Anti-Poverty Programme — there is a figure of a saving of £300,000. How can a Government or a Department of Social Welfare, with the slightest consideration for or involvement in anti-poverty turn around, at the end of their first year in office and after all the promises of their February manifesto, and say that they have managed to save the economy £300,000 on an anti-poverty programme? How has this saving been achieved? I hope the Minister will tell us before leaving the House today. What has happened? Equally, bearing that saving in mind how could the Minister have come in here and supported the abolition of the National Social Service Board, handing over a very small sum to the Combat Poverty Agency to enable them provide the services of that board in whatever way they can? It is a hallmark of all Government manoeuvres in this area to do down independent advisory boards who would help, criticise and, where necessary, advise people of their entitlements. It is a symbol of the Department's inefficiency that they are devising and reverting to the days when people in receipt of social welfare were not informed of the intricacies of the system or of their entitlements. That is not the type of saving we want to see in this or any other area.

At the end of their first year in office there are many questions that must be asked of the Minister and his Government. The ten minutes available to me did not afford me an opportunity to ask all the questions I would have liked but I have touched on some of them. Having listened to Members' contributions I hope the Minister will leave the House today determined that, in their second year in office, he and his Government will be fighting in a serious, committed way on behalf of those in receipt of long-term benefit.

Mr. J. Mitchell

We have just heard two contributions on this Supplementary Estimate, one on behalf of the Progressive Democrats and another on behalf of The Workers' Party that discredit those two parties and are of no benefit whatsoever to the poor of this country. There was, on the one hand, the rather extraordinary contribution by Deputy Kennedy who showed clearly that the Progressive Democrats have no idea whatever of what life is like at ground level here, who admitted that she had never been in Ballymun or had any idea of what life there was like except from what could be perceived from the air as she flew in and one of Dublin Airport. These are the same people who condemn what they call clienteleism, alluding to Deputies who are in touch with their constituents. On the other hand, there is this left wing — they will not call it Marxist/Leninist, but it is Marxist/Leninist rhetoric — on the part of The Workers' Party, well-to-do members who can afford to be members of the Royal Saint George Yacht Club in Dún Laoghaire, condescendingly addressing what they see as the absolute good of social welfare. Social welfare is not necessarily good per se. Certainly it is not good if it is unselective, if it is being paid to too many people who do not need it, and if it is not being paid in sufficient proportions to those who badly need it.

Miss Kennedy

That is what I said.

Mr. J. Mitchell

There has not been one word from The Workers' Party — in regard to the Christmas bonus which they have welcomed — of the fact that people in receipt of two and three pensions will receive a £65 bonus for Christmas while those people living on £35 a week will receive a bonus of £20. Where is the cry for social justice from The Workers' Party? Where is the understanding of the poverty afflicting so many of our people when, in this Supplementary Estimate, we are being asked to pass within a short time today we are being totally unselective? Percentage increases are being given which mean that the higher one's weekly allowance the higher will be one's bonus and, the lower one's weekly allowance, the lower one's bonus. That is inverted justice. The Society of Major Religious Superiors, in a document they published, a document which has many flaws and could be much criticised, at least highlighted this anomaly of percentage increases which mean that the larger one's social welfare payment, the larger one's bonus. This applies not only to Christmas bonuses but to annual increases. Those people at the bottom rung of the social welfare ladder — who are, by definition, the most needy in our society — receive the lowest annual increases and Christmas bonuses.

I have pleaded in this House many times that the Minister be more selective. I pleaded with him months ago not to grant a Christmas bonus which would repeat the mistakes of the Government of which I was a member and which paid these across-the-board increases. Rather than paying those percentage increases it would have been much fairer had the Minister come in and said that everybody would be paid an extra £40 or £50. It would have been even more fair, though administratively inconvenient, were he to have said that we have £20 million to distribute, that we are not going to pay it to those who are not in need but, rather, that we will give it all to those who are in need. Unfortunately, the Department of Social Welfare follow the path of administrative convenience all too readily. They do not see themselves, as they ought, as a combat poverty agency, as I have said before in this House. Rather do they see themselves more as a form of a money-dispensing machine.

I make a plea in this House today that this be the last time we have non-selective Estimates for the Department of Social Welfare, that we stop rubbing the noses of the poor in the ground, that we stop dispensing largesse to those who do not need it. Time and again I have cited cases of several people with two pensions from former employment amounting to perhaps £33,000 a year, who have jobs but who qualify for free travel, free electricity, and free television licence and who are the owners of large houses on which they pay no rates, and country cottages to which they commute by way of free travel. By virtue of this Estimate such people will receive a bonus of £60, while there are people living on £35 a week with no other means of support and who have no free travel entitlement. They will not have a television so there can be no question of getting a free television licence. Neither do they have a telephone and, even if they did, would not be granted free rental. These are people in abject poverty, who go hungry, who do not know what it means to have a full meal daily; perhaps they manage a meal three or four days a week. What affronts me in this House is that those who call themselves socialists, even Marxist, have no regard to or make no reference to the need for selectivity, the need to help the most needy in our society. I condemn them as I condemn the Minister. He has only been nine months a Minister, but he was Minister in this Department before. It is not that he has newly taken up the cudgels; he was there before. He could have started reforms immediately which would have given hope to the poor of our country on this day. But no, the poor are to remain poor.

Probably the reason I am the main Opposition spokesman on Social Welfare is that I have a burning passion, and have had for many years, about abuses in social welfare. Money dispensed to those abusing the system is money diverted from those who really need it. In my constituency, and in most constituencies in the country, there are people who are genuinely in desperate need. I had a telephone call this morning from an unfortunate mother of three children who does not even have a proper chair to sit on in her kitchen. She is not talking about toys for Christmas; she does not have food for Christmas. She is getting £65 a week. She does not get the Christmas bonus because in the last three months she went to England and came back, foregoing her long term unemployment assistance in the meantime. Yet we are giving the Christmas bonus to many well to do people. It is a shame that this House has tolerated this for so long. Let this be the last time this sort of unselective proposal is put before this House.

On abuse, I have to say a word of praise to the Minister. He has done a lot to tackle abuse for the coming year and in a way that has not provoked a backlash, and he deserves congratulations on it. It has been mainly based on the Jobsearch scheme, but there have also been significant achievements in the area of disability benefit. I have no doubt that further efforts need to be made in the area of abuse.

I would like to talk at greater length about unemployment but we do not have time today. Not only do we need to tackle abuse but to redirect our efforts in regard to unemployment. There is a need for radical new thinking on the social insurance fund. It is absurd, given the amount of unemployment here, that we should be taxing employment by the way we draw pay-related social insurance from employers. Therefore, the fashion in the public sector and in the private sector is to make people redundant, because all the incentive is in that direction.

The Minister for Social Welfare, whose job it is to pay the unemployed, has a major role in redirecting social insurance. We should be considering altering radically our social insurance base to company turnover rather than to company payroll with rebates per person employed, thus reversing the incentive from getting rid of people back to getting people on the register, away from encouraging black market employees and restoring them to legitimate employment on the register where they will pay their taxes and stop abusing the system.

I am sorry we do not have more time. Next week we will have a Social Welfare Bill and a Social Welfare Question Time and I will have a great deal more to say on these matters.

Mr. Desmond

We hear from all sides about the need for the social welfare system to create an incentive to work. We hear a great deal about alleged abuse of the system. The Minister has joined that bandwagon. We hear about the need to tax social welfare benefits. The latest instalment today is from the OECD report on the Irish economy, no doubt inspired by various officers of the Department of Finance. In addition, we hear a great deal about the need to be selective. Let us put all of this into perspective. This week there are 136,000 people drawing unemployment assistance.

Mr. J. Mitchell

They deserve more help than they are getting.

Mr. Desmond

The money does not exist. These 136,000 people are paid on average a miserable £53.45 a week. According to The Irish Times or the back page of the Tribune supplement a dinner for two, even with a Member of the Oireachtas, would get rid of £53. That is all some people will get for Christmas this year. They will get a 60 per cent bonus this year and that will hardly pay for Christmas week.

There is an obsession with controlling the payments made to those who are sick, and they are insured persons paying PRSI all their life. Out of a labour force of one million we have 78,000 drawing disability benefit at any one time. The average is £56. They do not all get pay-related benefit. Only one in every five gets it — and they get nothing for the first three weeks anyway. So if a person breaks his leg on the job and is out sick, he gets an average benefit this year of about £17. It is peanuts. An industrial worker who has double pneumonia and has to stay in his bed for four or five weeks, or who has a major illness and has to go to hospital and undergo surgery is on disability benefit and has to live and feed his family on £80 a week for eight or nine weeks. The cry for taxation of that is selective indeed.

I could go on. There are 85,000 on unemployment benefit, and the restrictions have been very severe. The average payment this year is £53.83 and about half of them get pay-related benefit of about £14 a week. The levels of social welfare payments are low. They are not the kind of exotic income levels that are alleged by so many people in the community. Occasionally one meets the industrial worker, referred to by Deputy Mitchell, who has two pensions. So what if he has two pensions? When I retire I will have two pensions. I will have an Oireachtas pension for which I paid 6 per cent——

Mr. J. Mitchell

The Deputy should not get a Christmas bonus.

Mr. Desmond

——and I will have a retirement social welfare pension for which I pay 6.5 per cent.

Mr. J. Mitchell

Is the Deputy looking for a Christmas bonus as well?

Mr. Desmond

There is nothing wrong whatsoever with an industrial worker having two pensions because he is paying for them.

Mr. J. Mitchell

It is obvious that socialism has no conscience.

Mr. Desmond

There is nothing wrong with a supplement being paid on a social welfare contributory pension. The number of persons who have double pensions on the social welfare side are very few and far between. They are mostly people who came into social insurance employment from the mid-sixties onwards. I know the workers being referred to. They are a unique brand, probably from Guinness.

Mr. J. Mitchell

What about the banks, Players-Wills, Gouldings, those big companies?

Mr. Desmond

Gouldings have been closed down for 15 years.

Mr. J. Mitchell

But they have two pensions.

Mr. Desmond

They get only £5 a week.

Miss Colley

Let the Deputy give up his ministerial pension.

Mr. Desmond

That is all that the Gouldings pensioners get. I know them. My father represented them for 30 years as a trade union official. There is a lot of mythology about the incomes of people and this must be discarded. I spent four years in Government trying to stop some of that mythology taking root.

The Minister gave us today a horrifying figure. He said that of those who left school at primary level 57 per cent were unemployed for over three years. That is the reality. That is the social crisis in our community. I am glad the Minister has given a 60 per cent bonus for Christmas. I got that bonus down to 60 or 65 per cent last year and the year before to give the additional amount saved to the long term unemployed. I recall vividly Deputy McCarthy in the House and also Deputy Roche; I was vilified. I will not ever forget that, but I will forgive it.

I congratulate the Minister because the experience he had in office previously and his further experience in Opposition have meant that the Social Welfare Vote has remained intact. I congratulate him on surviving some of the more draconian proposals which he had to face last July. He has kept the Department of Finance at bay and has refused to yield to some of the most right-wing, conservative, vicious thinking in this country in recent years in relation to social welfare. I hope he does not succumb next year: I do not think he will. Now that the Government are beginning to realise they are a minority Government they will be that bit more careful in the coming 12 months, which is no harm. I hope the Government will continue in that vein for a couple of years. We will keep a rein on them against some of the nonsense which goes around about public expenditure.

I want to ask the Minister briefly about the subhead for assistance allowances in relation to single parents in our community. I notice there is a requirement of an additional £3.1 million here. Is that because of additional numbers? I congratulate the Department of Social Welfare on the capacity to have precision in relation to their Estimates, not like that of the Department of Education which we have just had now. The Department of Social Welfare, to their eternal credit, with limited resources have always been very competent in the manner in which they have handled a budget of £2.6 billion. They can still find £10.5 million one way or the other in order to bring forward proposals such as this.

Next week we will be talking about a Social Welfare Bill. I am gravely concerned that we will see a further erosion in the basic social welfare rights of insured workers. A person must now have five years stamps before he goes on to long-term disability benefit, or qualifies for an invalidity pension. That is an extremely long time. If he breaks his leg and never goes back to work he must wait for five years. When I was Minister for the Department it was a three year wait for long duration disability and three years for eligibility for invalidity pension. The changes are massive and the cuts are very major cuts. The cuts in pay-related benefit which have been brought in in the past two budgets means there is no need whatsoever to tax them because those payment levels are right down to rock bottom. They have gone down from an average of about £28 a week to £14 a week, so, effectively, taxation is not required. The replacement ratios are well down to about 65 per cent, or 70 per cent for disability. I am completely opposed to any taxation measures as proposed in the OECD report.

I commend the Minister for keeping his Vote intact this year. I know the pressures that are on him and he has done a very good job. I congratulate him on the Christmas bonus and on having to find only about £8.5 million. I hope he wins the battle against the conservative — I will not say bureaucratic — forces in Irish society in 1988.

Mrs. Barnes

I certainly do not want to interfere with the time left for the Minister's response. I have a few questions which he may be able to answer. As Deputy Mitchell has said, there is Question Time and also a debate on the Social Welfare Bill next week and we shall be able to make our points then. My basic point is that we should think in terms of a basic income rather than social welfare. In the light of unemployment and the incredible number of categories of payments, entitlements, eligibility and, above all, the future structure of work — which perhaps not this country but the rest of the industrialised world is facing — we must think seriously of basic incomes. That could be basic household or basic personal incomes. We must remove the shame, the degradation, the queuing up for information, the administration, the bureaucracy, the incredible waste both in human and in administrative terms. As Deputy Mitchell has said, there are different categories of people who are not getting enough to survive on a day-to-day basis. Because of the patchwork approach to these problems, we have built in certain differences so that there is resentment and discrimination in the system itself.

I note with pleasure that the Minister says the Government will be seeking ways to make the system more flexible and adaptable, particularly for the unemployed. That is how we should go about it. We must remove the stigma from social welfare benefits, give back to people a sense of honour and decency and make them feel they are useful human beings in this community, whether their work be formal or informal. A basic income is the only way in which this will be achieved. I hope that some work has been done in the Department on that aspect. I do not know what the Department of Finance would say about it, but there are enlightened people in the Department of Social Welfare who might agree with me.

Is anything active being done with regard to the training of the staff who have to deal with people who are queuing up hopelessly at hatches, sometimes in very inclement weather, week after week? When Deputy Boland was Minister he had schemes ready for introduction — and I ask if they have been introduced — under which you do not put very junior staff in the Department of Social Welfare dealing with people who have incredible difficulties, psychological and mental, because of the traumas they are going through. Could we ensure privacy and confidentiality of information in our offices so that people are not turned away, made to feel they are in some way guilty, when the difficulties may be bureaucratic or official?

Above all let us guarantee those people who must go through the system the greatest degree of communication and information with dignity. We must remember the numbers, the proportion of our population involved here. If a basic income plan cannot be adopted this year or next year, at least let there be a humane, dignified, well-trained staff. I know also the pressures put on staff who work behind the hatches. Let us be able to report progress on all fronts by this time next year.

Minister for Social Welfare (Dr. Woods)

In the time available I will refer briefly to some of the points which were raised. Deputy Kennedy referred to the need for fundamental reform and the need for removing disincentives to work. In any steps which a Minister takes he must be careful not to create disincentives to work. My principal concern must be that those who need the benefits in the first instance should get them. As long as one accepts that that is the first thing I will be doing I am prepared to look at ways of removing disincentives and at rationalisation. Deputy Desmond makes very wise contributions but the fact of the matter is that the disincentives may be taken out of the context in which you initially intended them. Nevertheless, I will bear in mind what the Deputy has said.

The need for reform and rationalisation was stressed by a number of Deputies, particularly Deputy Mitchell, but in changing or altering the many schemes you will have to make sure that you will not hurt those who should not be omitted. That is the great danger and one of the problems with the schemes is that often there is a lack of information about the people concerned. What we need to do is to set up a system which will obtain that information and leave us in a better position to tackle the problems. I am sorry that Deputy McCartan was not in the House for Deputy Desmond's contribution because he might have gained from that Deputy's experience in Government. Deputy McCartan seems to hold a very simplistic view of the whole social welfare situation. He suggested that I should be fighting against the cuts. I will take on Mr. Cuts wherever I have to take him on at any time but as Minister for Social Welfare I have to look for rationalisation.

Deputy McCartan spoke particularly about the Combat Poverty Agency. The director of that agency only took up his duties full time last September and in the current year they were not in a position to carry out the research they had in mind. They have managed to do some of it but to a fair extent they have ended up paying out grants to voluntary groups, and as Deputies will be aware, there is a voluntary grant scheme operated by the Department. Next year the Combat Poverty Agency will be in a better position to tackle the work they want to engage in. That is where the saving of £300,000 rose although it did not prevent the agency from doing the work which it managed to get underway. It did affect the volume of voluntary grants but there was another £750,000 allocated to that by my Department.

Deputy McCartan also referred to the Jobsearch scheme. Out of a total number of 135,000 people interviewed only 1,785 were disallowed. The number of appeals was 705, of which 222 were allowed. As Deputy Desmond has emphasised, the Department of Social Welfare will ensure that people receive their rights and benefits and the basic criteria which are used in that context are the right of appeal and a fair hearing. This can be seen clearly from the Jobsearch scheme. Compared to the total number of people who were interviewed the number of appeals is extremely low. Also the appeal system works in a very fair way.

I have to agree with Deputy Mitchell when he said there is a need for targeting. At the beginning of this year, there was little time, as the Deputy will recognise in which to target the schemes, but I have now begun to do this. It is proving difficult as it is very hard to avoid hitting people who should not be affected by such targeting. Nonetheless, I accept the point he made. In the forthcoming budget I will bear in mind what Deputy Mitchell had to say as it is also a view which I share. Here again we come back to the question of balance which Deputy Desmond emphasised.

In regard to abuse I thank Deputy Mitchell and Deputy Desmond for their words of praise. Deputy Mitchell said that further effort is needed and that there was a need for radical change. The only trouble is that there is only a certain number of radical changes we can implement at any one time. At present we are implementing two major administrative changes in regard to statutory sick pay and PRSI for farmers and the self employed. Nonetheless, I appreciate the point which the Deputy made in that respect.

One of the other findings at the Jobsearch scheme was that 79 per cent of the long term unemployed had never had a course or scheme offered to them before. That emphasises just how wise it was to make 40,000 places available on these schemes and courses for the long term unemployed. There are many reasons why those people were never given such opportunities but the fact of the matter is they were never given those options previously. As Deputy Desmond has pointed out, 57 per cent of those who left school after completing their primary certificate were over three years on the register. That is a very telling statistic. As I said at the outset we will pursue the Jobsearch scheme in a positive manner and if there happens to be indirect benefits, which we believe there will be, we will be glad to have them. There are many lessons being learned from that scheme which I hope we can build on next year.

Deputy Desmond asked about social assistance allowances and I can tell him that the bonus amounts to £800,000 while the extra numbers amount to 2.3 million. Therefore, there is a fair increase in numbers. Deputy Barnes and a number of other Deputies referred to the need for a satisfactory basic income. This is one of our major problems. As Deputies will be aware, allowances for the long term unemployed, for those on unemployment assistance along with those on supplementary welfare are at the lowest level. They receive about £35 per week and £34 in the——

Mr. J. Mitchell

A person in receipt of the prescribed relative's allowance receives only £26 per week.

Dr. Woods

That is for a different purpose.

Mr. J. Mitchell

It does not matter.

Dr. Woods

Nevertheless, these are matters which I will give my attention to in the future. Deputy Barnes spoke about flexibility and we will certainly give our attention to that. I have mentioned some of these matters and we will probably discuss them again next week. She referred also to the training of staff and the approach of the Department. We have training programmes and computerisation will help this a lot. We have completed the computerisation of unemployment assistance in Dublin and we are about to extend that to Cork and then to other areas. Of course, that will make life much easier for the staff who deal with people. This is a big undertaking and we are working on the unemployment benefit side in the Dublin exchanges at present. I agree with Deputy Barnes that there should be privacy and separate sections in exchanges. We have some fine exchanges in different areas of the country and we would like to see that extended as soon as possible.

Vote put and agreed to.