Is it necessary to have a definition on the chief appeals officer, given that later in this legislation we are creating a new appeals office with new independent functions which we hope will be seen to be a new development with independent management structure? I am concerned that the proposals as they stand would be seen as simply an internal reorganisation. The expectation of all organisations was that there would be an attempt to set up a separate executive structure. Surely the appeals officer's position could do with an expanded definition over and above any powers given to him in existing legislation. I ask the Minister to give us his view on whether such a definition is needed. My view is that it is desirable in the context of the very much expanded role being given in Part V.
Social Welfare Bill, 1990: Committee Stage.
"Appeals officer" is already defined in the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act.
Is the Minister satisfied that the definition is adequate in view of the increased responsibility being given to the appeals officer in this Bill?
Yes, I am satisfied, as is the parliamentary draftsman.
The new appeals officer has a special office attaching to him and we hope he will have some autonomy in hearing appeals. We want to be absolutely certain that the definition is sufficient but we accept the Minister's view. We look at this section as a new departure because of the special role of the chief appeals officer. I felt that the consolidation Act did not contain a definition of "chief appeals officer".
This section deals with definitions which are necessary in the context of the Bill. I assure the House that the definitions are adequate and proper and that "appeals officer" is properly defined in the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act. That definition has been tested in the courts and it has been found to be an independent office.
According to the Social Welfare (Consolidation) Act, "appeals officer" means a person holding office as an appeals officer under section 297. There is not a separate definition of "chief appeals officer". The Minister might look at the powers given in section 297 and consider whether an updating is required to deal with the powers given in this Bill. It would give more weight to the introduction of an important new section if there were a new difinition. This is a much sought after development in the social welfare code and we hope it will be radically different.
Section 297 (2) provides that one of the appeal officers shall be designated by the Minister to be the chief appeals officer and another of them shall be designated by the Minister to act as a deputy for the chief appeals officer when that officer is not available. It is quite clear that "chief appeals officer" is already covered in the basic Act. We are simply giving new functions here.
It might be useful to discuss sections 3 and 4 together and to decide upon them separately. The two are inter-related and this might be the most productive approach.
Is that satisfactory? Agreed. Amendments Nos. 1 to 8, inclusive, have been ruled out of order.
I realise that they have been ruled out of order and I accept the reasons. We were trying to bring forward the benefit dates but that would entail a charge on the Exchequer. There is a view that the year should be half or three quarters over before people in the social welfare category benefit from increases. All Governments have been guilty of postponing payments and I am repeating efforts made by my colleagues to bring forward these dates. The Minister when in Opposition also tried to do it. Some time some Government may agree to give increases to social welfare categories on a date which is regarded as more reasonable, nearer the beginning than the middle or end of the year.
I appreciate the point and the importance of making these payments as early as possible. The Deputy will be aware that when I took office in 1987 the date had already been put back to October or early November and we managed to bring it forward to July. The difficulty at present is that to bring the payments forward to April would cost the State an additional £46 million.
The Chairman might provide me with a list of all the amendments which have been ruled out of order. I am aware that amendments Nos. 1 to 8, inclusive, have been ruled out of order and I should like to give some of the reasons for their tabling.
The social welfare system must provide proper support for those who cannot avail of job opportunities. A huge number of people cannot be successful in the job market and must be provided by the social welfare system with sufficient to live on. The system must provide people with a living income and must be seen to be fair, efficient and non-judgmental. We need a system which guarantees every individual a minimum income which is sufficient to live on, regardless of sex, marital status, domestic or work situation. That is why we requested that the figure of £60 per week be inserted in the Bill. There is general agreement in 1990 that nobody should be expected to survive on anything less than £60 per week. The supplementary welfare allowance stands at £45. That shocks people into realising what it is like to live on social welfare. In effect, the State is saying that £45 is what an adult social welfare dependant can survive on. It is just impossible.
We are heading into the Single European Market in 1992 and there is a need to be seen not just as good Europeans but as being good to our own citizens through our welfare code. We should be working towards a national minimum wage. Here we are trying to address the question of dependency. Notice the ratio. The minimum payment in respect of each adult dependant should be not less than 70 per cent of the amount paid to the claimant. The question of dependency is something The Workers' Party would like to see eliminated. We want to eliminate the concept of an adult dependant, specifically adults being dependent on other adults. The first step is eliminating the concept of an adult dependant in the social welfare system and establishing the right to an independent income for every adult. We want the payments for adults who are not in the labour force to be fixed at 70 per cent of the relevant social welfare rate. It is unfortunate that that has been ruled out. However, so be it.
The second amendment is an attempt to bring forward the date and we have a number of amendments — which I presume are all out of order — providing for various start up dates; I made these points in my speech on this Bill. We have attempted to bring forward the payment dates by three months. People on welfare are desperate for funding. Every penny is crucial and they hear about the Estimates, budget debates, figures bandied about, rates, percentage increases and so on, and here we are going through the Bill and still they have had no increase in their pockets. Some of them will have to wait until as late as October. We have attempted in amendments Nos. 2 to 8, inclusive, to bring forward the starting date for many of these schemes from July to April. April starts the tax year and in the minds of many people it is the month you get your welfare increases.
Amendment No. 1 refers to dependent children under 15 years, 15 to 17 years and 18 years and over. Let me refer to a recent bulletin of the Combat Poverty Agency which highlights the point that the funding for children is totally inadequate. According to the findings of Dr. Lee and Dr. Gibney, two well known medical practitioners, the current social welfare allowances for children are inadequate to meet the basic calorific requirements of teenage children. A 12 year old child consuming an average 2,500 calories a day needs a minimum of £11.90 per week for food alone. Families with several children in the age bracket 11 to 18 years would be seriously disadvantaged and only by considerable sacrifice on the part of the parents are their nutritional needs met. This often means severe hardship particularly for the mother who usually goes without.
The Lee and Gibney report gives details about 50 families interviewed about their diets over a one week period. They found that four out of ten families had less than £100 a week to live on and of that £100, 84 per cent spent £60 or less on food and half the families relied either on the Society of St. Vincent de Paul or on moneylenders for financial help. Depending on the age of children, we should slot in the rates to suit the demands of children. The more junior or infant the child dependant the less he or she will consume and the less he or she needs by way of clothing and so on. As the children grow older, and particularly into teenage, the demands on their social welfare recipient parents are horrendous. Those of us who have children know that even with a relatively decent salary, such as we have here as TDs, children's demands for funding for all sorts of things, personal, clothing, books, cinema and leisure activities, are tremendous. You can multiply that pressure on parents in receipt of social welfare a thousandfold because their children have similar demands and the inability of the parents to meet these demands is all the more complicated.
A number of nutritional problems were evident, according to this report, especially for the mothers. These problems reflect a lower intake of fresh food, vegetables and cereals and specific social difficulties encountered by single parents. The report proposes an age increment for older children in social welfare allowances. When responding to this section the Minister might give us his opinion whether we should be targeting various tiered age groups for extra funding. I will leave it at that.
We are very concerned about sections 3 and 4. They contain this Government's major financial input into the lives and the quality of life of people in receipt of benefit and assistance which are central to the Bill. If one looks at the gross increases in the total spending the Government had at budget time, in view of the extra contribution from PRSI and savings made within the Department the increase in the amount allocated to the Department of Social Welfare showed that they did not take the problem of poverty seriously and that the share given to the Department was inadequate to tackle this problem.
My colleague, Deputy Byrne, mentioned families with children. Nothing in either the benefit or assistance sections particularly addresses the problems of families with older children. I pointed out on Second Stage that the child over 11 or 12 years is nearly an adult with an adult's needs, which have to be paid for. Therefore, my amendments refer to the various Schedules to the Bill. Let me seek at this point a little orderly direction. Given that these sections refer to the Schedules, do we debate them separately later, or can we refer to them now?
Acting Chairman
You can refer to them now.
My amendments are confined largely to two or three areas, in particular, problems relating to older children. The Minister said the most important thing about poverty studies was that they should indicate where the real problems are. In the last eight to ten years study after study has indicated that as unemployment for a longer period has become a fact of life, children of the unemployed are particularly at risk of poverty. This group were not targeted in the budget, and that is regrettable. In that context the amendments we in Fine Gael have tabled relate in particular to increasing the dependent element by an additional £5 for children over 12 years and these amendments relate to the Principal Act referred to in the Bill.
The second area of particular concern — which I have raised before with the Minister — is the fact that, extraordinarily, persons in receipt of disability and unemployment benefit are at the bottom of the social welfare pile if they are entirely dependent on these benefits. I know that some of them have pay related benefit and — in the case of disability benefit — there may be an additinal income, but I know, from my own direct knowledge, that this is the case in relation to a large number of recipients. The Minister's figures indicate that 22,000 people have been in receipt of disability benefit for between three and eight years, and certainly half of them would be depending on that benefit alone. They are particularly discriminated against and two of my amendments attempted to deal with that matter; they relate to the creation of a disability assistance scheme for persons who were long term in receipt of disability benefit and who could, if they satisfied a means test, move on to disability assistance which would be comparable with long term unemployment assistance. It is a principle of simplification and a response to need.
As I said, these people are at the bottom of the pile because, by virtue of the fact that they are defined as being on short term benefits, they are refused all supplementary payments other than the possibility of getting a medical card if they have an illness, and I suppose it is reasonable to assume that people on disability benefit would have. I am seriously concerned about this group because they fall through the net. I know it is complex dealing with them because they are part of a category of recipients of benefit who have many and varied characteristics. However, they exist in substantial numbers and I do not know how they survive. Many of these people come to me in significant numbers before Christmas and the only place to which I could direct them for assistance was the voluntary agencies. Their plight is not acknowledged and my amendments propose that we should establish a new payment for people in that category. If they pass a means test and have been in receipt of benefit for the same peiod as we award long-term social assistance and unemployment assistance, they should be included in that category.
I accept that there have been substantial increases in social welfare but, in the context of the figures set by the Commission on Social Welfare — and when inflation is taken into account — the figures fall far short of those projections. We must ensure that our social spending is targeted at the proper groups and it is the failure to do that which creates anomalies in the system. In that context I give great credit to the Minister for his achievement in the social welfare allowance area which is the best in this Bill because it brings together the various rates of allowances which will allow him to establish the lone parent's allowance. It took two to three years' preparation to bring this about and — as I said in my Second Stage speech — it is in accordance with the best principles and achievements in bringing together the different allowances. However, it has created huge anomalies, there is now a lone parent's allowance but there is no lone parent's benefit.
To address the needs of older children would be targeting resources at the group which have been identified by the ESRI, the CMRS, the National Campaign for Welfare Reform and the Combat Poverty Agency. Over the last year these organisations have identified families with children as being at high risk of poverty. The reason the improvement in relation to numbers of children does not respond to this is that it obviously is not selective because a small family with an older child has the same — or additional — expenses as the large family who ultimately benefit if they have enough children, although not on the basis of the need being tailored to the age or demands of the child.
I should like to reply to some of the points made before they accumulate. Deputy Byrne raised questions about the adequacy of payments generally and I will return to that in a moment. He also raised the question of the supplementary welfare allowance. He has the knack — like most of his colleagues in the party — of picking out one area which seems to lag behind others, concentrating on it and suggesting to everybody that this is the one that matters.
Was I incorrect?
Let me put it in context. These increases are being paid to 1.26 million people. The supplementary welfare allowance scheme, which is a fallback for people for whom there are no other schemes, is paid to 11,000 people. We are talking on the one hand about very substantial increases, of very much higher basic rates across the board for a total — between recipients and dependants — of 1.26 million people. However, Deputy Byrne picked out the scheme relating to 11,000 people plus 3,600 dependants. That is the scheme people fall back on for a short time when their other payments are not in order. By introducing the lone parent scheme people will not have to depend on the supplementary welfare allowance scheme. We want to have recognised schemes which will include everybody. However, it is not possible to include everybody all the time and, consequently, some people will fall between two stools. If they do, the supplementary welfare allowance will help. I should like to put that in context because I would not like other Members listening to the debate — or the public — to focus on that scheme as if nothing was happening anywhere else.
Deputy Byrne also raised the question of adult dependants generally, what their position should be and how they should relate to the household. He also queried whether they should have an independent income in their own right and how it would be controlled and applied. The Deputy will be aware that we have set up a special household group to survey and study this matter. It is being carried out by distinguished people and their study is quite complex.
And ongoing.
It will soon——
It was due in December.
It will be published reasonably shortly. They had hoped to have it through for December last but this was not possible. I can well understand that and I am sure when we see the result of it we will more fully understand the technicalities and difficulties. That is being addressed and it is not a simple matter. The adult dependant allowance has been increased more than the normal percentages over the last couple of years. We are now looking at what should be the objective for the future under this household group.
Deputy Byrne also mentioned that some of the increases in payments were put back to October. The increases in payments we are talking about here will all be made in July. It is true the increase in the child benefit will come into operation in October but that is dealt with in a different section and we will discuss it later. I would not like the false impression to go out from the House that any of the increases in basic payments to individuals will be applicable from October. That is not the case; they will be applicable from July and let us be quite clear about that.
Deputy Byrne mentioned a study that was carried out and feels it relates to the general position that pertains today. This is an old piece of research, undertaken in 1987 and at the beginning of 1988. Deputies must remember that there have been considerable increases since that date and they have an impact on the levels mentioned in the study, which was carried out by two distinguished workers, Dr. Pauline Lee and Dr. Michael Gibney. They carried out a study of 53 houses in a particular estate in Dublin and of those, 50 households agreed to participate. They looked at the position in relation to the general health and dietary habits of the people. The result showed that certain dietary elements were missing due particularly to lower intakes of fresh fruit and vegetables and a lower overall intake of food. People get iron, vitamin C and other trace elements from very small quantities of food. Trace elements are very minute — I used to work on them — and if you take a little of the right food regularly you will get the trace element but if you do not take it you are in serious trouble and that is where the problem arises. There is a problem with diet but nonetheless——
There are vitamin tablets.
It is true that people in the income groups we are talking of tend not to have the most suitable diet but this is not solely a question of income.
Shades of Edwina Currie.
That report also stated that to meet the dietary needs of a 12 year old would cost £11.27 per week.
My information states £11.90.
This report states £11.27 but there is not much difference anyway. It was pointed out that at that time the child dependant allowance was £8 to £9 and up to £9.50 in some cases. As we know, the long-term unemployed were on the lower rates. At this stage the basic level is £11 to £14.50 and again we are looking at a different situation. We have been active in the meantime. I am glad the Deputy brought up the whole point because it serves, as does the report, to indicate that we have made substantial progress in the meantime. I appreciate there are problems in relation to diet and that money is a very important issue but anyone who looks at the report will realise we have been making considerable progress in that regard.
I would also point out to Deputy Byrne that there were 36 different rates of payment for children at that time. We have reduced those to six rates and everyone in the House said that was the right thing to do. The commission said we should reduce it by averaging downwards — do not forget that — but what we did was average upwards, a much more difficult and expensive task, and we have kept moving upwards. When you get down to six or four rates you are then in a position where, with the resources you have, you can look at where you go next. Certainly these other possibilities can be considered in that context. We have been applying additional resources and targeting them to children in particular. That shows up in a whole lot of different areas, in relation to the total income of a household and so on.
Deputy Flaherty said she is very concerned with these two sections and feels that we could have given greater increases considering all the savings we have made. All the additional resources were redirected to this area and in addition the Exchequer had to come up with additional resources. The extra money which came from the self-employed has also gone back into making these improvements. All the savings that were made — and they were substantial — and the moneys which we garnered from other sources went to this area and in addition the Exchequer has provided extra money. The total cost of all these improvements, on a full year basis, is £216 million.
Deputy Flaherty said she would like to see us targeting the older child. I am very conscious that the costings for older children are obviously higher and that is something we can look at on future occasions. Further improvements have been made by the Government in a total package. These include the £300 tax allowance for the child-related tax exemption scheme. Deputies have not seen this come into operation yet. The improvements in this area are quite substantial: the £200 allowance for each child introduced last year for the first time, the slow working of that into the system and now the increase in the allowance to £300. It is very well targeted towards those on lower incomes at work and is of great importance in that area.
As Deputies will know we are also extending the child dependant allowance to those up to 20, which again is directed at improving the position of older children. That is in line with the commitment we made last year to increase the age to 19, then to 20 and 21. By next year it will have been increased to age 21. In this package there is a number of things very specifically directed at the people about whom the Deputies are so concerned. It was the Government's intention specifically to direct the resources towards those who are clearly in greatest need and also to take into consideration those who are at work and on low incomes because it is very easy for them to get into difficulties.
Deputy Flaherty has said there is a special problem with disability and unemployment benefit. There is a difficulty because, as the Deputy said, disability benefit and unemployment benefit are short-term payments but our concentration has been on the long-term unemployed. The research and studies indicate very clearly the position regarding the long-term unemployed. As the Deputy fully realises, pay-related benefit applies in many of these cases. One approach for the future could be to bring these payments up to an adequate level and have no pay-related benefit. At present the pay-related aspect can add about £18 a week to unemployment or disability benefit unless, as the Deputy has said, you are long-term on disability benefit and you either do not qualify or do not want to go onto invalidity benefit which is the appropriate cover at that level.
It is important to point out — and I would go back to what Deputy Byrne had to say at the outset — that from the time I became involved three years ago, the long-term unemployment assistance rate for a husband and wife with three children has gone up by £26.55 per week. In fact people in employment would not have received a wage increase in the region of that amount unless they were on higher incomes. This is almost a 30 per cent increase in unemployment assistance for a husband, wife and three children. That is the bottom line and it means that from July this year the payment to a husband and wife with three children will be £116 per week with an additional £11 for each additional child dependant.
Deputy Byrne referred to the short-term payments such as the supplementary welfare allowance. The payment for a husband and wife with three children is £109 per week, an increase of £27.35. The Deputy will see that we have been increasing those payments by a somewhat greater percentage than the increase in the unemployment assistance. However, the problem is that they were very low when we started out and we have been closing the gap between them. All the payments have increased considerably, so that a husband and wife with three children will receive £116 on long-term unemployment assistance, while a husband and wife with three children on supplementary allowance or short-term unemployment assistance will receive £109. A person in similar circumstances will receive £112.80 unemployment benefit and we must bear in mind they can receive another £18 on top of that in pay-related benefit. A widow with three children on a contributory widow's pension will receive £101 whereas the non-contributory pension for a widow with three children is £93.50, and we are closing the gap. On this occasion I took special care to increase the means tested widow's pension more than the contributory widow's pension because the contributory pension was already much higher.
How do our level of payments compare to those in the United Kingdom? The personal rate of unemployment benefit for a person in Ireland from July will be £48 and the long-term unemployment assistance rate will be £52, whereas in the United Kingdom the current rate of unemployment benefit is £37. A couple with two children will receive £101.80 whereas a similar couple in the United Kingdom will receive £96.50. Similarly the personal rate of widow's pension is £46 whereas it is £43.30 in the United Kingdom; a widow with two children receives £86 whereas a widow with two children in the United Kingdom receives £79. In Ireland a couple on disability benefit with two children receive £108 per week, whereas they receive £96.50 in the United Kingdom. Our payments compare very favourably with those in the North of Ireland. In most cases they are higher, which is a considerable change. This has been brought about over the past three years by the consistent and substantial improvements that have been made. Our social welfare rates are higher than in the UK. In the past people have felt that the rates in Northern Ireland were a source of division and that we received smaller social welfare payments but that is not the case any more. Our social welfare payments are higher than those in Northern Ireland and in Great Britain.
I contend that we have made very substantial progress in this area. Deputy Byrne also referred to some of the studies that have been carried out. It has been said that one-third of the population are living in poverty but I refute this. I do not agree with it, it is a misleading statement. I know there are people in poverty and we have to deal with them and make sure that we improve their position. There are many people who are not in poverty but they need to have their position improved. The Commission on Social Welfare indicated that the elderly were all right and were not at risk. The ESRI study also indicated that they were not at risk; notwithstanding that, it is important that we keep up the levels of payments and improve the non-contributory payments, as we have done this time. There is no statistical evidence to prove the level of poverty claims. Pressure groups who persist in using this figure are doing no service to themselves or to the disadvantaged members of our society whom they say they represent.
Deputy Flaherty made a good point when she pointed to a group who appear to be falling behind and need attention. Our resources should be directed towards the people most in need. The pressure groups look to the work of the ESRI to support their views on the level of poverty and in doing so they show a complete lack of understanding of the nature of the research conducted by that organisation. The approach adopted by the ESRI is not to measure the number of people falling below the poverty line, because as they rightly point out there is no objective method of setting such a line, rather they establish alternative income levels or, poverty lines and estimate the number of people or households who have incomes below those levels. The real value of their work is the comparative value which shows what people are more at risk than others. The value is not in absolute terms because the study is not designed to deal with absolute terms, nor could it. They estimate, for example, that 10 per cent of households and 12.8 per cent of people fall below the 40 per cent poverty line.
The ESRI make it clear that figures such as these do not represent their view of the extent of poverty in Ireland. They do not include non-cash benefits in their figures so they know they do not paint a comprehensive picture. The poverty line figures, useful as they are, do not tell the whole story with regard to standards of living. Very substantial transfers are made to the less well off through the provision of free or subsidised State services in education, health and housing. These need to be included in an overall assessment of the standard of living of low income groups. The critics of Government policy are wrong not only in their interpretation of research on poverty but in their refusal to acknowledge the substantial progress that has been made by the Government in improving the position of the less privileged in our society. Since the data on which the ESRI based their analysis were collected in 1986 and early 1987, major improvements have been made in the level of support for social welfare recipients. Deputies know that this is the case. I have already mentioned some of those improvements and I will not repeat them.
Very substantial progress towards meeting the recommendations of the Commission on Social Welfare have been made in the basic rates of payments. The Commission on Social Welfare set a priority rate of £45 and if we adjust that figure to account for inflation since that time it comes to £53. From July next the personal rate of payment will be £61.50 in the case of old age contributory pensioners, £56 for widows contributory pensioners and £54 for invalidity pensioners. The long-term unemployment rate will now be brought up to £52, which is only £1 below the adjusted figure. We have made a lot of progress and are making further progress in the two sections we are discussing. It is important to keep what is in the sections in perspective. We serve a substantial number of widows, old age pensioners and others and they received fairly substantial increases.
I welcome the Minister's indication that he is to some degree accepting the case we have made for older children, but I was disappointed at the tenor of his remarks. There were shades of Edwina Currie in some of his remarks about people not spending their income as wisely as they should and ensuring that they got the right calorific intake or trace elements.
I was quoting from the study which was referred to by the Deputy.
The Minister would be wise not to do that.
If the Deputy wishes I will read the relevant passage from the study.
Members should agree to discontinue this tete-à-tete, each Member to his or her own thoughts and uninterrupted expression of them——
The Minister's reference to pressure groups reflects an attitude to organisations who are acting in a purely disinterested fashion on behalf of groups who do not have anything to gain. That attitude, unfortunately, was expressed clearly in the House by the Taoiseach. It sends ominous chills through me and compares with attitudes across the water. Had there been anybody else in power across the water other than Mrs. Thatcher he would not have been able to make such pleasant comparisons.
The Minister chose to use the 1987 figures and relate them to current figures when it suited him, but when he related current figures to 1987 figures he picked the lowest possible figure for 1987 and took the highest possible figure for 1989. That was not an honest presentation of the target set by the Commission on Social Welfare which at this stage would be between £65 and £75. The Minister should not think that he is codding us with the figures he is juggling about.
We will give the Minister credit for any progress that has been made but he should not use the figures in the way he has. We may not have the figures at our finger tips but we are familiar enough with the inflation changes over a number of years. We have entered into a broader debate on the extent of poverty.
The Minister likes to refer to the 1987 figures in isolation, but in November last the ESRI produced a report, "Poverty, Income and Welfare in Ireland", which showed that there are serious poverty problems. Tomorrow I hope to press the Minister at Question Time to indicate the line he is adopting and to give us his definition of poverty. That report indicated that there is a substantial level of poverty here and children were identified as being at risk.
I welcome the Minister's indication that he will give consideration to our views in regard to expenses for older children, but I urge him to do that as soon as possible. In relation to the categories of unemployment benefit and disability benefit, will the Minister instruct, through his supplementary welfare section, that the needs of those on long-term disability who do not qualify for invalidity pension and are dependent on that alone, are met until he has sorted out the difficulty in regard to disability benefits, assistance and invalidity pensions? Some people do not qualify because they are mistermed as short-term beneficiaries when they have been in receipt of a benefit for three years and up to eight years. They are the poorest of the poor in the social welfare net. Those on supplementary benefit, while their weekly income may be a little lower, receive assistance with bills and all the supplementary payments that are going, but the group I have referred to are excluded. I do not know how they manage to survive but I imagine that they do so through assistance from the voluntary agencies. If the Minister is not willing to accept our amendments he should consider those who do not have any other income.
I confined my comments to sections 3 and 4 and I was trying to be as precise as possible but other speakers were not.
If the Deputy feels that his good example was not followed he should not lower his standards. I was about to remind the House of the requirements on Committee Stage. We should not have a rehash of Second Stage and Members should bear in mind the time limitation. On Committee Stage, as Deputy Ferris was about to advise the House, we are expected to confine ourselves to what is in the section and not to make Second Stage speeches.
I have come through another House which teaches Members to be as good as possible when dealing with legislation. One Member asked if a reference could be made to the Schedule and it was confirmed that that was in order and Deputy Byrne referred to payments to children which are covered in the following sections. Unfortunately, the Minister gave us a Second Stage speech because he felt he had to cover all the points mentioned. I realise that he wanted to answer all the questions raised but I will be brief.
I asked the Minister to consider rationalising the dates involved and he told me that bringing forward dates as I suggested would involve the Exchequer in an expenditure of £46 million. He told us that the benefit extended to 1,400,000 people. Is that the gross figure which the Department will expend or has the Minister taken into account the clawback through other Government agencies? I am referring to the clawback by local authorities in rents, by the supplementary welfare office which deals with mortgage relief and the local authorities who give relief from various service charges. The Minister may not know about that because he represents a Dublin constituency, but there are service charges in county council and urban areas throughout the country and there is a clawback based on social welfare income. A person in receipt of more than £100 per week in social welfare does not qualify for relief from water charges. In other words, we are charging people with children for water. If they did not have any children they would be in receipt of less than £100 and would qualify for relief.
I wonder whether the Minister, in reply to my original comments on sections 3 and 4 regarding the dates of payment, has taken into account the net cost to the Department and to the Exchequer. I think he agrees with us that they should be made as early as possible — he scored a political point by saying that they were worse when he arrived in office. I accept that Governments have moved these feast days — as they would be termed for the poor — from April to July and to October and back again and there is general agreement that these payments should be made as close as possible to the year in which they are applicable, that is, 1990. There will be clawbacks.
He went on to deal with supplementary welfare payments. This is a very important instrument which is available to the Department and to unfortunate people who are disadvantaged for many weeks. I will leave my thoughts on this matter to another section, but I am worried because this is the lowest form of income. It is the fall back, it is the fire brigade service when the cheque is held up in the post, when something goes wrong, when a certificate is late going to the Department and when there is no income for the family. The Minister has admitted that over 11,000 people benefit from the scheme.
I should like to put on record immediately that the last place anybody wants to go is to the supplementary welfare officer, first, because of the lack of privacy and, second, because they have the feeling that they are looking for something to which they are not entitled. Although it is only an interim payment, it is recouped by the Department when payments sort themselves out. It is the bottom of the rung for those who have nothing else to fall back on. Because of cutbacks over the past few years we know that supplementary welfare payments have been discontinued to many categories who up to now had qualified, and particularly for those on means tested payments, supplementary welfare was usefully used to supplement them. I am concerned at the rate of supplementary welfare, although the Minister has admitted he has increased it. I welcome many of the things which the Minister has done in this Bill.
The Minister must realise that it is our duty on this side of the House to keep prompting, urging and hoping that with all our wisdom and our advice — we do see anomalies on the ground — there will be some improvements. Deputy Flaherty mentioned some of the anomalies between contributory categories and non-contributory categories. There are now anomalies where people on disability benefit receive less than people on long-term unemployment assistance. The one advantage of the disability benefit is that it is not means tested but somehow it is related to contributions. I would like to confine myself to the dates, to the total cost and whether the Minister has taken into account the net cost, taking into account the clawback system between rents, water charges, supplementary welfare and so on. I shall deal with the children, the benefits and the lack of benefit in the next two sections.
We break at 6.30 p.m. I do not know the extent to which everybody has satisfied himself or herself but it might be possible to dispose of sections 3 and 4 before 6.30 p.m. but not when we resume, as Deputies will rehash the same arguments.
I will go through my notes as quickly as possible. I think it is a case of hear no evil, see no evil. Having heard the Minister today he appears to be incapable of recognising the degree of poverty that exists, particularly in this city, with which I am familiar. For some odd reason he seems to be embarrassed that I should have highlighted the incredible poverty of payments of £45 under the supplementary welfare scheme. He chided me for daring to highlight this fact and went on to explain it away by saying that only 11,000 people with 3,600 dependants fall into this category.
The figure of 1.26 million people in receipt of benefit is impressive, but I am not referring to them at present, I am referring to the 11,000 plus 3,600 dependants who are forced to rely on that miserable £45. I do not know whether the Minister is trying to avoid answering that question when he gave the figure of 11,000, but when one looks at the figures for unemployment assistance, miraculously they fall into the same category of £45 per week. How many people are in that category? He went on to say how reasonably well off we are and compared us with England.
Let us look at the unemployment assistance for a married man with a wife and three children. He gets £109. The Minister tries to deny the level of poverty that exists. If we take the figures produced by Dr. Gormley — whom the Minister quoted earlier — we see that according to the Lee and Gibney report it costs £11.90 per week to feed a child and if we round off that figure to £12 per child per week and if there are three children in the family, that amounts to £36 out of the £109 to feed the three children. If two adults eat as much as three children that is another £36. That amounts to £72 to feed the family. How does the Minister imagine people on an income of £109 can afford to live? For this man with three children £72 will be spent on food and if he lives in local authority housing, he will have to pay rent, bus fares, heating, electricity and fuel, not to mention clothes. These are frightening figures.
Dr. Gormley, when talking about a proper nutritional intake, said that the weight and size of the majority of children were only slightly less than the Irish norm, a small number were significantly underweight and undersize in two of the schools. The Minister seems to be suggesting that these figures were old and out of date. If 1987-88 is old and out of date when we have just come into the nineties, I think the Minister is stretching it. Even if these figures are out of date his concluding remarks were that low income families need an adequate minimum income of £60 per week per adult and a subsequently improved child income allowance. If £60 per week was the amount argued for by Dr. Gormley in 1988, then my figures are generous when I ask for——
All these authorities were quoted very liberally on Second Stage and you are not allowed to do it again. May I remind the House that it is not in order to make a Second Stage contribution when we are dealing with specific Commitee Stage requirements. The Deputy will have to apply himself to what is proposed here. He has already been advised that anything that would require additional expenditure is not permissible. He has to apply himself, as best he can, within those parameters.
I have two minutes left.
I do not know. I thought the House might have agreed to put the question on one of the sections at 6.30 p.m.
Bear with me for one second. I will say my final sentence and that will give the Minister a minute. He mentioned the child benefit payment from October only, as though that was some excuse. Why must the children wait? Does he not know that the children go back to school in September——
That is a later section.
——and they need the money before October? I feel very strongly about that payment date. October is far too late in the year for receipt of that payment.
I was trying to make clear that all the payments under these two sections are taking effect from July. I did not want to give old age pensioners or anyone else a concern which could arise from what the Deputy had said. In deference to the Chair, I will say very little more at this stage. I have noted what Deputy Flaherty said and I will see what can be done. Dr. Gormley actually said that a top priority was deemed to be a nutrition education programme for children and parents with emphasis on breaking the dominance of food such as chips, burgers and sausages. I accept that money and education are involved.
Perhaps we could report progress.
No.
To answer the Deputy's question, it is the gross figure we pay out. Obviously the question of any clawbacks would be outside this. Our full pay out is £216 million in a full year but the clawback is another question. To bring it forward, the total we would pay out would be £46 million. I take the points the Deputy has made in regard to the other areas.
Tá
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Níl
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