Billy Timmins
Question:7 Mr. Timmins asked the Minister for Social and Family Affairs her plans to introduce workfare as opposed to welfare; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [4883/03]
Other Questions. - Social Welfare Policy.
The term "workfare" is used to describe a form of social provision in which people are required to perform work, often in public service jobs, as a condition for receiving a welfare payment. I have no proposals to introduce a system on these lines.
The focus of my Department's programmes is to provide income support while actively encouraging and facilitating persons to find and take up employment. There is a range of measures designed to encourage unemployed and other disadvantaged groups to access the active labour market.
The employment action plan was introduced in September 1998 and is administered jointly by my Department and FÁS. It forms the preventive pillar of Ireland's response under the terms of the European employment strategy.
To qualify for unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance, a person must be available for full-time work and genuinely seeking work. The employment action plan, which has been in operation since 1998, seeks to prevent the drift to long-term unemployment by systematically referring persons to FÁS employment services when they have been a certain length of time on the live register. Those under 25 years of age are already being referred to FÁS as they approach six months duration on the live register. Arrangements are being made with FÁS to extend this threshold to cover everybody over 25 years of age.
Following interview by FÁS an appropriate intervention is offered which may include job placement, further education, or training. Feedback on a person's progress with the FÁS employment services is provided to the Department on a structured basis.
The back to work allowance programme operated by my Department is focused on lone par ents, people with disabilities and people on the live register for five years or more. Under this scheme, a person who takes up employment or self-employment for at least 24 hours per week continues to receive a percentage of his or her social welfare payment on a tapered basis over a number of years.
My Department also administers a range of second chance education programmes to help unemployed people, lone parents and people with disabilities improve their skills and qualifications. The Department's objective in this area is to raise educational and skill levels in order to enable social welfare recipients meet the requirements of the modern labour market.
Now that we have the most right wing Government in Europe and the Minister's partners in Government are anxious for workfare to be introduced, is it true that although the Department might not be considering introducing such a system, the Government is considering it?
FÁS schemes have been cut by 25% and the back to work scheme has been abolished even though it is very difficult for people who have been unemployed for five years to get back into the workplace. The summer jobs scheme has also been abolished. Will the Minister confirm that the Government, particularly its right wing element, is not considering such a move?
This must be a new Fine Gael policy, one that makes that party more right wing than I had ever thought.
This is the Government's policy.
There is absolutely no way we are introducing American solutions to this State where we would expect people to work for their social welfare.
The Government is closer to Boston than Berlin.
There are absolutely no such proposals. I look forward to hearing the Deputy's proposals in this context.
The Minister will hear them soon enough when I am on the Government side of the House.
If the Deputy introduces workfare from this side of the House I would wish him well because it is not an acceptable form of income support.
We will not introduce it, the Minister's right wing colleagues will do that. We will be a caring Government.
My colleague ran through the whole gamut of labour market interventions that the Tánaiste has at her disposal. Is the Minister concerned, given that staff in the employment exchanges of the Department of Social and Family Affairs are referring people to the new social economy programmes, that the Tánaiste has ordered that all of these schemes be stopped, including those where contracts were signed on the basis of having ten or 15 workers who would be coming off the live register? It is outrageous that the Government has allowed this to happen. The Minister did nothing to stop it at the Cabinet table, just as she did not ask for a fair deal for people on social welfare during the budget. That is the Minister's job and it is important that she does it.
As the Deputy is aware, the Tánaiste is reviewing all of the FÁS schemes.
She has stopped reviewing them.
Decisions will be made as a result of the review. In that context, my Department and I have had several consultations with the Minister of State in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment discussing the issues.