Vol. 1041 No. 5
103. Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will provide an update on the consultation process as part of her Department’s work on addressing the cost of disability; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33414/23]
The issue of the cost of disability is much discussed at present. It is a concept that is being increasingly developed. In March, the Minister, in response to a parliamentary question, stated the work on the straw man was at an advanced stage and widescale public consultation was planned. In May, the situation was similar. Where are things at in this regard? How does the Minister intend to progress the issue?
I thank the Deputy for raising the matter. The Indecon cost of disability report was prepared following extensive consultation with disabled people and disability stakeholders. It is one of the largest disability surveys ever undertaken in the State. The report established that additional costs of disability run across a number of policy areas, including housing, equipment, aids and appliances, care and assistance, mobility, transport, communications, medicines, employment and income support. Based on this, one of the key conclusions of the report was that a multi-faceted whole-of-government approach is required to address the cost of disability. It is for this reason the Government decided the report and actions on foot of the report should be considered and monitored by the national disability inclusion strategy steering group under the remit of the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth. A new national cross-government strategy to succeed the national disability inclusion strategy is currently being developed by all Departments and agencies. The cost of disability report is an important element of the evidence base that will inform the scope and focus of that strategy.
My Department has committed under the roadmap for social inclusion to develop and consult on a straw man proposal for the restructuring of long-term disability payments. While findings of the cost of disability report will feed into the straw man, it will also meet commitments made in the Make Work Pay and the Pathways to Work reports. Work on the straw man is at an advanced stage and I expect to bring it forward for publication shortly. I am committed to carrying out a wider consultation process with all stakeholders and advocacy groups following publication. I hope this clarifies the matter for the Deputy. What the stakeholders and various groups say is, "Nothing about us without us." I will engage with them extensively.
I thank the Minister. She provided a bit more insight there. Perhaps she can provide more as we proceed. There is no doubt but that the challenges faced by people with disabilities are enormous. The survey on income and living conditions includes a category of people who are unable to work due to long-standing health problems. This cohort substantially consists of disabled people. One in five of that group is living in consistent poverty, compared with 5.3% in the general population. One in three is at risk of poverty, compared with 13.1% in the general population. The group has one of the lowest rates of disposable income, at approximately €18,000. As the Minister outlined, there are many additional costs, including for matters that may not previously have been accounted for, such as mobility aids and so on, but there is also the simple cost of being able to operate in society. There is the cost of socialising and that of accessing education when it is much further away than it is for other people. Similarly, there is the cost of employment and other things. The Minister stated that she hopes to publish the report shortly. Will the further consultation with stakeholders take place before or after its publication?
My plan is to publish the straw man proposal and then sit down with stakeholders to get their views on it. We want an open conversation. It worked well in the past when we sat down. The straw man proposal is just about putting out some ideas. We will take from it and add to it but we will have that conversation. I take the points raised by the Deputy.
There will always be a debate on targeted supports compared with universal supports. Universal supports sometimes mean taking resources away from those who need them most. We are doing a big piece of work on significant reforms to the disability payment as a follow-on from the cost of disability report. One of the key recommendations in the report related to targeting supports better. For example, everyone on disability allowance gets exactly the same flat-rate payment of €220, regardless of the level of disability. The cost of disability report recommends tiered payments such that, for example, a person with a profound disability who might never be able to work would get a higher payment than would be received by a person with a moderate or mild disability who could do some work. I will be publishing the straw man proposal. This will bring generational reforms into the disability payments.
I take the Minister's point in general and philosophical terms regarding targeted compared with universal supports but very few people on disability payments are on very high incomes. Given the current thresholds for the disability allowance, there are many people on modest incomes who benefit little or not at all. That needs to be examined separate from the cost of disability piece. I am glad the straw man proposal is progressing. If the Minister can provide more insight on what she means by "shortly", which is a very broad word in this place, that would be appreciated. Will it be published in the third quarter of the year? I think the Minister is agreeing that it will. Will there be an opportunity for submissions, as well as the consultations and conversations organised by the Minister? Will people be able to submit documents?
It will be in the third quarter of the year. It is at an advanced stage. I am happy to hear the views of the Deputy on the matter because we want to get this right. For the first time, I will be considering tiered payments for disability. It is the right way to go. It is clear that a person with a profound disability needs more support than a person who may be able to work. We have the reasonable accommodation fund. I am doing a consultation on that as well. It provides help to employers, allows people who have disabilities to get into the workforce and assists with adapting the workplace to suit their needs.
There is a lot of work going on at the minute. We are also looking at consultation on the wage subsidy scheme because that is an important financial support for employers who hire people with disabilities. We are taking a number of different approaches and at the end of the day, we want to see people who are on disability payments getting the best support possible, as well as the supports to help them to maybe do part-time work because, as we know, it is good for them to get out into the workforce. I will leave it at that.
104. Deputy Sean Sherlock asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will examine a proposal to allow pre-retirement men coming from a manual labour background to have a disregard for the requirement for 12 months in receipt of a social protection payment so they can qualify for community employment schemes. [32063/23]
I wish to ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will examine a proposal to allow men and women, the question should have read men and women, of pre-retirement age coming from a manual labour background to have a disregard for the requirement to be in receipt of a social protection payment for 12 months, in order that they can qualify for community employment schemes.
I thank the Deputy for his question. The aim of community employment is to enhance the employability of disadvantaged and unemployed persons by providing work experience and training opportunities for them within their communities. In addition, it helps long-term unemployed people to re-enter the active workforce by breaking their experience of unemployment through a return to work routine. The general rule relating to eligibility for participation in community employment, CE, is that the person must be in receipt of a qualifying payment for 12 months or more. This is to ensure that the scheme is targeted at those furthest removed from the labour market and who will benefit most from participation. The exceptions to the eligibility criteria apply to those who would be considered among the most vulnerable in society, and include people from the Traveller or Roma communities, people with addiction issues or who have been recently released from prison.
Recently, participation in CE was extended to include the adult dependants of people in receipt of jobseeker’s allowance as an initiative to assist them to return to the workforce. Currently, access to CE does not include retired manual labourers unless they satisfy the current eligibility criteria. There are no plans at present to change the 12-month eligibility rule in respect of pre-retired manual workers. However, the eligibility criteria for CE continues to be kept under active review by my Department to ensure the best outcomes for individual participants, to support the vital community services and to take account of changes to the labour market.
While I appreciate the answer, it is that the status quo remains. That is what I interpret from the Minister of State's response. What we are talking about here are people who either carried the hod, or were cleaners who partook in manual labour for long periods of their lives where the physical nature of their work is such that they cannot transition at a certain period of their lives into new modes or forms of employment. Frankly, the community employment scheme has delivered untold benefits to our communities. However, there is a category of people who want to continue to engage in what I would call caretaking, light duties, groundskeeping, gardening and so on, categories of work like that where we do not farm them out. If the Minister of State could look at the criteria in such a way as to make it easier for people to continue on in the workplace, albeit in a staged-back and less intensive way, there would be thousands of people who would love to qualify for such schemes and who would make an active and decent contribution to society and to their communities. Could the Minister of State review the schemes, criteria and eligibility by which they operate because we have to recognise there is a category of people here who just will not be able to continue on?
I thank the Deputy. We have to be careful if we are going to categorise a whole group of people as likely not able or eligible to go back into the mainstream workforce. We would have to be very careful if we were to do that, notwithstanding that there will be some cases, no doubt the Deputy has seen some himself, where that would be very difficult for an individual. A key strand of the Pathways to Work strategy, strand 5, is on working for all and leaving no one behind. This strand includes a focus on older workers and returners. It specifically includes a commitment to deliver dedicated recruitment events for older workers and returners to help them engage with employers and to encourage their recruitment. We have had a number of events in that regard. Last year, we had 25 in-person events under the return to work campaign with almost 2,000 people engaged in that. A really important statistic regarding people over 50 in particular is that, over the last 12 months up to the end of May, 18,000 people aged over 50 left the live register specifically for employment. I can see individual cases but we have to look at overall groups in terms of shaping a policy for CE.
I take the Minister of State's point and I am not trying to apply a broad stroke to this but I think it would be acknowledged that there is a category of workers where the ability to transition to enhancing their digital skills, for instance, would be limited. That is a fact of life. That is a non-judgmental statement I am making. There are unfilled places in community employment schemes. There are people who carried the hod, as I say, whose backs were broken. These are people such as cleaners who had intensive manual labour type jobs who do not fulfil the disability or illness criteria but they are still able to make a contribution and they just want to transition into some form of community-based activity and to be recognised and to receive a payment for that. All I am asking here is that even though the Minister of State says it is being kept under review, we move it beyond being kept under review to maybe a more active policy to engage with that category of workers.
The Deputy will be aware that, particularly over the last 18 months, that we have been highly responsive and adaptive to the needs of organisations who depend on CE and to the reality of the labour market itself. We have adapted and changed the eligibility for CE a number of times. We would like to see a little bit more evidence in terms of the definability and scale of the group as well but it is important to say that when Intreo officers across country sit down with someone, they develop a personal progression plan that is tailored to that individual. There are good supports available there in trying to find mainstream work for those people. There is a training grant of €1,000, and qualifications such as Safe Pass that might be of interest to the group we are talking about can be covered. We will keep the Deputy's point under consideration and, as I have said, we have adapted and changed it over time.
The Minister of State will put my file into a filing cabinet somewhere in the Department.
No, I take the Deputy's point but we are talking about potentially changing the eligibility for a whole scheme, where there are 18,000 people involved as well. We have to take policy changes with due consideration.
105. Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire asked the Minister for Social Protection to provide an update on the proposed legislation on child maintenance system changes; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33415/23]
I wish to ask the Minister for Social Protection about the recommendations from the child maintenance review group. This is an area that has long been in urgent need of reform. The challenges that lone parents face, the fact they have to fight this battle on their own, very often, and the fact that their income from maintenance has been taken into account for means has created a lot of challenges for a category of people who, more commonly than most, are at risk of poverty. I seek an update from the Minister on the implementation of the recommendations from the review group.
I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. The report of the child maintenance review group was published last November. The Government accepted the group's recommendations regarding the social welfare system. I am pleased to say that, pending the introduction of the necessary legislation, my Department has already implemented some of the recommended changes on an administrative basis. As a result, my Department is no longer applying the efforts to seek maintenance requirement to the one-parent family payment and the jobseeker's transitional payment. As this requirement often involved lone parents having to go to court to seek a maintenance order, this change removes a potential additional stress for them, as well as helping to reduce the burden on our courts system.
In addition, the liable relative provisions are not being applied to new claims for the one-parent family payment. This means that my Department will no longer seek to recoup a portion of claim costs from the non-resident parent in these cases. I want to be very clear that removing these provisions does not replace or supersede the primary responsibility of parents to maintain their children.
Furthermore, child maintenance payments will be disregarded in the means test for social welfare payments. This measure will mean that many lone parents currently on reduced rates of payment will see their payment increase and some additional lone parents will qualify for a payment.
It is estimated that this measure will be of direct benefit to approximately 16,000 lone parents, at a cost of approximately €10 million per year.
These are very significant reforms of the social welfare system that will be of great benefit to lone parents. These changes require amendments to both primary and secondary legislation as well as changes to some of my Department's systems, application forms and processes. Work on the legislation is at an advanced stage. Some of the recommendations have already been implemented on an administrative basis.
I thank the Minister. There are acceptance issues concerning the justice recommendations in respect of the agency, but that is outside the Minister's remit. I welcome that the Department has accepted the recommendations concerning the social protection system. The Minister has stated – it is my understanding also – that she is not including child maintenance in the means test for new claimants; however, in the ordinary work of the Department, lone parents on the likes of the one-parent family payment or jobseeker's transitional payment are occasionally reviewed, naturally. My understanding is that the disregard is not applied to those being reviewed and only to new claimants. This needs to be rectified.
Could the Minister give us an update on the progress on the legislation required?
Definitely, new claims are not liable. We have changed the rules on the administrative basis for new claims. I will have to revert to the Deputy on whether, based on the review, it has been possible to make the changes. I will double-check.
The legislation is a bit more complex than we initially thought. Different parts of it, both secondary and primary, are affected, so the officials have to go through them all in detail to ensure every aspect of the three measures is covered. When we make the changes, we want to ensure we get it right. It has taken a little longer than we thought but we are applying the disregard where we can on an administrative basis.
I am pleased to say that I expect to have Government approval for the legislation very shortly. I will be bringing a memorandum to the Cabinet and I will then bring the legislation through the Houses of the Oireachtas.
I thank the chair of the Child Maintenance Review Group, former judge Catherine Murphy. I acknowledge Deputy O'Leary's predecessor in this area, Deputy Kerrane. She too was very passionate about the subject, on which we had good conversations and very constructive discussions. Senator Lynn Ruane is also very passionate about the subject and she too has done a lot of work on it. As the Deputy knows, I worked in a credit union and saw at first hand the issue that the Deputy is raising. It was something I wanted to do something about, so we will move as quickly as we can.
106. Deputy Gary Gannon asked the Minister for Social Protection if core social welfare rates will be adjusted in the next budget (details supplied) to match the rate of inflation; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [33417/23]
Will core social welfare rates be adjusted in the next budget to match the rate of inflation, and will the Minister make a statement on the matter?
I thank Deputy Gannon for raising this matter. I recognise the challenges that the increased cost of living has brought to many households. The Parliament is very well aware of the pressures faced by households and has not been found wanting.
Last September, I announced the largest social protection budget in the history of the State, comprising measures worth almost €2.2 billion. This budget provided a combination of eight lump sum payments and a €12 across-the-board increase in weekly rates – the largest such increase since the mid-2000s – along with targeted increases to payments such as the fuel allowance. These increases were on top of other measures taken in advance of the budget, including energy credits, a fuel allowance lump sum in spring 2022 and an increased back-to-school clothing and footwear payment. Other measures taken by the Government include reductions in transport fees and the waiving of examination fees for second level students.
Even ignoring these additional measures, ESRI analysis has found that budget 2023 delivered for lower-income households, who were found to be better off than if they had just received an inflation-indexed increase in basic rates.
This year, on top of the budget measures, we provided a further €410 million in additional supports to households in need. This included a €200 lump-sum payment in April, a €100 child benefit lump sum paid last month and an additional payment of a €100 back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance per child, which will be paid from next week.
I value and support the work of the minimum essential standard of living, MESL, research centre. As the Deputy may be aware, its work is funded by my Department and has a valuable input into our policy-making process. The Deputy may be aware that the Department runs a pre-budget forum each year at which stakeholders and advocacy groups, including the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, have an opportunity to meet me and present their proposals for measures they would like to see included in the budget. This year's forum is to be held on 19 July.
Decisions about budget 2024 will be made in the coming months. In working with my ministerial colleagues, I will continue to take account of the recommendations of the stakeholders and I look forward to responding to changes in the cost of living. The Deputy can be assured that, again, this Government will not be found wanting.
I do not doubt the Minister's interest in the subject but we potentially disagree on what the rates should look like. The MESL, the minimum essential standard of living that a person needs to live a life of dignity, is substantially above what current core social welfare payments. The argument made by several people who work in this field is that some of the once-off payments are just that – once-off payments – and people are hungry again a week later.
The cost of a basket of goods has increased by 10% nationally and 13% in cities over the past 12 months. We live in a country in which 760,000 people are living in, or are at risk of, poverty. The only sure way of combating this is to increase core social welfare rates. Is that the Minister's intention to increase core social welfare rates? The Vincentian research trust has highlighted that anything less than a €27 increase in core social welfare rates will mean people will fall below the poverty line.
I thank the Deputy. He will agree that the Government, since its formation in 2020, has provided unprecedented supports to protect people and families, first during the pandemic and then with the cost of living. We provided €19 billion in direct income supports through the pandemic unemployment payment and wage subsidy scheme. Those supports were put in place quickly and helped to ensure the country would rebound strongly. That is why we now have full employment and more people at work than ever before.
I know things are not easy for people at the moment. We all see when we go into a shop that the price of a basket of groceries has gone up, but thankfully some supermarket chains have announced price reductions in recent weeks. I hope we will see more of that. In fairness, the Government has done a lot to help people with the rise in the cost of living. Between October and December, we made eight separate lump-sum payments, at a cost of over €1.3 billion.
Let me give an example of what the Government is doing. Only this week, it announced changes to extend the free general practitioner card to an additional 500,000 people, including many on middle incomes because they too are under pressure as well. While a pensioner on a fuel allowance got a €12 increase, all the lump sums add up to an extra €2,331 per annum this year.
I cannot unsee the circumstances that exist in the absence of the pandemic unemployment payment, which was very welcome, having been set at a rate of €350 to recognise that people coming out of employment through no fault of their own would not be able to live on core social welfare rates. It is very difficult to unsee that social welfare rates have increased by only €5 a couple of years after the pandemic. In the absence of targeting the lump sum payments that the Minister referred to at the most vulnerable, meaning that they were being availed of by people who did not need them, such as those with second homes and millionaires, there were people choosing between heating their homes and feeding their families. I am very conscious that although we are now in the summer months, we will be moving into the winter shortly, meaning people will be making such hard choices again. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul and other organisations have highlighted that people are still going without basic necessities such as food and, heaven forbid, a night out so they can provide for their families.
That is still the situation in this country. The only way of combating it is by targeted increases in core social welfare payments.
Nobody should be going without food. The additional needs payment is available and people can apply for it. It is there to be paid out and I encourage people, if they are in any sort of difficulty such as the Deputy mentioned, to go to their community welfare officer or make a telephone call. There is an online presence as well. I do not want to hear about anybody going without food. That really should not be happening. I ask the Deputy to bring any examples to me and I will look at them personally. People should not be going without food. The additional needs payment is the State safety net and it is there for people. I would like to make them aware of that because nobody should be going without food.
We gave a €12 increase right across the board at the beginning of this year. In addition to that, taking the example of a pensioner in receipt of the fuel allowance, adding up the lump sums gives the equivalent of €45 per week over a year. That is a fair bit extra. The survey on income and living conditions data that were produced did not include the lump sum payments because the data were based on the 2021 figures. When the €12 weekly increase is added to the €45 lump sum payments, people are better off to the tune of €57 per week. They absolutely needed that money.
The budget is coming up. We have listened to stakeholders and I am very conscious that some people are in a difficult situation. We want to help them. I repeat that people should go to their community welfare officer if they are in difficulty.
