It is a pleasure to return to address the joint committee. I hope members have a copy of our presentation which we have titled, People before Percentages. We have heard many percentages this morning. This is inevitable, but I will speak about the people whom we visit because it is important to focus on those who suffer in Ireland today, of whom there are many. We estimate that the Society of St. Vincent de Paul spends approximately €1 million every week. We could very well spend anywhere between €55 million and €60 million this year if we can get it. The number of calls for assistance has increased by more than 30% in many parts of the country, except in very disadvantaged areas because things were never good there anyway — they have not lost their jobs and are not the ones losing their homes.
The calls for assistance come mainly from families with children who are asking for very basic items such as food and assistance in meeting energy costs. As this peters out over the summer, they will seek help in meeting educations costs. Approximately one third of calls come from people contacting the society for the very first time; persons on welfare who may have not needed us previously, persons in work on low pay who, as Mr. Walsh mentioned, are affected by cuts in salary and persons who are unemployed. We need to be very conscious of those who have struggled for many years on pensions and social welfare because there is a tendency among the media to imagine that poverty only started last September and only involves nice middle-class people like ourselves.
Our presentation document outlines the scale of the problem that we are trying to work through. The Dublin region is the largest in the country and we have included a graph which shows that in the first four months of the year the number of calls has increased by more than 100% compared to the numbers last year and the previous year. We do not know whether this will extrapolate to an even greater increase at Christmas but it is very high. It indicates that whatever the numbers might be indicating, people are struggling.
It is true welfare rates were not cut but those on welfare are most definitely worse off now than they were prior to the budget. It is the only group who have had to pay increases in rent of at least €11 since October. They have lost the early child care supplement and been told that the Christmas bonus is going, which will cause great hardship. The only ones happy that the Christmas bonus is going are the moneylenders who are clapping their hands with absolute joy.
We heard suggestions of a softening up process by economists in the media and newspapers last weekend. They stated the decrease in the consumer price index was a justification for cutting welfare rates. As Mr. Walsh indicated, most of the decrease has been in mortgage relief or bank interest rates. The cost of what people spend their money on, namely, food, energy, education, health and transport, over which they have little or no control, has not decreased. We still have higher prices in Ireland compared with most other countries in Europe. The question I will put to those who believe those on welfare and pensions are doing very well is this: if people on welfare are doing that well, why is the Society of St. Vincent de Paul spending €1 million a week, making more than 350,000 calls every year and putting in approximately 2 million free volunteering hours? It appears we are helping the non-existent poor with their non-existent problems.
Mr. Walsh mentioned child support, a crucial issue. We welcome the introduction of the early education package. However, we are somewhat concerned that the limit that may be put on this and the capping of the amount a particular recipient can receive will cause problems for many poorer families. We know the removal of the early child care supplement is causing great difficulty for low-income families in work.
There are proposals to reduce or change child benefit. It is our experience that many families are using this money as an essential part of their daily budgets for food, rent and other expenses. Any reduction in child benefit, however it may occur, must be accompanied by a corresponding increase in payments to those who are very poor, in other words, qualified child allowances and family income supplements. Poor children live in families and do not fall into poverty in isolation.
It is ironic at a time when most of us have seen reductions in our mortgage repayments or, if we are lucky enough to live in private rented accommodation without depending on State support, can renegotiate our rents that tenants of social housing schemes have faced rent increases of at least €11 per week. They are certainly worse off than they were last October. It is proposed that the rent supplement would be reduced and that tenants would negotiate rent reductions with their landlords. This is a naive proposal, to put it mildly. These people are constrained to living in particular circumstances and are not free to move accommodation. The suggestion they would negotiate with their landlords is therefore ludicrous. The rent supplement scheme is itself a scandal. We are spending €432 million annually on it, a figure which could increase to more than €500 million next year. It is a waste and a poverty trap. It would be preferable if recipients were placed in social housing because they would thereby pay lower rents and, more importantly, would be able to work if they could find employment. At present, they are penalised if they have jobs.
The income levies imposed on the low paid are a further indication of how people have suffered. We have managed to pass a taxation Rubicon in that we have installed in the system the principle that one will pay tax regardless of how poor one may be. People earning less then the minimum wage of €289 per week are being taxed. It is called a levy but that is merely a different way to spell "tax". In the event that the levy is replaced by a tax in the next budget, we are concerned to ensure those currently paying it do not pay more. If we are to prevent an even bigger increase in poverty among the working poor, we have to ensure those who are now paying tax on low pay are taken out of the system as quickly as possible.
The society has helped unemployed people for as long as we have existed but we are facing an avalanche in this regard. This is a real human tragedy. We are concerned about delays in paying benefits because, while the Department claims average waiting lists of four weeks, in our experience the wait can be as long as 13 weeks. That is unacceptable. In fairness to the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, we welcome her efforts to recruit additional staff to reduce the delays.
Serious problems arise in respect of self-employed people who have lost their businesses. Many did not pay for the correct stamps if they paid at all and now find they are entitled to little or nothing. We need to find mechanisms for protecting such people and are trying to play our part in this regard, especially in rural Ireland. Our focus should be on unemployed people with low skills because they will be the last to return to employment. We need to support young people in particular. The unemployment rate among young people, at 20%, is double the national rate. Deputy Enright noted on a previous occasion that the rate is closer to 30% in her constituency. Those who will be left behind are people with low education, so we badly need to help them.
We welcome the back to work enterprise allowance, which is aimed at encouraging people, especially the self-employed, to start up small companies. However, from my experience of my day job, which for many years has involved helping people to start businesses, I realise that two years is not long enough to get a small company up and running. It does not make sense to remove the benefit after two years, therefore.
It is all very fine to speak about protecting the banks and generating further employment but it will be essential to protect the jobs which already are available if we are to maintain and sustain the skills base of this country. I am aware that many political parties have grabbed onto this issue but I remind them of our pre-budget submissions in which we repeatedly advised that we need an imaginative mechanism which puts together the social welfare codes and other sources of money, such as the EU's globalisation, social and energy funds, to keep people in work rather than on the dole. Such a mechanism would have the great benefit of keeping companies in existence. The Government will recoup its investment through taxes, PRSI and levies and the people at work will have the benefit of having a job.
We are dealing daily with the conditions of apprentices. It imperative that every young person in an apprenticeship can complete his or her training. We must also retain for the country the skills of the graduates in whom we have invested substantial sums of money. The graduate support scheme which was introduced many years ago by Enterprise Ireland should be revived.
I will now speak about other important issues which are not necessarily relevant to the budget. We have great regard for our colleagues in the money advice and budgeting service but they are totally stretched and need more help and staff. We are especially worried about the suspension of the community support scheme which provides older people with alarms and safeguards. In the society's national management council meeting last Saturday, we instructed all our conferences to ensure no older person in Ireland went without an alarm. We will buy them if necessary and then argue the case with the Department because it would be unconscionable if an older person was hurt or died simply for the cost of an alarm.
Significant problems have arisen in regard to the mechanism and qualifying threshold for mortgage interest allowance as well as with the numbers who should be receiving it.
The previous budget's abolition of the book grant scheme for schools outside DEIS areas is a disaster. Schools throughout the country are seeking our help because they cannot support needy children. It is a scandal that a charity such as the Society of St. Vincent de Paul is expected to do the work of the State. We can apparently find €190 million to support the pig industry yet we cannot find €7.5 million to fund this scheme and support children. The cost of school books must also be addressed. In effect, there is a cartel in this regard and a system should be devised to put manners on that process. We have heard mutters about cutting back on the back-to-school clothing and footwear allowance for poorer families and our response is "hands off." This payment is essential to poorer families.
The conditions for asylum seekers in this country are especially bad. They live on €19.10 per week, a sum which has not increased for several years, and we tend to forget them. They are the other part of the forgotten poor. Equally, the society is now being called on to help migrant workers who we were happy to take into the country when times were good but are now falling out of the system because they do not meet the habitual residency conditions. We are particularly concerned about what will happen when the new work permit system is introduced on 1 July because we expect it will cause great hardship.
In summary, calls to the St. Vincent de Paul have increased dramatically. We are now spending more than €1 million per week because there is no question that poverty and suffering have increased. While welfare and pensions were not cut in April's budget, poor people are certainly worse off. There is neither a moral nor an economic justification for reducing benefits because the cost of energy, food, transport and health remain high and poorer people have no way of avoiding them. We need to keep people in employment and address youth unemployment. As education is the key to progress and development of this economy, it cannot be subject to further cuts.
The Society of St. Vincent de Paul will continue to do what it has done for the past 160 years. We will be out every night of the week and will work as best we can to offer people our friendship, support, reassurance and hope. Above all else, we must focus on people before percentages.