I welcome the Minister of State to the meeting. I also welcome the fact that this review was undertaken. I will engage on the priority decisions, as we often get reports with 19, 100 or 200 recommendations, with most then left to lie on the shelf. What I am interested in is what the Minister of State is going to change, and perhaps we can persuade him to make some other changes as well. I am happy with certain aspects of the changes, but were I asked whether the big issues had been tackled overall, I would say “No, they have been avoided”.
I live in a rural area, so I would have thought it self-evident, but as I have often said, if those 2,600 plus workers disappeared tomorrow and no one took over what they were doing, then we would have people screaming at us within six months about the maintenance of many services, particularly physical services like community green areas, sports fields and so on.
This leads me to another point. The RSS is the best value for money the Department has ever achieved. As I have mentioned previously, there are local green areas where I live. They are fabulous. They lead down to the lake and run in parallel with it. They are maintained by the RSS, which just put in a walking route around the lake. People can make various circuits around it. The route is very popular now. Were it a public park in this city, we would have fully paid staff, contracted to retirement, to do all of that work. When I say the RSS is great value for money, that is a given, but people do not fully think through the implications of taking it away.
The gross cost of the scheme is €52 million, but each of its participants has an underlying entitlement to farm assist, fish assist or some other social assistance payment anyway.
We need to know whether the Department has an estimate of the net cost of the scheme compared with having all these people doing nothing. That is the real cost. We look at the contribution or benefit, and then the cost benefit. I think we will find that the benefit is totally disproportionate to the cost. If the €52 million was taken away in the morning, they would all fall back on farm assist, fish assist and other payments – the vast majority are farm assist and fish assist – and there would still be a large residual payment, which I reckon could be up to €40 million. Therefore, the real cost of providing these super services is about €10 million. I welcome the three-year contracts.
There seems to be in the recommendations an idea that this was an activation scheme, that is, that it was a halfway house scheme to try to activate people into a better life of PAYE employment. Perhaps I am reading the recommendations in the report wrong. The idea of the scheme from the beginning was that these were full-time farmers who were giving up - between themselves and a partner, if they had one - 19.5 hours to community work a week and getting paid for it. They really could not take up a full-time job because they were farming and that is why it was tailored to a modest contribution of hours. Therefore, the original rule said that if you went in the scheme, it was not an activation scheme because they were activated. Who are more activated than farmers? If somebody left and got a PAYE job, fine. However, that was not the purpose of the scheme. The purpose was to give social stability and a reasonable income to small farmers. Therefore, I welcome the over-60 element, but I think it is way too restrictive and we should go back to the original rule.
That particularly seems to be unnecessary. One would think there was a queue out the door from here to Galway of people trying to get into the scheme. However, we know that the pool is limited because the pool of people in receipt of farm assist is very small at present. Therefore, the problem is filling the places, as we see because the numbers permitted on the scheme far exceed the number on the scheme. My view is that as long as the companies can provide the places, there should be no quota on the companies any more. There is no need for it. If they can provide useful work for people and if people are eligible, we should fill it up to the 3,500. People should be able to stay on it indefinitely, unless a time arises that there is greater demand for the places than 3,500, or whatever the limit on the scheme is. Then we might have to ration them out, but I do not see that in the foreseeable future as long as employment stays strong in the country. Which is better, to have a farmer at home getting farm assist or have them in one of the RSS jobs doing a huge contribution to the community, which I think I have proven is the best value for money we are getting in terms of public services in the country? There has been a big debate about the cost of some public services here. This is one where there is relative output for a small net cost. Why not just take that third one out there and go for bust, and let people stay in the scheme as long as there is not somebody trying to get onto the scheme for whom we do not have a place?
I welcome the three-year contracts. The reason there were one-year contracts is there was some worry in the Department at the time about employment rights and so on that might accumulate. I am glad it appears that has been overcome. It is big step in the right direction. Initially, the means test did not take place every year. I think for the first five years of the scheme it did not take place at all. I again welcome that it will be for three years.
The final big point of this seems to have been avoided in the review. I am awfully surprised at all the interested parties. I often wonder about these reviews compared with, say, the experience I would have, or the participants, who are a bit shy. I often find that people are shy about their own affairs. They will tell us but they will not tell everybody. They will not get up on a soapbox. The reality is that, for some reason I cannot understand, a rule came in at one stage that if I go on it and am a single person, without a dependent adult, as they call it, under the social welfare payment, I will get the €259.50. Even if my farm income is €258.50, I will get the full €259.50 bonus for going on the scheme. If my farm income is €100, I will still get the €259.50. Allowing partners to go on at the same time will do some good, but some of those have part-time work. If I have a dependent adult or dependent children, the maximum net gain I can get by going on the scheme is the top-up, which I think is €27 a week. Therefore, I am getting €27.50 for 19.5 hours’ work. I have asked the Minister of State for this before but the Department has never provided them and I should have perhaps pursued it. I asked a few times. Since the rule changed, has the ratio of new entrants into the scheme between people with dependent adults and people without dependent adults changed? In other words, are the people with dependent adults the reason we have this number on farm assist? There is no logic in having anybody on farm assist if the scheme was the old way because it is so attractive. I have a suspicion that the people getting left on farm assist now are the farmers or fishers with dependent adults who will not work 19.5 hours for €27.50. Therefore, I am very disappointed that we do not revert to the original rule. I do not think it needed a review. I think this should be the Minister of State’s private review, and we just go back to the original rule and say that if you go on the scheme, you get the full rate, that is, the full person rate with dependent adult or dependent children, according to the normal rules of the scheme. If you are half rate for the children, then you get the full half rate on the scheme.
I welcome the proposal here but I noticed something. There was initially a capital allocation for whatever need the scheme had – it depended what work they were doing. Some of that was abused and we got it back. However, there needs to be some capital allocation rather than going around to other Departments. It is only one Government. The Minister of State knows that there is much fighting between Departments over funds. Everyone is trying to get it off the other Department. However, at the end of the day, to those who sit around the Cabinet table, there is only one pot. Let us keep it simple. The Minister of State’s Department would pay a capital allocation where there is a case to support the scheme and increase the productivity of the scheme.
