This is my third week in a row on the Adjourment Matter. I have probably been pushing my luck. I thank you for allowing me to raise this question of the reduction in allowances for trainees on courses for which the Minister for Labour has responsibility. I am referring in particular to courses under the general aegis of FÁS at this stage — they would have been under the aegis of AnCO in a previous world — and to people under the aegis of CERT.
The allowances were cut by figures which varied from about £10 a week for 15 to 16 year-olds to £3.30 a week for 25 to 66 year-olds. Social welfare rates vary and allowance rates vary, but the fundamental principle that allowances have been cut, and cut in a way which bears heaviest on younger people, is without dispute. It is bad enough that any allowance should be cut because no allowances payable in our society are all that generous. The allowances prior to these slashing cuts were, to say the least, minuscule. They did not provide people with anything like an income. In the case of people over 18 they did not provide, even in their pre-cut condition, any real encouragement to people to do these courses.
The cutbacks must be seen in the context of the report of the Youth Forum of the European Commission in their policy document A European Perspective on Vocational Training which called on member states to pay an allowance to trainees sufficient to allow them to feed, clothe and house themselves and to enjoy some leisure activities. That was the perspective of the Community of which we claim, when it suits us, to be a committed and dedicated member. We have left people with the sort of sum of money which will guarantee that, if they are to feed themselves they will not clothe themselves, if they are to clothe themselves they will not be able to feed themselves, and if they choose to feed and clothe themselves, they will not be able to house themselves. One thing I can guarantee the Minister is that the trainees will not be able to feed, clothe and house themselves.
I do not want to attribute this personally to the Minister. The Minister is a friend of mine. Therefore, I will not get involved in any sort of personal abuse. The Government's perspective, which the Minister must loyally defend, on somebody coming from probably a deprived background and a less than adequate educational background, someone we are hoping to entice into a new vision, under the whole glorious title of the social guarantee, of doing something useful is to provide such a person with that sort of income. The younger have the choice of either starving or accepting whatever is handed out to them because they do not qualify for social welfare. For the 18 year-olds and over we are simply saying: "You have no choice. Therefore, you take it or you leave it." The cutbacks effectively have eliminated any positive incentive for the unemployed to gain a foothold in the labour market by undertaking training. It is reasonable to say that, instead of the allowances being an incentive to undertake training, they are actually a disincentive and a barrier.
One ought to look in particular at the allowances for adults. Even though the training allowance is, in theory, equivalent to the unemployment assistance payment, it is not because extra deductions are made from it. FÁS make some deductions from these meagre allowances. They can be made, for instance, in respect of absences and late attendances. When you have the misfortune to be signing on the dole you have to sign on once a week but, effectively, when you are on one of these training schemes which are meant to be helping you, you are effectively signing on perhaps twice a day and you may be penalised in respect of any absences. In addition, if FÁS choose to believe that somebody is absent without good cause and arrange to have money deducted from the person, there is no independent appeals procedure, whereas if somebody signing on the dole has money deducted, there is, ostensibly at least, an independent appeals procedure. The perception is not so, but there is a formalised appeals procedure.
That does not create the climate in which these training schemes become more attractive. Unlike the social welfare system, a FÁS trainee has no right of complaint to the Ombudsman. The Minister will recall that he rejected allowing the Ombudsman the power to investigate complaints about FÁS during the debate in the Seanad in July 1987.
Deductions can be made for meals given to trainees in excess of the value of £3 per week. Trainees have to attend AnCO centres at 8.30 a.m. On dark winter mornings many need to use public transport to arrive. Where travel allowances are paid, they are often inadequate. I have seen figures which suggest that somebody from Enniskerry in County Wicklow who has to travel to the city centre to a training scheme will be out of pocket, after the travel allowances are paid, to the tune of almost £2 a week. There is a certain unreality about figures like £1 or £2 a week in a place like this, which is a bit like the great Lord Lane in the Court of Appeal in London wondering about the Birmingham Six wondering about a couple of pounds. To the Minister and myself £1 or £2 may not be an enormous sum. To somebody on £35 a week the absence of £1 or £2 a week is the difference between one meal in the week being there or not being there.
In addition to the cash benefits people lose, they are not eligible for many of the additional benefits that go with unemployment assistance. They are not paid a Christmas bonus. They are excluded from the national fuel scheme and they lose eligibility to EC social assistance butter vouchers. They can also lose help under supplementary welfare with ESB bills, etc.
It would be easy for the Minister to tell me that these are somebody else's problems, but he is a member of the Government. He has collective responsibility and, if decisions are taken about areas within his jurisdiction, it is his responsibility to know the impact of those decisions on those people for whom he has the responsibility. In addition, he has a responsibility to know what other benefits available to trainees from other Departments are being removed.
I would like to talk about the cuts in allowances as they affect the under 18 year-olds. In column 2311, Volume 368 of the Official Report of 3 July 1986 the Minister present, then Opposition spokesman, asked the then Minister:
Would the Minister agree that people between the ages of 15 and 18 years who are on these courses are normally from deprived backgrounds and are encouraged by community leaders and others to avail of these courses? They are the last people who should be affected by these cuts and whoever was responsible for making this suggestion should be brought to account.
That last suggestion is one I should like to endorse — whoever was responsible for making this suggestion and, indeed, whoever was responsible for accepting that it should be implemented, ought to be brought to account.
The Association for Community-based Training and Educational Development, of whom I am sure the Minister is aware, made a considerable and convincing case about the damage these cuts will do. The reduced rates will clearly act as a disincentive to young trainees and will lessen their motivation to participate in training courses to their fullest capacity. The low training rates will possibly encourage young people to participate in the black economy. The reductions will clearly affect family income in the most deprived and disadvantaged areas and, while it is true that the vast majority of young people in any area are law abiding, there is no doubt that reductions in income will encourage some young people to participate in anti-social or criminal activities.
The less obvious consequence of such cutbacks is to undermine any development in personal responsibility, because a young person with that limited source of income will not be in a position to make any reasonable contribution to the family income or else will not be able to retain a reasonable proportion of personal disposable income. The really painful part of this is that what has been adjudicated to be realpolitick is that, since 16 to 18 year-olds who are not in school, or in general have no access to State support, effectively one can offer them what one likes because it will be more than what they had previously. One can judge what is an acceptable level of support for a person in two ways. It can be judged on the basis of the minimum needed to provide for their basic needs which is the humane, compassionate Christian democratic way to do it, or we can say we will give them the minimum we can get away with and that will be the most we wish to pay and it can be reduced.
If people have no access to income the income that society chooses to give them can be determined by different criteria. I would have thought the humane criteria were what would give people a minimum standard of living. By a minimum standard of living, I mean one that is vastly lower than, say, you, a Leas-Chathaoirligh, the Minister and I are used to. We are not talking about anything like the standard of living we are accustomed to. We are talking about something that is light years away from the standard of living we take for granted.
The Combat Poverty Agency have made clear a very deep concern about the implications of these cutbacks. They said these cuts would hit young people in great need and pointed out that, relating these allowances to social welfare levels, in many ways flies in the face of the spirit of the Commission on Social Welfare report which clearly accepted that levels of social welfare payments were grossly inadequate. To begin to develop a base line of income support based on incomes which are identified as being utterly inadequate is not even a matter of equalisation. It is a matter of regression backwards. Therefore, instead of beginning to raise the levels of income support which have been identified as being inadequate we are choosing to reduce the levels of income support which are somewhat in excess of the inadequate base levels.
So much could be said on this issue that I do not know if I want to elaborate on it all. I have volumes of stuff in front of me and I am only telling it to the Minister who knows most of it already. I want to make the point that these cuts are not unconnected with Jobsearch because, for most people who have been unemployed for any longish period, the threat of Jobsearch — and I use the word "threat" deliberately — hangs over them more or less permanently. They know that, irrespective of the hardship that may be caused, to refuse a Jobsearch offer means the end of unemployment assistance. They may know that to accept a Jobsearch offer means moving from one degree of poverty into a worse degree of poverty but, to decline a Jobsearch offer, means moving from a degree of poverty into absolute destitution. Since virtually the entire media plus most of the political parties refuse to accept all of the evidence that has been assembled to show that Jobsearch has done nothing other than make much of the unemployment worse than it already was, and since unsubstantiated — that is without the methodology or the specific facts made available — assertions by the Minister for Social Welfare have become dogma on this issue, it is almost impossible to get this through to Irish public opinion.
There are very different views about Jobsearch. In another place I have already indicated the depths of hostility in all of the centres of the unemployed around the country to Jobsearch. The Jesuit Centre for Faith and Justice have documented in fairly comprehensive fashion the perceptions of Jobsearch and, indeed, the misuse of statistics to justify Jobsearch. In each case, those quite clear challenges to the established view have gone unheard and the unsubstantiated assertions by the Government have been taken as fact. I see a direct connection between the capacity to threaten and the capacity to lower allowances. The one thing said to me consistently about Jobsearch was that it was the same as the old AnCO or FÁS course except that it was now mandatory. If we can threaten to take away £40 a week from a person, it is easy to force him to work for £37 a week.
Hidden in the middle of this, apart from the obvious penalty on young deprived people, is an implied discrimination against women. Any woman who has a child will quite happily be available for work while she can afford to pay a child minder and is, therefore, clearly both actively seeking employment and available for work and, therefore, entitled to unemployment assistance. She cannot go out of the home to do what is effectively a mandatory Jobsearch job at £37.80 per week because on £37.80 a week she could not afford to pay somebody to look after her child. There is effectively a systematic exclusion of women with children from the register of unemployment assistance, not because they are not available for work because they are, not because they are not actively seeking employment because they are, but because we will not pay them enough on a training scheme which takes them out of the home to support a child or their children. That is gross discrimination and is contrary to the spirit of both the employment equality legislation and much of what the Minister has said on many occasions in recent times about equality between the sexes.
