Amendments Nos. 14 to 16, inclusive, have been ruled out of order.
SECTION 5.
Amendments Nos. 14 to 16, inclusive, not moved.
Question proposed: "That section 5 stand part of the Bill."
My amendment was simply to apply £25 per child across the board. It would result in increased expenditure by the State and my amendment has been ruled out of order because Opposition Deputies or parties cannot spend Government money. The point of the amendment was to draw the Minister's attention to the need to seriously examine how we could eliminate poverty traps through the child benefit system.
A plethora of schemes provide income for families. The family income supplement scheme is related to the claimant but also to the number of children in the family. Child benefit is payable in respect of every child regardless of whether a person is working and whether their income is £100,000 or £5,000 a year. For good reasons, social welfare payments include allowances for chidren. The anomaly is that when a person goes to work, wages do not include an allowance for children. A person can lose as a result of taking a job.
The jobs on offer at the moment are low paid and it would make more sense if the Minister examined the question of integrating child benefit, child allowances under FIS and the child allowances under social welfare into a single child benefit payment payable in respect of all children. At the same time there could be a social welfare threshold — which I address to an extent in a later amendment also ruled out of order — whereby no social welfare payment would be below a certain level. It would also be important to apply that to threshold in relation to tax an PRSI levies.
I am arguing for a more comprehensive approach to social welfare and the integration of social welfare and tax to eliminate poverty and unemployment traps which exist because of the way we deal with allowances for children in the social welfare code. I am not arguing against these allowances but the way in which they operate results in people being trapped in a situation where they cannot increase their income without suffering a penalty.
It would be nice to integrate the child benefit, the child dependant allowance and the family income supplement children's allowance. However, it would effectively mean that the people who need it most would get less. This is the difficulty. I accept the Deputy's point. It is a question of resolving that difficulty without people who need the payment and social welfare losing out.
The Deputy mentioned the threshold for social welfare. If one was to impose a threshold, it would have to vary with the number of children but one of the great difficulties is reaching a situation where child benefit and the other allowances could be taken together. We should look at child benefit in addition to child dependant allowance. We will be trying to resolve that but the problem is preserving the position of the people most dependent on us. I agree with the Deputy in principle but achieving it in practice presents a difficulty. Many circulars would have to go under the microscope before one would get to that point.
Committee Stage is not necessarily the best platform for this kind of debate. The approach I propose would eliminate much of the bureauracy and complexity in the social welfare system and perhaps eliminate the need for many of the circulars which are mainly issued to clarify anomalies and so on. The threshold would be common across the board for social welfare and tax. The integrated child benefit payment would be the difference in terms of social welfare recipients. An enhanced child benefit would be paid universally and those in the tax net and with substantial incomes would repay some of it through the tax system. The payment would be accountable for tax purposes and that is why I suggest that integrating the tax and social welfare codes is important in terms of what I am arguing for here.
While the Minister is doing many important things in terms of improving rates and so on, there are so many anomalies and traps involved at the moment that there is a need for a root and branch approach to eliminating poverty and unemployment traps. A working group is examining the integration of taxes and social welfare at the moment. Does the Minister know when we are likely to get a report of a substantial nature from that working group? We have had an interim report which was nothing more than a nod in the direction that some work was being done. When are we likely to get a substantial report from that group?
Towards the end of this year, I understand.
In time for the next budget?
Hopefully in time for the next budget. We would have to discuss the question of taxation of child benefit at some length and it would take much more time to discuss it. One of the features of our situation is that we have a large number of people in the middle income group. There is a big middle group, a very small top group and a very substantial bottom group and this structure creates its own difficulties. We have an expert committee looking at all these issues and we will see what comes from that. The previous British Prime Minister actually established a base line similar to the one the Deputy is talking about, but in our circumstances that would mean a loss to people and I would not go down that road.
Question put and agreed to.