Select Committee on Social Affairs debate -
Wednesday, 20 Mar 1996

SECTION 2.

Mr. J. Walsh

I move amendment No. 1:

In page 5, line 19, after "1993" to insert "and ‘qualified persons' shall be substituted for any references therein to ‘adult dependant'".

The purpose of the amendment is very straightforward, to get rid of dependency terms in the Bill. The Department of Finance will be glad to know that as this is a policy issue, it does not cost anything. Many times during the year I have raised the issue of deleting dependency terms in legislation. It has been recommended by the Council for the Status of Women and generally it was anticipated that the opportunity would have been taken in this Bill to remove all terms throughout the legislation humiliating to women. We would wish to see that happen.

Minister for Social Welfare (Proinsias De Rossa)

I thank the committee for facilitating me by delaying the sitting until 11.30 a.m. which I very much appreciated.

I support in principle the amendment tabled by Deputies Joe Walsh and Mary Wallace. The original draft of the amendment which I had seen proposed to insert "qualified partner" and I had problems with that wording because there are circumstances in which an ‘adult dependant' would not necessarily be a partner — for instance, she could be a former partner. The present wording is better from that point of view.

My preference is to substitute "qualified adult" for "adult dependant" because we need to make a distinction in the payment as between adults and children. In addition, I am anxious to have the amendment drafted in a way that would be consistent with the Bill as it has implications for the legislation generally. References to "adult dependant" allowance are scattered throughout the legislation and it would be necessary to change that.

Although it will not have huge cost implications there will be some administrative cost arising from changing information leaflets, application forms and so on but I do not expect the Department of Finance to object to that. It can be done over time.

I accept the amendment in principle but I would prefer to substitute "qualified adult" for "adult dependant". Between now and Report Stage I will be happy to consider Deputies' suggestions on the phrase we should use and I propose to bring forward an amendment on Report Stage to implement the proposal.

There are many references to the term "adult dependant" throughout social welfare legislation and regulations and from a technical point of view it will be necessary to identify and replace all such references. In order to address the issue raised by the Deputies in the context of this Bill it may be possible to include a general provision in the Bill to construe all references to "adult dependant" as meaning "qualified adult" or "qualified person", whichever we decide on. This would facilitate the use of the new term as soon as possible following the enactment of the Bill and the various references to "adult dependant" could be identified subsequently with a view to having all such references replaced in the next Social Welfare Bill. I ask the Deputies to withdraw the amendment pending further discussion on Report Stage.

Mr. J. Walsh

That is very generous of the Minister. In the last set of printed amendments, our amendment referred to "qualified persons". Whether one uses the term "qualified persons" or "qualified adult" is not something I feel strongly about as long as the degrading and humiliating terminology is removed from the Bill.

Miss Flaherty

I welcome the direction of this amendment. It is a question of whether it is bypassing many of the real discriminations in the Bill. There is no doubt it will be an improvement. As more than 90 per cent of "adult dependants" are women, it is a gender issue — maybe a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I am not quite so sure. There is a huge change required in our social welfare system if we are to get rid of the concept of a shared household and hence the lower rate for the second adult social welfare recipient. The middle road suggested by the Council for the Status of Women is that there is an entitlement that the total adult payment be shared. While I welcome this amendment I am putting down a marker that the issues of dependency for many women and for some men is not being addressed by this amendment. I hope those other issues will stay on the agenda.

Proinsias De Rossa

I note Deputy Flaherty's point that what we are dealing with here is terminology. How people perceive themselves and react to the way they are described is important, but the underlying issue of dependency must be dealt with. A major debate as to how we should deal with that issue has not yet got underway in Irish society. The most radical proposal is that there should be individualisation of payments to people in need of social welfare support. That would have major cost implications involving hundreds of millions of pounds. If we were to go down that road, that proposal could not be introduced overnight, rather it would have to be phased in over time. That and other aspects of dependency are being examined by the Department. By accepting that proposal we are not in any sense saying that is the end of the matter.

Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Section 2 agreed to.