Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 22 September 2020
25. Deputy Claire Kerrane asked the Minister for Social Protection if she will consider moving towards linking social welfare rates with the minimum essential standard of living to ensure that all households relying on social welfare supports receive an amount that is adequate to meet their needs; the steps she will take in Budget 2021 in relation to the matter; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [25249/20]
View answerWill the Minister consider moving towards linking social welfare rates with adequacy? Will she begin that process in the upcoming budget?
The minimum essential standard of living, MESL, is an assessment, developed by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice, VPSJ, of the minimum income needed to live and partake in the social and economic norms of everyday life for various household types. My Department has partly funded the excellent, detailed work of the VPSJ for a number of years, and I find it extremely useful.
One of the benefits of the work of the Vincentians is that it provides the different levels of income needed by different household types, including the different costs that arise for households in rural and urban locations. The most recent report from 2019 indicates that the welfare system already provides adequate supports for some household types, for example, families with young children in urban locations and pensioners, but that there is an adequacy gap with respect to other households types, for example, families with older children.
In recent years, my Department has recognised these challenges. Budget 2019 introduced a new, higher rate of increase for qualified children aged 12 and over, under all social welfare schemes, and budget 2020 again provided for a higher increase for older children. Changes were also made to enhance the working family and one-parent family payments. I will again use the work of the Vincentians to inform my approach to the forthcoming budget.
With regard to the suggestion of linking welfare rate changes to an index such as the MESL, the previous Government committed to developing an approach to benchmark pension payments to inflation and earnings and, as part of its Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-2025, has also committed to consider extending this approach to other welfare payments. While any change to the current process of setting social welfare rates would require Government approval and would have to be considered in the overall policy and budgetary context, I will bring forward proposals in respect of both of these commitments over the next 12 months.
Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire. The Minister will probably know that this is an issue that we have been raising in the House for many years. In 2018, we published the Social Welfare Commission Bill, which was to establish a commission to consider the work the VPSJ does on the MESL to ensure very vulnerable households that rely on social welfare supports can meet a certain amount of their outgoings. All this is a very basic minimum standard of living to be met by these vulnerable households.
The commission would also take the political football out of setting rates during the annual conversation as the budget approaches of giving a fiver to some and not to everyone. This is a constant conversation every year. While I appreciate that the Minister's Department partly funds the VPSJ and its important work, it does not pay much heed to its overall objective, which is to link all social welfare rates to the MESL, which is so important.
Is that something the Minister will examine for all social welfare payments?
As the Deputy said, the Department has partly funded the excellent and detailed work of the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice for a number of years and it is useful. I met Sr. Bernadette McMahon at my Department's pre-budget forum in July. The work of the Vincentians highlights the importance of services and how they can impact on the minimum income standards needed by households. The minimum essential standard of living, MESL, research has consistently identified older children. We have made progress on that and I want to see us continue to make more progress. Bringing the weekly working age social welfare rates in line would entail increasing the maximum personal rate to €250 and increasing the qualified child rate to €48.20 for children under 12 and €94.70 for children over 12. That would cost an additional €2.51 billion per year.
I certainly would not be asking the Minister to do it in one year but I ask if she could begin the process in the next budget. The Minister also referred to the roadmap on social inclusion. We have been asking about this roadmap for a long time because, as the Minister will know, it was published two years late, having been due in 2017. The Minister will notice from the response of the organisations on the front line, for example, the Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Social Justice Ireland and the European Anti-Poverty Network Ireland, that they all note that the roadmap does not refer to bringing social welfare rates in line and benchmarking them to adequacy. That is very obvious in the roadmap for social inclusion. We know that poverty in the State is an ongoing crisis. Social Justice Ireland goes as far as to say that it does not believe poverty will have changed in any way, shape or form at the end of this inclusion plan.
The Minister mentioned the pre-budget forum. Adequacy is always mentioned as a priority in that forum. The Minister must also consider the CSO report on enforced deprivation, which shows that rates of deprivation have gone up. Has she read the report? More than one in five children are experiencing deprivation and more than 45% of lone parent families are living in deprivation. Those matters need to be dealt with.
Last year, my Department undertook a consultation process with a number of interested stakeholders. The process included discussions with representatives of the community and voluntary sector at the pre-budget forum in July 2019 as well as bilateral meetings with stakeholders. The outcome of those discussions was considered and, in consultation with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, my Department is considering proposals for setting a formal benchmark for State pension contributory payments and the indexation of future changes in pension rates of payment in line with the commitment in A Roadmap for Pensions Reform 2018-2023.
The programme for Government states that the Low Pay Commission is to examine universal basic income informed by a review of previous international pilots and resulting in a universal basic income pilot in the lifetime of the Government. The practical arrangements for giving effect to this commitment are still being considered but it is the intention that this matter will be progressed in accordance with the timeline set out in the programme for Government.
