Last year when I spoke on the Social Welfare Bill I praised the Minister for his approach to the whole question of social welfare, even in the short space of time he had been in office. He had a very fresh approach. At that time my remarks were greeted with a certain amount of cynicism and scepticism by the Opposition but I think my remarks were justified. I have no hesitation this year in reiterating what I said in relation to the Minister. His record in the past year has been an exceptionally good one. This Bill shows that he is going to continue his good work in the coming year. It is obvious that the Minister is very committed and dedicated to the brief he has and is trying to ensure that the people who need to be catered for under the social welfare code will be fully catered for.
I particularly welcome the evidence of the Minister's willingness to try new approaches and to listen to other people's ideas, not just those on his own back-benches but on the Opposition benches as well.
Before going into the details of the Bill it is important to reiterate the financial context in which we are looking at this Bill. We are all very much aware that we have had severe budgetary restraints and many Departments have had to face severe cuts. In social welfare, one of the highest spending Departments, one would have expected severe cuts as well. But again, by his wise approach to the whole area of social welfare, the Minister has managed to maintain, in real terms, the spending in his own Department by improved efficiency and by ensuring that there is less loss of public money through abuse. The Minister is to be commended on the fact that he has cut back on fraud and on various abuses within the social welfare code and has given the money saved back to the people who deserve it, those on social welfare. I will be referring to that later.
The Commission on Social Welfare mentioned among their recommendations four main areas for priority attention. The first was improving the basic payments for those at the lowest payment levels; secondly, improving the level of income support for families; thirdly, a broadening of the social insurance base and, finally, improving the quality of the service being delivered by the Department of Social Welfare. I intend, very briefly, to use those four headings in my short speech on this Bill.
In the area of improving the basic payments for those at the lowest payment levels, it is very clear that the Minister in this Bill is carefully following that recommendation. We all know that inflation is now running at approximately 2.5 per cent to 2.75 per cent but in this Bill the Minister has given across-the-board increases of 3 per cent. It is the first time in many years that the Minister for Social Welfare has exceeded the level of inflation, even when we take into account some of the high increases of 20 per cent and so on that were granted earlier in the eighties. Inflation was running higher at that time.
In addition, as he did last year, the Minister has set the date for implementing the various increases in July. Deputies will recall that last year in the Fine Gael budget a November start-up date was proposed which would have meant severe difficulties for many people on social welfare. I have no doubt that critics of this Government and of the Minister will cry that this is not enough. They will look for a higher percentage increase and an earlier date. Some of them might even go so far as to say that it should be back-dated but we are living in the real world and we have to work within the real parameters that are set for us by the economic constraints we are faced with. The Minister has done extremely well to increase all these benefits by 3 per cent.
The Minister went even further in relation to the child dependant rates. He increased some of those payments by 6 per cent and this is very welcome. A side-effect of this increase is a lessening of the bureaucracy involved in the social welfare code. At present there are 36 different rates of payments for child dependants. With the way this increase is being implemented, that number will be halved and there will be now only 18 rates of payment for child dependants. Even 18 is too many but it is a step in the right direction and I hope that figure will be reduced even further next year.
Perhaps the greatest evidence of the Minister's commitment to the recommendation of the Commission on Social Welfare is the fact that he has increased some social welfare payments by 11 per cent— those on the lowest level of social assistance will get an 11 per cent increase. That is a very welcome move and one which I have not heard anybody criticise — or anybody from the Opposition praise — and the Minister should be commended for it. There was little dignity for a single man living alone trying to live on unemployment assistance of £34 or £35 per week. It was evident that many of these people had to go to the health board for supplementary welfare allowance which was also paid by the State. I hope the move that has been made this year will be continued next year. The size of the increase in this case was as unexpected as it was welcome. The Minister has done a good job. Overall, the fact that the Minister has allocated an extra £101 million to social welfare for a full year will be welcomed by all.
The second area I want to speak about is that of improving the level of income support for families. In this regard I refer again to the family income supplement. Last year I said this was a very worthwhile scheme. It had been introduced by the previous Government and I commend them for that. I commend the Minister for continuing it and I hope it will be improved during the coming year. It is the only scheme that I know of, whether in the tax code or the social welfare code, where there seems to be some form of positive discrimination in favour of the family. We always claim to hold the family in very high regard but over the past decade or so the family, as the basic unit of society, has not been given the recognition it deserves by the State. I hope the family income supplement, as one of the positive measures to assist the family, will be improved in the coming years.
I am disappointed that, again, this year the take-up in this area has been very low and I hope that something can be done to improve it. I am sure that more than the 5,000 families or so who are benefiting from this scheme could and should be benefiting from it. I know from the remarks made by the Minister that a review is to take place on the family income supplement. Like Deputy Browne, I suggest to the Minister that, instead of increasing the amounts to be paid, he should try to expand the scheme so that more people would qualify under it. That would be more beneficial. It is a welcome boost to the families who are already in receipt of the benefit. I also suggest that perhaps the Minister would consider taking more than six children into account in his calculations for family income supplement. I know it is tied, to a certain extent, to the average industrial wage and where there is a larger family involved perhaps this could be dispensed with. Everybody knows how difficult it is to rear a family, with all the additional expenses that are put to them.
With regard to broadening the social insurance base, there has been quite a considerable number of contributions regarding the introduction of the new insurance scheme for the self-employed. Undoubtedly, this is the most important change in the Social Welfare Bill and probably the most controversial. Many of the Opposition speakers have condemned it. All of them seem to be working on the same set of figures by the same gentleman who was mentioned by Deputy McDowell earlier. The Minister has, on a number of occasions, corrected that. The person who first challenged the Minister's figures in relation to this matter has not come back to deny that the Minister was right. The previous speakers came in here today with this notion and tried to grasp at some kind of straw, at something with which to criticise this move. They used the same set of figures which the Minister had disproved many times over the past couple of weeks. They insist on advancing the same arguments. I would suggest that, before any other Opposition speaker talks about the cost of this to the State and the fact that the PAYE taxpayer will be paying for the farmer again — they take a good, hard look at the figures when they will find that the Minister is correct.
Deputy O'Keeffe claimed that the Government introduced this without careful consideration. He claimed more or less that the Government rushed into it without taking anything into consideration. I think Deputy O'Keeffe was wrong. He was wrong to criticise the National Pensions Board who did a fine job in drawing up their report.
One other Deputy talked about the £2 flat rate breaking small farmers. The reaction I have had on the part of small farmers around County Meath, is quite the opposite. They welcome the chance to draw an old age contributory pension for which they will be eligible when they reach the age of 66 — there may be changes effected in that figure — when they will not have to satisfy any means test. That is a more realistic attitude than that of some Opposition spokespersons.
Some people have advocated what might be described as an opting-out clause. It should be remembered that the basis of any insurance scheme is that one takes on the good and bad risks together, overall evening out the cost; people cannot be allowed to opt out. For example, if an individual's circumstances change and he or she decides to opt out early on and their circumstances change again in, say, ten or 15 years time, when they would like to have the opportunity of opting in again, it could be too late to do so.
One of the major objections to this scheme has been that it will cost the State money. I can only reiterate that that theory is based on a false premise. It is based on the figures given, on a rate of 4.5 per cent on a ceiling of £15,000. But the rate will be 5 per cent and unearned income will be included. The upper limit has been increased already this year from £15,500 to £16,200. Therefore, it will be seen that people are working from a false premise. They should examine the scheme again before voicing any further criticism.
One feature of the scheme which is very welcome is the move to group PRSI contributions, health charges, the youth levy and tax altogether so that they can be collected together by the Revenue Commissioners. My experience on the Committee of Public Accounts has shown me that separate collection leads to more problems. The fact that the Revenue Commissioners will be able to collect all of these charges together will give an impetus to their collection, ensuring a higher collection rate.
I should like to turn now to the Jobsearch programme which "saved" the Government and the Department of Social Welfare £22 million last year. It was contended by Opposition speakers that we would not be able to conduct 140,000 or 150,000 interviews in the course of a year. In fact there were over 141,000 interviews conducted. As a direct result of that programme 4,239 people were placed in jobs and just over 30,000 were placed on AnCO courses with a further 10,000 on Jobsearch courses. That was a remarkable achievement. Some people may criticise it, contending that they were phoney jobs and so on but the people who benefited do not say that. They are glad of having been given an opportunity to do something useful over a certain period.
I might address the charges that people were bounded out of claiming unemployment assistance. Approximately 12,000, in fact nearly 13,000 people left the unemployment register voluntarily; they disappeared from the register. I am sure they had their reasons for so doing; I have a fair idea of what they were and are. In fact anybody in the country would know what they were. A total of 1,951 claims were disallowed as a result of the Jobsearch programme, representing less than 1.5 per cent of the total number of people called under the provisions of that programme. That belies the suggestion on the part of many that people were hounded, that this represented a way of getting them off the unemployment register.
My experience of the Jobsearch programme operated in Navan, County Meath, is that most people there were very satisfied after, I will admit, initial hiccups and problems having been encountered about which I will speak in a moment. They were very satisfied with the attention they received and the approach adopted by those people designated to help them. There was reference to a survey of Jobsearch participants which was conducted following their involvement in the programme. The statistics would seem to bear out what I am saying, in that 75 per cent of those who participated said they found it useful and, more importantly, 72 per cent of them felt more confident in going for a job having participated in the programme. Those figures speak for themselves.
I know there were some problems encountered initially in Navan and, I am sure, in other areas also. Undoubtedly there can be improvements effected in the operations of the scheme. For example, we might be somewhat more selective in the mix of people placed on the Jobsearch programme. Again from my experience of its operations in County Meath I know there were very young people, not long out of school with no work experience, alongside people of 50 or 55 involved in the same programme. It was not easy for the older participants to have to do things that the younger, more educated, felt they could do very easily. At times it was embarrassing for the older participants.
There did not seem to have been any effort made to grade people on the basis of their literacy skills. Let us face it, most people leaving school nowadays have good levels of literacy whereas older people — who had to leave school for various reasons earlier in the forties and fifties — might not have the same level of literacy. There did not seem to be any account taken of that fact. I might reiterate my general point that there should be a more selective approach adopted to the participants on one of these programmes. I might also suggest that participants be involved more in deciding course content. I know this occurred in Navan and was very successful. It may happen in other centres also.
I hope, in future Jobsearch programmes, the anomaly that arose in the course of the year about the entitlements of people on Jobsearch programmes — who were told they would have the same entitlements as if they were in receipt of unemployment assistance — found suddenly around Christmas time that they could have been without fuel vouchers and bonuses. I made representations to the Minister at the time and that problem was ironed out.
I might refer now to the need to improve the quality of service advocated by the Commission on Social Welfare. This is one of the areas where the Minister for Social Welfare has shone. He has provided, and is providing, a much better service for everybody involved. Up to now our exchanges were based mainly on the idea of serving the unemployed only but the Minister clearly intends that the social welfare offices should be geared to all our social welfare needs. I hope that that trend will be speeded up as much as possible during the next four or five years. I also note the Minister's plans for computerisation of local offices that has already been tackled in a number of centres and, as somebody mentioned earlier, that programme will continue during the next 12 months.
There is, and has always been, a case in the Department of Social Welfare, more than in any other Government Department, for a complete localisation of services, not just from the point of view of people having a certain local knowledge but also for combining the work of the Department of Social Welfare and the work of the community section of the health boards. It is ridiculous that a person who is disallowed for unemployment assistance has to go to his community welfare officer and instead of getting his assistance from the Department of Social Welfare he has to get it from the Department of Health. There is a separate means test in both cases. The localisation of services should help to cut down this duplication of services at local level. In this regard the proposal by the Minister for one-stop shops is most welcome.
Deputy Browne mentioned the plight of widowers and I should like to add to that the plight of deserted husbands who are trying to rear families. Some people who have been left in this situation, whether they are deserted husbands with families or widowers, are in a limbo. I ask the Minister to look at this. I realise that there are probably very severe cost implications involved in what I am saying but, in justice, we have to try to end this discrimination against fathers, husbands and widowers who are trying to rear families. I ask the Minister to look at this area and I reiterate what Deputy Browne said.
I should like to refer to the dental scheme which probably is not within the scope of the Social Welfare Bill but which is within the Minister's brief. I regret very much that dentists have not thrown their full weight behind the extension of the treatment scheme which the Minister introduced last year. They are operating their own form of discrimination against married women who work in the home. I appeal to them to end this discrimination immediately. They are responsible for it.
In relation to dental treatment, a problem that has arisen in the North Eastern Health Board area is the cost of orthodontic treatment for people whether they have medical cards or hospital services cards. It is practically impossible to get orthodontic treatment within the North Eastern Health Board area on the health board scheme. It is equally impossible for many families, and not just those on social welfare, to pay the cost of orthodontic treatment especially, as happens in some cases, when two or three people in a family need it. I ask the Minister to consider some kind of scheme, even if it is a loan scheme, which would allow people to borrow money either from the Department of Social Welfare or from a fund run by the Department of Social Welfare, so that people and, in particular, children can get the vital dental treatment they need. This is a serious problem and it should be addressed.
I should like to welcome the clearing up of the anomaly in the Social Welfare Bill in relation to pro rata pensions. This is an anomaly which we have all come across at various times and the 1,700 people concerned will welcome the fact that it has been cleared up. I should also like to welcome the fact that the local authority contribution to the cost of unemployment assistance is being dispensed with.
I should like to make a few comments on sections 19 to 22 in Part IV of the Bill. Section 19 is a substantial improvement and will serve as a much better deterrent to those who defraud the social welfare system. Too often after exhaustive investigations people are brought before the courts and charged with defrauding the system only to have the Porbation Act applied to them. Having to refund money before the Probation Act can be applied will make a huge difference in recouping the losses from fraud and in deterring other types of fraud. I welcome the provision for the increased penalties. If the provision for these penalties were implemented many more improvements could be made for those people who live in poverty. If we can get rid of all the abuses within the system we will have a lot more money for those who deserve it.
I congratulate the Minister on his efforts to deal with social welfare abuse whether by employers or by employees. The Minister earlier announced a crackdown on the abuse of the unmarried mother's allowance. This crackdown is on the abuse of the allowance, not on the allowance. When an announcement like this is made it is inevitable that there will be cries from various sectors about harassment of people and so on but I think the voices of the people who are paying for all these services should also be heard. If there is abuse it should be tackled and I commend the Minister for his courage in tackling some of the very serious abuses we have had for many years.