I thank the members of the committee for giving us the opportunity to discuss this important issue. I am accompanied by Ms Frances Byrne from OPEN and Ms Sarah Gill and Ms Hilary Kingston, who are community employment, CE, workers working in the community. We had a meeting on Wednesday with the Minister, Deputy Ó Cuív, on this issue and we were delighted to hear his statement that he was not considering removing the additional welfare payments for lone parents and people with disabilities who are on community employment schemes. We thank the members of this committee who have made representations on behalf of those workers.
The "Your Right Your Fight" community employment, CE, campaign aims to protect welfare entitlements for community employment workers. The campaign is a joint SIPTU, OPEN, INOU and Mental Health Ireland campaign which is supported by Inclusion Ireland. More than 10,000 CE workers are members of SIPTU and are organising and campaigning with the union to defend their rights and entitlements on behalf of CE workers and their families. The "Your Right Your Fight" campaign is being co-ordinated and supported by CE workers nationally to ensure the retention of one-parent family payments and disability allowance so lone parents and people with disabilities can continue to access training and employment through CE.
CE is a vital means of addressing long-term unemployment by providing accessible and appropriate opportunities for employment and training. Even during the Celtic tiger economy significant numbers of people found it hard to access employment. Active labour market programmes such as community employment have played an important role in creating access points for long-term unemployed people, lone parents and disabled people. At a time of unprecedented unemployment, schemes like community employment are even more vital. Community employment provides badly need jobs and resources that underpin the delivery of services in local communities. CE is the backbone of the community sector providing one third of total employment there. Child care projects, youth projects, disability projects, meals on wheels, elder care projects and so forth are dependent on CE workers to deliver vital local services.
The removal of the one-parent family, OPF, payment and disability allowance for community employment workers would have a devastating impact on the workers and on the community sector infrastructure as a whole, causing much of it to simply collapse. More than 10,000 CE workers, 50% of the total, are in receipt of OPF or disability payments. The proposed cuts will act as a financial disincentive and major obstacle to lone parents and the disabled entering a CE scheme. The removal of welfare entitlements will have a major impact on staffing levels and the sustainability of community projects. CE provides 25% of community child care workers, many of whom are lone parents.
In some community settings a CE worker does the same or a similar job as a directly employed worker. If this proposal goes ahead then only the lone parent or disabled directly employed worker would be entitled to receive both his or her wages and a portion of his/her OPF or disability payment, thus potentially creating a two-tier workforce in community projects. This is not desirable and would create problems for those projects.
The call to end what the McCarthy report termed "dual payments" to community employment would hit lone parents and disabled people particularly hard. Many of them have additional labour market participation costs. The McCarthy report rationalised its call to cut social welfare payments for two reasons, deflation and falling wages. However, deflation does not affect all income groups equally and not everyone has the means to shop around. Research by the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice on minimum essential budgets highlights the challenges facing social welfare and low income households in particular if they cannot access the major multiples. It should also be noted that the latest consumer price index from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, indicates the return of inflation. On the issue of falling wages, data from the CSO does not back up the argument of falling private sector wages. Its latest report notes that weekly "earnings in the public sector fell by 4.4% compared with a fall of 0.7% in the private sector". A reduction in working hours as distinct from a pay reduction appears to be a bigger factor.
In Budget 2010 participants on community employment were hit twice. As the CE payment is linked to social welfare payments for people of working age they lost 4.1%. They also lost a proportion of the training allowance they receive, so the differential between the basic social welfare rate and the CE payment reduced from €24.40 to €20. This loss of income was further compounded with changes to rent supplement supports and increased medical and dental charges. Many participants and social welfare recipients are fearful that further cuts will make life unbearable.
I will ask Ms Frances Byrne and Ms Sarah Gill to outline the next sections of the presentation.