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Social Welfare Benefits Data

Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 20 February 2018

Tuesday, 20 February 2018

Ceisteanna (44)

Peter Fitzpatrick

Ceist:

44. Deputy Peter Fitzpatrick asked the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the uptake to date of treatment benefits which were recently extended to the self-employed; her plans to extend additional benefits to the self-employed; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [8402/18]

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Freagraí ó Béal (7 píosaí cainte)

I am delighted to get an opportunity to ask a question of the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Deputy Regina Doherty. Can she give me an update on the treatment benefits, which she recently extended to the self-employed? Can she indicate what additional benefits she plans to extend to the self-employed? As a former self-employed person, I believe the self-employed were neglected in recent years and am delighted to see a Minister who will do something at long last.

I thank the Deputy for his question. The treatment benefit scheme was made available to self-employed contributors for the first time from 27 March 2017. The benefits available at that time, which were free dental and optical exams and a contribution towards hearing aids, were extended to self-employed people. Between self-employed contributors and their dependent spouses, those changes have added 450,000 customers to the scheme, which I think is absolutely deadly.

The additional optical and dental treatments were introduced at the end of October 2017. We have seen a surge in uptake from the customers, with the new dental cleaning and supply or repair of glasses being particularly popular. Consequently, more than 330,000 claims have been processed and paid in the three months from November 2017 to January 2018. This represents a fourfold increase on the same period a year ago.

It is not possible to identify treatment benefit claims from the self-employed without significant analysis and development work, as the Department does not record this information under separate pay-related social insurance, PRSI, classes. We do not ask when a service use appears whether he or she is employed or self-employed. However, the increase in claim numbers around the period of extending these benefits is a good indicator of the interest in them from the self-employed community and their spouses.

Entitlement to invalidity pension was also extended to the self-employed from December 2017.

The actuarial review of the Social Insurance Fund, which I published in October 2017, will play an important role in informing the overall debate on policy developments on the Social Insurance Fund, including its financial sustainability and the consideration of extending benefits for workers generally, including to the self-employed. The actuarial review concluded that self-employed PRSI contributors already get excellent value for money and provided costings for the extension of additional benefits to self-employed people.

I thank the Minister for her reply. I must agree with her that it is very important that these treatments are given to the self-employed, especially the optical and dental services. I also believe they have been extended to their spouses and partners. It is great that approximately 450,000 self-employed people will benefit from this. As has been said, this country was on its hands and knees from 2007 and onwards. The self-employed, owners of small and medium-sized enterprises, SMEs, and entrepreneurs are the people who gave a big hand in getting the country back on its feet.

The self-employed should be entitled to similar, if not the same, benefits as full-time employees working to pay their PRSI. To me, it is a brave person who gets up in the morning, goes to the bank, gets a loan and starts his or her own business. These people must be looked after.

I agree with the Deputy. A working group was set up in my Department to examine and develop a benefits scheme for the self-employed who become unemployed. The group has now finished its work. I am specifically referring to jobseeker's allowance and jobseeker's benefit, which are probably the schemes that self-employed people tell us most often that they would love to access, from a security perspective. As the Deputy notes, they go to work every day, and they have had the gumption and initiative to set themselves up in work and to provide employment for other people. The least the State can do is provide them with the security blanket of knowing that if they are sick they have a minimum basic income for that period.

The group that we established has now finished its work. We are currently completing a report, which I hope will be available shortly, and then I will examine and consider the report's context. Again however, it must be in line with the growing economy. It depends on how much funding is available and on the review of the Social Insurance Fund. Ultimately the aim of this partnership Government is to make sure that we extend all of the employment benefits that are available to employees to self-employed people. We will not stop continuing to extend them.

I thank the Minister very much. As a self-employed person myself, I started my own business in 1994. I remember sitting down with my wife at night-time and the decision to go into the bank to hand over the deeds of my house as a guarantee that, whatever money it gave me, at least it would be repaid. It is very important that we give the self-employed jobseeker's allowances and benefits. I refer again to the self-employed, SMEs and entrepreneurs. I know a lot of people who are afraid to give a commitment to start their own business. I remember going to night classes years ago, spending a lot of money to learn what it would take to set up my own business. Can the Minister give us any indication of when she thinks that the self-employed might get their jobseeker's allowances and jobseeker's benefits? A lot of people who would like to take a chance but if one is a family man, it is not only oneself one has to think about, it is also one's family.

This is a twofold system. All of the supports, encouragement and financial assistance to help people to establish their own businesses are available form the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation. They are growing, and given that more people have started to establish their own businesses, we can see that confidence is returning. However, Deputy Fitzpatrick is right. In our Department, which is concerned with income support, we want to fill the gap so that a self-employed person who is ill can avail of the security blanket of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection. I am not in a position to tell the Deputy when this gap will be closed. If I won the lotto tomorrow, we might do it much sooner than we will be able to. It is very much dependent on the growth in the economy. The economy is in a good place at the moment and if those trajectories keep going in the right direction, I anticipate that we will be able to do it within the lifetime of this Government, assuming that we have a full term. However, we are not going to stop until we extend to the self-employed community the full spectrum of supports that are available from my Department, whether they are treatment benefits or any of the schemes that are available to employees.

We have received an apology from Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett.

Question No. 45 replied to with Written Answers.
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