Dept of Finance doc a 'ready up' to justify welfare cuts
Issued : Sunday 6 December, 2009
Statement by Roisin Shortall TD
Minister of State, Department of Health with responsibility for Primary Care
The document that appeared on the Department of Finance's website on Friday, Replacement Rates and Unemployment, is a classic pre-Budget ready-up to justify welfare cuts next Wednesday. It will suit the Government and indeed Fine Gael just fine.
There is nothing new in the document. The lack of integration of our tax and welfare systems, the idiotic untapered withdrawal of many welfare benefits when a person enters work, the severe limitations of Family Income Supplement, and, in particular, the poverty traps that are rent and mortgage interest supplements have all been highlighted before by myself and others.
The Department of Finance document simply appears now as an excuse to cut welfare. But cutting welfare will cause hardship to those who depend on it, while in the absence of employment opportunities, do very little to tackle the real problem.
The main problem is not over-generous welfare support for those out of work, but the sharp withdrawal of these supports for those in work.
The Labour Party is the first to acknowledge that welfare should never be a way of life for anyone. We have frequently highlighted the very many welfare and tax rules that encourage people to stay on the dole. We feel strongly that these rules contribute to the black economy and social welfare fraud. They amount to crazy social policy that acts against the best interests of both claimants and taxpayers.
However, there is a need to focus on and tackle these issues, not just use them as an excuse to make savings off the back of poor people.
In our pre-Budget document on Friday, the Labour Party emphasised the need to prioritise the Rental Accommodation Scheme over Rent Supplement as not only would it save the State money but it would also end this poverty trap once and for all. In the Dáil last week, our private member's motion called for the retention of child benefit rates precisely because any targeting measures would create new poverty traps for families. Isn't it curious that the Department's document, ostensibly about identifying poverty traps and proposing policies to make work pay for poorer families, failed to conclude that child benefit rates should be retained at current levels?
In the Child Benefit debate last week, I also highlighted the severe problems with Family Income Supplement which excludes the self-employed and those with non-standard working hours and does not take account of the huge costs families have on childcare and mortgage repayments.
The Labour Party would also like to see a vast improvement on the arrangements for temporary work for those on jobseeker payments as the current rules frighten people into not declaring short-term projects. The arrangements in respect of medical cards and CE employment also need attention.
Every T.D in the Dáil knows dozens of families who are struggling to survive because they have recently lost employment. These families would do anything to get a job but the work is just not there at the moment. Cutting welfare rates under the guise of incentivising them to take up non-existent employment just hits them when they are already down.
Like so much of the commentary from so-called experts over the past year, the Department of Finance document has clearly been written by someone who has never had to face this struggle. At the very least they have forgotten what it is like to live with very little when your children have the same demands as when you were at work.
If the Government was serious about making work pay, it would be looking at all of these issues and not just looking for excuses for making the poor pay for the Government's own mistakes.
