Social welfare payments for a single unemployed person should be increased by £14 in the Budget, and by £24 for a couple, according to a new report.
The increases should be part of a move to benchmark welfare payments at 50 per cent of average household incomes, the socio-economic review for 2001, published by CORI (Conference of Religious in Ireland), recommends.
The report calls for the Government and social partners to develop a new "social contract against exclusion" to be agreed at national level. Without such an approach "we doubt that poverty and social exclusion will be eliminated and we believe the rich-poor gap will widen even further", it says.
Prosperity and Exclusion, Towards a New Social Contract, says that Budget decisions in the next few years will be crucial to the shaping of Ireland in the 21st century.
Ireland is seen at both EU level and by the OECD as a success story in terms of the "conventional macroeconomic indicators", according to the report. However, side by side with the new Ireland of the Celtic Tiger is "another Ireland characterised in terms of a widening rich-poor gap, long-term unemployment, rundown inner-city housing, homelessness, growing aggression and violence".
The report also points out that Ireland has the highest pupil-teacher ratio in the primary school sector of all countries in the EU, as well as the highest level of adult illiteracy.
Ireland has the third-lowest expenditure on health in the EU and one of the lowest numbers of doctors per 100,000. The State is ranked 17th on the poverty index of 18 industrialised nations, and spends a lower percentage of its GDP on social protection than any other country in the EU. The EU average is 28.2 per cent while in Ireland it is 17.5 per cent.
There is "little evidence of the Irish economic miracle in the deprived sectors of the Irish economy. The fruits of economic transformation have not benefitted all members of Irish society. The rising tide of the Irish economy has failed to lift all boats", and in the absence of Government intervention those benefits will not trickle down to vulnerable and disadvantaged groups, the report says.
In the three years since the Government has been in office, single unemployed people are £10 a week better off while those on £15,000 are £49 a week better off. A single person on £40,000 is £96 a week better off while long-term unemployed couples are £17 a week better off.
Father Sean Healy, director of CORI's Justice Commission, which drew up the report, says: "There is a real danger that the plight of large numbers of people excluded from the benefits of the Celtic Tiger economy will be ignored. Irish society needs a radical approach to ensure the inclusion of all Irish people in the benefits of present economic growth. A basic income is such an approach."
CORI argues that a basic income is one that is unconditionally granted to every person on an individual basis.
It is paid to individuals rather than households and is paid irrespective of any income from other sources and without conditions. It does not require the performance of any work or the willingness to accept a job if offered one. It is always tax-free.
CORI supports individualisation of the tax system, but the report says the process followed by the Government is "deeply flawed and unfair".
"The cost to the Exchequer of this transition is well in excess of £0.5 billion. Almost all of this money has gone, or will go, to the richest 30 per cent of the population".
Benchmarking social welfare payments to 50 per cent of average household income would give a single person £92 a week in this year's terms, while in 2001 terms it would be close to £100, the report says in its recommendations.
Welfare payments should also be indexed to increases in average household incomes, and the report recommends increasing child benefit substantially without taxing it.
The Following are some of the proposals in CORI's Social Contract Against Exclusion:
Index social welfare payments to increases in average household incomes.
Benchmark social welfare payments at 50 per cent of average household incomes, about £92 for a single in 2000 figures.
Increase child benefit substantially and do not tax it.
Poverty-proof all Budget tax packages to ensure tax changes do not further widen the rich/poor gap.
Move towards individualisation of social welfare payments.
Move towards introducing a basic income system.
Increase tax credits substantially and make them refundable.
Remove work permit requirements for asylum-seekers whose asylum applications are at least one year-old.
Conduct an annual survey to discover the value of all unpaid work.
Set up an independent national agency to oversee and implement a national policy on homelessness.
Provide the childcare services with the additional resources necessary to effectively implement the Child Care Act.
Increase the percentage of the health budget allocated to health promotion.
Provide the necessary resources to achieve the NESF target of eliminating early school-leaving without a qualification by 2002.
Increase the proportion of education expenditure that is allocated to the primary sector.
