Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan said “the levels of reductions in people’s disposable income is nearing the lowest point we can go” when asked about controversial Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) suggestions.
Responding to remarks by an OECD official that a reduction in unemployment welfare rates could encourage people back into the workforce, Mr Hogan said there had already been a substantial reduction in the benefits of certain sectors of welfare in the last number of years.
“We have to have cohesion in Irish society . . . I think that the levels of reductions in people’s disposable income is nearing the lowest point we can go.”
Fianna Fáil’s spokesman on social protection Barry Cowen criticised the OECD’s “increasingly right-wing agenda”. Any proposal to cut welfare benefits to people who were unemployed to “push” them back into the workforce was illogical.