WELFARE:SIGNIFICANT CUTS in welfare payments are required in the budget to meet a target of cutting €3 billion from the social welfare budget by 2014, Minister for Social Protection Eamon Ó Cuív has said.
But he said there was no question of Ireland going “back to the bad old days” and people living on welfare could be sustained in “reasonable comfort” on rates similar to those enjoyed back in 2007.
At a briefing on Government’s four-year National Recovery Plan yesterday, Mr Ó Cuív also announced that any jobseekers who refused to engage with a new national employment action plan would lose their dole payments.
The action plan, which is due to be unveiled in the budget, will offer the unemployed opportunities to get involved in community work and training programmes. Legislation has been introduced this year so that receipt of benefit payments would be conditional on participation in the action plan.
“We will have more intensive and continuous engagement with people on the Live Register. People with no good reason who do not interact with national employment action programme obviously will not retain their payments.”
The Irish National Organisation for the Unemployed criticised the comments yesterday, saying they had been assured by the Minister that the proposed employment action plan would not be introduced on a mandatory basis.
Mr Ó Cuív said he could not specify what individual cuts to welfare payments would be necessary in the budget but he said there had to be “significant savings” from welfare payments during 2011.
Cuts of €760 million will be made from the Department of Social Protection budget in 2011 in addition to savings of €100 million achieved through “labour activation” measures aimed at getting people back into employment.
“There is no question, there will be a reduction in social welfare rates this year – you can take that as a given,” he said. “There has to be a significant saving because control measures only operate over time. The most significant amount of that money has to come from changes to schemes.”
Further savings worth €1.9 billion will be required in the period 2012-2014, which should bring the overall social protection budget to €17.9 billion in 2014.
Mr Ó Cuív said he thought it would be possible to “ameliorate” further cuts to welfare rates by implementing savings through a crackdown on welfare fraud, structural reform and new employment programmes to cut the number of people on the dole. The crackdown on fraud will be aided by the roll-out of a new public services card next year for welfare recipients. The national recovery plan also flags two major structural reforms of the welfare system under consideration by the Government: a revamp of the child benefit system and the development of a single social assistance payment to replace a series of existing means- tested working age payments. Mr Ó Cuív said he was considering a new proposal that would reduce the current child benefit payment to a lower rate. This would be supplemented by a new single payment for families on low incomes or social welfare.
Welfare 2011-2014
2011
Cuts of €760m will be made from the Department of Social Protection budget – the bulk of which will come from reductions in social welfare payments. An extra €100min savings is targeted through “activation measures” to get people back to work and off social welfare.
2012-2014
An extra €1.9min cuts are required by getting people off the dole and into jobs, cracking down on welfare fraud and structural reform of the welfare system. Further cutbacks in welfare payments may still be necessary.