This year's Budget increases in weekly social welfare payments fail to meet the levels required for the Government to properly honour its own anti-poverty commitments, it has emerged.
Increases in weekly payments to pensioners and people receiving the lowest social welfare payment rates were below those needed to make significant progress towards targets made in the Programme for Government and the National Anti-Poverty Strategy for 2007.
The extent of the failure of Budget 2003 to adequately meet Government welfare targets is illustrated by a report from the Department of Social and Family Affairs, released to The Irish Times under the Freedom of Information Act.
The report, prepared for discussion in advance of the Budget with the Government's Taxation Strategy Group, outlined the Government's commitments in relation to weekly payment rate increases by 2007. It also detailed the levels of increases in these rates required in Budget 2003 in order to make "significant progress" this year.
The report acknowledged it would be a matter for Government to determine the pace at which the various commitments would be implemented.
It added: "However, it is useful, in the context of Budget 2003, to outline the average level of increase in weekly rates of payment which would be required in order to achieve the various commitments in equal monetary steps, commencing in 2003."
For the relevant commitments to be progressively implemented in this way, the rate of the Old Age Pension in Budget 2003 should have increased by €13.20 per week, according to the report. The Budget's Old Age Pension increase turned out to be only €10 per week. The Programme for Government contains a commitment to increase the basic State Pension to at least €200 per week by 2007. The Budget increase brought the payment to €157.30.
According to the report, the average weekly increase in the lowest rate of social welfare payment in the Budget should have been €10.10 or €15.40, depending on the type of benchmark used. This would have allowed the Government to meet its commitment in the National Anti-Poverty Strategy to increase the lowest rate to €150 per week, in 2002 terms, by 2007.
The report said that if a separate commitment in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness to raise the lowest rates of payment to €127 per week was to be met on schedule in 2003, a weekly increase of €8.20 per week was required. The actual Budget 2003 increase in the basic weekly social welfare payment was €6 - a rise just ahead of inflation which brought the lowest payment for a single adult to €124.80.
The report concluded that a "significant 2003 DSFA [Department of Social and Family Affairs] Budget package will be required", but it mentioned no particular sum.