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Updated, 12.59
THE IRISH NATIONAL Organisation for the Unemployed has welcomed the government’s repeated commitment not to cut social welfare rates in next month’s Budget.
Fine Gael’s junior minister Fergus O’Dowd yesterday insisted that the government had no intention to cut social welfare rates, believing that the department’s spending cut be cut by hundreds of millions through other measures.
“We’ve made it very clear that in the primary social benefits, there will not be any cut,” the NewERA minister told RTÉ’s The Week in Politics.
O’Dowd said the government would instead focus on countering welfare fraud, saying that the government believes it can save around €600 million per year in doing so.
The government will also try to cut spending by cutting unemployment payments for people who turn down an offer of paid work.
“It’s an intervention where people aren’t taking opportunities to go out to work… it’s reasonable that their welfare might cut,” O’Dowd said, describing the cuts as a “labour activation” measure.
This lunchtime the INOU said it “very much welcomed” the government’s commitment not to cut welfare rates, saying unemployed people had already seen many cuts to their payments in recent budgets.
“Over a number of Budgets those rates had been cut, and we’re very aware that many people are struggling to survive – and that with any other cuts, people wouldn’t be able to manage,” INOU’s head of policy and media Brid O’Brien told TheJournal.ie.
O’Brien said she did not believe, however, that cutting benefits for people who had turned down jobs would lead to much savings – pointing out that the previous government had made legal allowances for a person to lose a quarter of their dole payments if they turned down a job.
The organisation also expressed reservations about reported plans to scrap grants for postgraduate students, arguing that higher education had been the only route that many unemployed people could take to get back to the labour market.
Cutting those grants, when the government was keen to build a “knowledge economy”, would be “most unfortunate”, O’Brien said.
The government is also set to examine certain loopholes around rent allowance, O’Dowd said. Last month it emerged that one in three landlords receiving rental supplements from their tenants were not registered with the Private Residential Tenancies Board, as is required by law.
The anti-fraud programme programme, originally announced by Social Protection minister Joan Burton two months ago, will include the deployment of extra social welfare inspectors, who will be concentrated on targeting ‘black spot’ fraud sectors.
The government has also pledged to increase penalties on those found to be abusing the social welfare system.
Next month’s Budget is due to find €3.8bn in adjustments, with spending cuts set to make up around two-thirds of that total.
It had previously been reported that Social Protection spending cut be cut by €1bn, but cuts of this scale are unlikely given that the government will cut its overall spending by a little over €2.5bn.
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I have to say “Good news”.
I personally know a few people who are genuinely decent people but due to the state of the economy, are out of work and are barely surviving – and yes, they are trying desperately to find work.
Not all on the dole is there just to milk the state as some would have others believe.
Just from talking to a good many and looking at their incoming and outgoings, its easy to see in actual reality that one cannot get blood (bills to be paid) from a stone (empty pockets)..
There is only so much a lot of people can take in actual cuts – and that applies to everyone, not just those sadly unemployed.
There is huge fraud and I’m glad to see that this area is supposedly being tackled more.
Now if they can also stop child allowance money flowing out of the country to kids no longer resident here (or never was) and address those making double claims on both sides of the border – that would also be another progressive step too!
In 2007, unemployment stood at just over 3%. We are a nation of workers and the institutionalised welfare claimants are a minority. I absolutely agree that welfare should never be allowed to be a “career” and there are measures to tackle this but the vast majority of the 14.5% were net contributors to the tax pool in the past, are living on a knife edge and deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
Yes, we didn’t go from 3 or 4% unemployment to nearly 15% because people did not want to work. Social Welfare is the only safety net most people in the private sector have, so it has got to be at a level to give them a reasonable living until they hopefully get a job again.
At the end of the day the government has got to get the balance right though. Slashing capital spending (which creates jobs) to maintain social welfare and public sector pay won’t always be the right way forward.
disgraceful but no doubt they will hit my wages again, im at the point now where im earning around the same as a mate of mine on the scratcher. He gets quite a bit of his mortgage paid along with his 200 odd quid a week and has a medical card. by the time i put juice in the jam jar and pay for my lunch and work clothes i havent a pot to piss in. Only in Ireland eh.
Not surprised, gov r holding onto that chestnut until next year where we have 2 find another 4 billion
good to see them going after all the SW fraud, people who take the piss on the SW make my blood boil!
I completely agree with the above comment. It’s not just cross border double claims. I understand that certain members of the “Hippy/New Age ” communities in West Cork and Kerry are drawing in the UK due to lax control checks over there. This is all funding that is lost to better causes.
Maybe if you took public transport you’d have more cash Randy. Only in Ireland eh?
Maybe he works shift and can’t get a bus at 4am. At least he’s working and contributing! Get the facts before you make stupid comments.
Randy is working and it is not Right that he is struggling the government have really and truly taken the Mick with their own increases and no doubt they do not look to see the price of fuel to run their STATE CARS
ONLY IN IRELAND !!!!!!!!!!!
There are plenty of people on the dole that are driving cars, that’s one reason why I feel it must be too high. If your working full time, it’s not unreasonable to expect to be able to run a car. No one is poor and everyone is poor in this socialist system.
So John with the fabulous transport system we have in this country, I am supposed to give up my car bcos i have lost my job…a car that i will of course need once i get another job because theres no other transport available?
John did it ever dawn on you that they might have had cars before they were unemployed? I have a car that I luckily had paid in full for before I was made redundant, I need it to get to interviews but TBH I can’t afford to run it for much longer due to the costs involved. I got rid of my TV because the licence was not a priority, the same with magazines, nights out, days away, holidays (HA!) weddings, 21st’s.. is there anything I have left out? Maybe with your reasoning I should do without electricity and heating as well. after paying my rent €160 a week is what I live on, try it some time.
Calm down lads. Randy likes to stir
Rent allowance, mortgage allowance in fact anything that is not your basic dole €188 pw is all for the knife !
I’m not fortunately . reduce rent allowance, tenants reduce rent payment by similar amount,landlords will not be in a position to chuck people out, rent allowance is setting the rent prices in a lot of areas.
Sounds great in theory Martin but in practice it could be difficult. My landlord reduced my rent when I told him that I was on rent allowance from a relatively low rent to what I am on now. If that is cut any further I will have no option but to move back in with my parents who live 50 miles from where I have lived for the last 18 years and the flat that I have lived in for the last 10 years. i would much prefer that I could pay my own but but even with all the effort that I am putting in to getting a job I am still unemployed.
Of course I can be chucked out as their will be others that can afford to pay the cheap rent that I am on. The maximum rate per week is €80 and I have to pay the rest form my dole so even a €10 a week reduction would be the straw that broke the camels back.
It will be difficult ok, but we are in seriously difficult situation, I know for a fact that the banks have lobbied for rent allowance not to be reduced, because a lot of people decided to become landlords during the boom without thinking it through, a lot of the buy to lets are now innegative equity and the banks know that the landlords haven’t got any spare cash to top up the rents in order to pay the mortgages. The reality is most of the rent allowance is going to the banks.
I sort of see your point Martin however there is still a major flaw in your argument. By reducing the rent allowance you will be hurting the banks which I have no problem with. The thing is that I and potentially thousands of others are going to be hurt even harder. Do you think that the banks give a shit about whether or not I have to move out? Landlords will still have to get their rent and if I can’t pay it then they will get people who are working and can afford it will move in. If the RA goes too low the buy to letters will just hand over the keys to the house to the bank and cut their losses- I’m screwed again. The banks either sell the house or rent it out above the RA rate- You guessed it…screwed! In principle I agree with you but in practice i’m afraid things are not so simple.
Unfortunately Brian, there is a lot of pain to be sucked up before all this gets sorted, at the moment the banks, the government, lobby groups etc are moving the deckchairs around while the taxpayer/genuine welfare recipients are drowning. Repossesions need to take place and let prices hit the bottom, The banks can either sell on or rent at realistic prices. at the moment all we are getting is pussyfooting.
Saw O’Dowd on The Week in Politics last night. He seemed ill at ease and unconvincing. This is the usual FG populist rhetoric. The reality of targeting welfare recipients who “turn down” work is they are further impoverished. Many are vulnerable and have good reason to be unable to work…
Love the “only in Ireland” comments. I’m guessing most of the people who come out with that line have lived “only in Ireland”. Try living in some of our neighbouring countries doing the same job. You’ll see very quickly that the grass is not always Greener.
No I have lived else where and no the GRASS is Never greener and al that BUT we ARE TALKING ABOUT IRELAND
Does anyone know what they mean about the rent allowance – is it to be cut or not?
hopefully, it’s basuically a subsidy to landlords
I presume that you are not on rent allowance. Do you have an alternative?
Yeah it’s great the government is going to continue with austerity it’s really helping the economy. The increase in VAT the property tax the water tax petrol/diesel price increases plus extra tolls on the road should create some more revenue which we can pay into the banks that lost the money in the first place oh and the increase in the new income tax, the pension levy sure the government have to do this we need to pay off the national debt as quick as possible in order to keep the bond market happy I mean private hedge funds don’t deserve to lose money ever if they gamble….
Its a shame as people who rented didn’t cause the problems with the banks, that was the banks themselves, the buy to let landlords and the people who overborrowed on large mortgages. Seems unfair to renters as people who are unable to pay their mortgages are getting supplements or are to be allowed to rent their houses back at a reduced rate creating a section of society living in what is in effect luxury council houses. Those who didn’t buy into the property boom and now find themselves unemployed will have their rent allowance cut and be still further down the ladder. It all seems set up to maintain the pre-existing heirarchies in society.
Better to be unemployed with rent allowance than unemployed with a mortgage and negative equity.
Hopefully the rents will adjust downwards but it will be painful for lots of people until it does – people will have to move as landlords will be in denial and hold out for more well off tenants. The only positive I can see in it is that It should make life easier for low earners who have to meet the rent allowance rates.
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