Opening Remarks at the Pre Budget 2016 Forum Dublin Castle

Good morning everyone and welcome to this year’s Pre-Budget Forum.

I wish to thank you all for attending and for the comprehensive written submissions you’ve sent in.

I also want to express my profound appreciation for the work you and your colleagues do in providing vital support to people when they need it.

That crucial work makes life more manageable for many, helping them to cope with difficult circumstances.

I will ensure that your priorities for Budget 2016 are brought to the attention of my Cabinet colleagues.

As the Deputy Secretary General – Anne Vaughan – has already indicated, we are retaining the format from last year’s Forum, given the positive feedback about it.

This Forum is about hearing your views, and I know you won’t hold back!

As I look forward to the Budget, I see a number of broad groups – families with children; older and retired people; people with disabilities and their carers; and people who are unemployed.

The question this morning is how do we build a Budget that will benefit our people and our society?

It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on where we’ve come from.

When this Government came into office in 2011, we were dealing with an economic crisis on a scale Ireland had never seen before.

It was accompanied by a jobs crisis that peaked in an unemployment rate of 15.1%.

Today, after four difficult years, Ireland is in a new phase.

Our recovery is such that we recorded the fastest growth in the EU last year and will do so again this year.

Importantly, it’s a jobs-led recovery, and there are more than 100,000 additional people now at work.

That’s 100,000 individual stories of recovery – 100,000 lives changed for the better.

Unemployment has fallen by more than a third – to 9.7%.

But I’m conscious that this remains far too high.

And while our economy is recovering rapidly, many people’s individual lives have yet to recover.

Economic recovery by itself is not enough – we need a social recovery too.

This means ensuring the recovery is felt in the life of every person, every family and every community.

This Government is committed to returning to full employment by 2018 – a hugely ambitious but achievable goal.

And the progress made means we can focus relentlessly on raising living standards by investing in housing, health, education and social protection.

Looking ahead to Budget 2016, the Government still has deficit and expenditure targets to meet under EU rules – and we’ll meet them while having room to invest.

In the Spring Economic Statement, we outlined that we’d have between €1.2 billion and €1.5 billion to invest in services, support employment and boost growth.

This package will be split equally between taxation measures and spending measures.  It is important to remember that many welfare recipients can benefit from taxation changes, particularly in relation to the Universal Social Charge.

The last Budget was the first in recent years with scope to make improvements for welfare recipients.

I was pleased to be in the position to:

• Increase Child Benefit by €5 per month;
• The Living Alone Allowance to €9 per week; and
• Increase funding for the School Meals programme by a further €2 million.

I expanded the number of people supported by the JobsPlus scheme, which provides a financial incentive to employers, and has proven particularly successful with the longer-term unemployed.

I also introduced the new Back to Work Family Dividend, which supports families transitioning to employment.

These measures showed the balance I have tried to strike since becoming Social Protection Minister.

The welfare system is a safety net – one that played a crucial role during the crisis.

But I have always believed that it must be much more than that.

The system must also help people back on their feet, help them build financial independence over time, help them build better lives for themselves and their families.

That is why we not alone protected the welfare system to the greatest possible extent during the crisis, but reformed it too.

Reformed it by improving and increasing our employment, education and training supports through our new Intreo service, and through new schemes.

Schemes like JobBridge – though heavily criticised by some – have helped people bridge the gap between unemployment and work.

Schemes like JobsPlus, through which we subsidise wages when an employer hires someone is long-term unemployed, have done likewise.

I mentioned 100,000 stories earlier.

They include eight staff at Portman Travel in Tralee, who were originally taken on as interns via JobBridge, trained, and then hired as full-time staff.

They include staff hired by the likes of Hewlett Packard, PayPal and VMware, thanks to the schemes run by the Department.

They include Dr Karen Roche, a food scientist out of work following redundancy, who used the Back to Work Education Allowance and other State supports to start her own award-winning company.

I want to see many more such stories as we work towards full employment.

JobPath, the Department’s new contracted employment service aimed at the long-term unemployed, will increase our capacity to assist jobseekers most in need of help.

The JobPath providers will employ approximately 1,000 staff to support jobseekers over a four-year period.

As my colleague Minister Humphreys mentioned, the Department is also proactively engaging with employers.

Our aim is to make employers see the Live Register as the first port of call when hiring.

To this end, I am delighted to say that over 230 employers have signed the Employment and Youth Activation Charter to date.

These employers range from large multi-nationals to small and medium employers which are the lifeblood of their local communities.

Employers who sign commit to:

• Considering potential candidates from the live register as part of the recruitment process.
• Providing training/work experience opportunities, and
• Providing employability supports including information sessions for jobseekers and advice or guidance in relation to job search, CV preparation and interview skills.

The Charter is reflective of the ongoing work of my Department in building relationships with employers and raising employer awareness of Departmental initiatives.

All of the above is in line with the Department’s transformation from a passive benefits provider to an active and engaged public employment service.

In this regard, I welcome the considerable debate generated by the reforms of the One Parent Family Payment scheme.

I know the reforms have raised very real concerns.

But they are motivated by a simple reality: the One Parent Family Payment scheme has not been successful in reducing poverty, and we need a new approach.

I know we’ll discuss that issue in depth this morning.

For now, let me say that in the coming months, I look forward to examining the various supports available to all families with children, including single parent families.

In particular, I will look at the scope for further improvements in Child Benefit, as well as other supports for families in part-time or full-time employment.

Which brings me to a wider point about where our limited room for investment is best utilised.

This year, the Department will spend more than €19.3 billion on a wide range of schemes, services and administration.

This money impacts on the lives of almost everybody in the State in one way or another – whether it’s through Child Benefit, a Jobseeker’s payment, or the State pension.

The immediate impact of these payments – or social transfers as they are technically called – is to reduce poverty.

Ireland is the best performing EU member state in reducing poverty through social transfers.

Social transfers reduce the at-risk-of-poverty levels here by 63%.

In other words, we have one of the most effective systems in the EU in terms of reducing poverty.

And I firmly believe that maintaining a strong social welfare safety net is one of the reasons that social cohesion was maintained throughout the worst of the crisis.

But we must always look at where we can improve the system and – now that we have some small leeway for targeted increases – debate where those increases should be made.

The options for the forthcoming Budget will be considered by the Government in the coming months and your budget submissions and participation here today are a hugely important part of the process.

I look forward to hearing your views and proposals this morning.