Brennan stresses need for courageous welfare reforms

Reforms to the welfare system must ensure payments act as stepping stones for recipients to achieve a better quality of life, Minister for Social Affairs Seamus Brennan said yesterday.

He was speaking at the National Anti-Poverty Strategy's social-inclusion forum which aims at providing organisations not involved in the social partnership the opportunity to contribute to developing a new strategy.

Mr Brennan said the "easy route" was to sign cheques and hope that social problems would go away. However the "honest route" meant going behind payments and confronting problems.

"It is vitally important that we do not view welfare as permanent. That is why a one-size-fits-all system will not provide the answers."

He said courageous reforms were needed if the country was to witness significant social change.

"The window of opportunity is there, and we are now shaping reforms that will introduce over the coming months and years enlightened social policies in a number of key areas."

He said his social policy reforms would focus on child poverty, the pensions crisis and the needs of lone parents.

Mr Brennan said he was very keen that the next national anti-poverty plan would make a decisive contribution to tackling poverty and social exclusion through "ambitious and achievable" targets.

"We should set targets that can be reached but that at the same time will stretch our capacity to deliver across the wide range of policy areas that impact on poverty and social exclusion," he said.

"I am anxious that the implementation gaps that have been identified on the ground should be addressed.

"It is important that service providers work closer together at local level to deliver their services in a more integrated manner."

Official figures show investment in welfare supports and entitlements are now at the point where one in every three euro that the State is spending this year is going on welfare.

The latest results of an EU survey on income and living conditions in Ireland show that the number at risk of consistent poverty has been reduced from 8.8 per cent in 2003 to 6.8 per cent in 2004.

Mr Brennan said this reflected in part the impact that the record spending on welfare supports and entitlements was having in confronting and tackling poverty.

"All of us here, including those with responsibility for delivering services on the ground, should see the next plan as a key tool in our efforts to create a poverty-free and socially-inclusive society, a society of which this generation can be proud."