Universal social welfare rights difficult to justify, says review

SOCIAL WELFARE payments must be cut further to increase savings and reduce the budget deficit, including moving away from universal payments not based on income levels, according to Department of Finance briefing documents.

The papers also show religious congregations have paid just €20 million of the €111 million cash promised in the wake of the publication of the Ryan report into clerical child sex abuse.

The documents, reviewing spending in all Government departments, were prepared for Minister for Finance Michael Noonan on taking up office and are available on the department’s website.

On social welfare, they say child benefit payments to high-income earners “are difficulty to justify”. The briefing documents call for “better targeting of benefits and moving away from universality of benefits”.

The documents recommend a single social assistance payment to replace the different means-tested payments, including jobseekers, one-parent and disability allowances, for the 500,000 people of working age receiving welfare payments. Ongoing entitlement to more than one principal social welfare payment is to be reviewed.

A review is also expected of the “half-rate jobseekers benefit or illness benefit to recipients of one-parent family payments”.

A review of legal aid showed an increase in cost from €40 million in 2005 to €56.5 million last year. Proposals for structural reform include radical changes in eligibility and while there had already been two rate reductions in professional fees, “substantial decreases in levels of lawyers’ fees may be unavoidable”.

On the payments by congregations, the State sought further contributions from the congregations, when the Ryan report came out, following a previously agreed redress deal for victims.

The congregations offered a total of €348.5 million of which €111 million would be in cash, €2 million in rent waiver and €235.5 million in property. They were subsequently to split the costs evenly with the State which “would require further contributions of at least €200 million”.