REDUCING OR taxing child benefit could force women on low pay out of work as they would not be able to meet childcare costs, the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI) said last night.
Maintaining universal child benefit at current levels was just one of the recommendations in the council’s pre-budget submission which it launched at a public meeting last night.
The group’s submission also called for the minimum wage to be maintained because women were more likely to be in low-paid work.
The Government was being advised to cut “soft targets” such as the community and voluntary sector which is cheap to run but not cheap to replace, the council’s director, Susan McKay, said.
The cuts proposed in the McCarthy report would result in more unemployed women, fewer supports for women and further cuts in representative bodies such as the NWCI, the group said in a response to the report last night.
The report failed to understand women’s perspective or the value of some services such as those which protect women from violence, Ms McKay said.
Ireland could break promises it made to the UN and EU on women’s equality if it implemented the cuts recommended in the McCarthy report, she said.
Earlier , Minister for Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin confirmed that there would be changes to child benefit in the December budget, but said that the Government had still to decide on what form these changes would take.
Ms Hanafin said that the Government was looking at the option of either reducing child benefit as recommended by Colm McCarthy, taxing it as recommended by the Commission on Taxation or subjecting it to a means test.
She pointed out that Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan did signal at the last budget that child benefit would either be taxed or means tested. “There will be some change in child benefit – I think it’s fair enough to say that at this stage,” she said.
Ms Hanafin said that both taxing and means testing child benefit would pose administrative difficulties but the Government would be looking at reducing child benefit payments as a means of making savings on the €21 billion annual social welfare bill.
“It is important that we look at those areas where people are not dependent and child benefit, although very valuable and very important for the good of the children is not something that families are actually dependent on so it’s one of those areas that we have to look it,” she said.