Hanafin to develop policy that addresses mental illness

MINISTER FOR Social and Family Affairs Mary Hanafin has said she will develop policy to take account of increasing numbers of people on disability payments because of stress and mental illness.

OECD research showed that people were often better off doing some work rather than none, she said, and policy had not kept pace with growing understanding of such problems.

“We’ve a huge increase in the number of people who are on disability payment because of stress and mental illness, and I think there are policies we need to develop around that.”

Employers, as well as her department, would have to be involved, she said. “There’s nothing to indicate really that all of these people are better off not working than working, because they’re losing out on socialisation, on everything.” Policy should focus on what people are capable of rather than what they are not able to do, she said.

Having identified the next policy area she intends to tackle, Ms Hanafin signalled the possibility of an additional social welfare cut by saying that the lone parent’s allowance should be phased out when children reach the age of 13.

She said she had already told Cabinet colleagues the issue should be discussed formally by Government, and systems in place in other countries examined.

When she was appointed Minister for Social and Family Affairs last year, Ms Hanafin sent a text to her brother. It said “SFA”.

“For one awful minute, my father thought I had been dropped from the Cabinet . . . it took him a while to recover from that.”

She also revealed that her father, former senator Des Hanafin, advised her strongly that a reduction in pensions should not be among the social welfare cuts in the Budget.

Pensioners were exempt from the welfare cuts and public service pensioners decoupled from the cuts in pay, a fact that drew criticism from some commentators.

“I had my father at home telling me all the time, ‘Don’t cut the pension, whatever you do don’t cut the pension’ . . . he was coming from the political perspective,” she said.

“It’s not so much to do with the medical card of last year, but when you hurt . . . when you take from an old person, you take from their whole family.

“And whole families will react for their parents.”

The Minister said there were “very valid arguments” against cutting disability payments, but other groups, such as carers, had equally valid arguments.

“It was difficult to cut all of them, but once you started to distinguish between groups of the under-66s, that’s when you were going to be making decisions that were based on emotion, rather than the actual finances of it.”

Before the Budget, she visited residents at a Salvation Army hostel where a man in receipt of disability benefit asked her: “Will you be cutting us in the Budget?”

“I said, I’d love to be able to tell you I’m not, but I can’t. ‘Ah well sure’, he said, ‘We all have to do our bit’.

“I was really taken aback by it, because here’s a man who doesn’t even have his own bed.”

Post-Budget, her office has received many angry e-mails, she said, and she expects more complaints in January.

Ministers have been too busy to think about rumours of a reshuffle in the new year, she said.

“I genuinely haven’t heard as much as a sniff about it. Because remember, this Government, as in Cowen’s Government, is there since May 2008. I suppose his question now is, does he keep the same team leading into the next election?

“If he’s going to change it he’s going to have to do it in the next few months.”

Ms Hanafin, whose husband Eamon Leahy SC died suddenly in 2003, said the Leinster House lifestyle was difficult for women with young families.

“I mean, I left here last night at midnight . . . that doesn’t matter to me. I’m home in 10 minutes, there’s nobody waiting – very big difference if you were a woman with small children or living outside of Dublin.”

She said a general election was a long way off “hopefully”, but conceded that it will be difficult for Government TDs.

In her Dún Laoghaire constituency, she expects to be “lumped into the anti-Government feeling” along with Minister of State Barry Andrews and Green deputy Ciarán Cuffe.