PLANS BY the Government to conduct a major reform of the social welfare system by developing a single social assistance payment to replace existing means-tested payments will be presented to the EU-IMF troika at the end of March.
Officials from the Department of Social Protection addressed the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Jobs, Social Protection and Education yesterday to outline the plans.
Anne Vaughan, deputy secretary of the department, said it was envisaged that a single payment would replace six payment types – jobseeker’s allowance, disability allowance, one-parent family payment, farm assist, blind pension and the widow/er’s non-contributory pension.
The single payment would apply to new entrants to the social welfare system. It would not be applied retrospectively.
Ms Vaughan said consideration had also been given to replacing the carer’s allowance, but said that would not now go ahead.
She told the committee a single payment would address the complexity of the social welfare system by introducing a single means test, standardising the conditionality of the payment and simplifying the relevant income disregards that apply. Cost savings and gains in efficiencies would result, although she could not put an exact figure on what they would be.
She said the availability of supports and services would be “essential” to recipients of the single payment system to make sure they were in a position to avail of education and training opportunities.
The objective, she said, was to improve outcomes for people of working age from a poverty and social inclusion perspective and that changes to the social welfare system would make work pay.
Sinn Féin’s Aengus Ó Snodaigh said while the new payment seemed “administratively attractive” he warned that without a corresponding spend on education and training it would be a “backward step”.
Michael Conaghan TD (Labour)said claims the new system would bring people “closer to work” were overstated. “What brings people closer to work is the availability of work.”
He agreed that the system needed to be reformed to reduce “deadness and segregation”.