Our series of posts from the December launch event continues with some key points made by Helen Johnston of the National Economic and Social Council.
Helen’s presentation focused on the current state of the Irish welfare system.
1. Helen Johnston – The Irish Social Welfare System
The Irish social welfare system is based on the UK beverage system, so we kind of started off in the same place.
We have social insurance payments that were already mentioned based on contributions and then also the counterbalancing social assistance payments governed by means test. We have the universal child benefits system, which I think you have here in the north as well. And then we have a number of ancillary benefits in the other. Helen mentioned some of those as well, free travel. household packages with a TV license and so on.
So some of the features then of the Irish social welfare system, given that that’s its structures, is that we face quite a bit of economic inequality in the Irish welfare system. And that’s really for two reasons.
One is that we have a high number of households who actually aren’t in work or aren’t making any income whatsoever, so they need to be supported by the social welfare system. we have quite high market income inequality. So people earn quite high salaries, but we’ve also a lot of people who earn very low salaries. So there’s quite a big divergence. And so we need to try and address that income inequality and that’s done through the social welfare system.
Secondly, as well as the social welfare benefits, we mentioned we also have services. And traditionally Ireland has been quite good on the social welfare cash benefits. We’re probably higher in most cases than the UK system comparatively speaking. But our services I think are much weaker and we don’t have access to the same levels – we haven’t in the past anyway – in terms of education and health in particular. So it’s been much easier I think in the past to put a five euro or ten euro on a social welfare benefit, than to kind of improve how we might deliver a service, which involves staffing and ways of delivery and so on.
In terms of our social, we have a social insurance system, but in terms of our social insurance system, it’s much weaker, I think, than a lot of comparative European systems. So even though we have that, we need to improve it, and we are, kind of, I think, starting to work towards that, going in the opposite direction, I think, from the UK, who have now kind of reduced some of the social welfare contributions. So overall, we have this hybrid of universal insurance-based means-tested benefits.
2. Helen Johnston – Issues That Need to be Addressed in the Irish Social Welfare System
In N.E.S.C. we did some work a few years ago and we produced a social welfare report on the future of the social welfare system, participation and protection. And we identified four issues that we felt needed to be addressed in the future. So I’m just gonna flag a few of these things, I’m not gonna dwell on them.
So one was to ensure an adequate income to alleviate poverty. And one of the key things here was about improving child income support. We have the universal measure, but we need to improve the targeted measures to make it more seamless if people want to move of benefit and into work.
We also then wanted to support high participation because the world of work is changing and so on. But one of the things we suggested here was piloting a participation income scheme, particularly for people who are maybe working in the care sector, not working. who are providing care and aren’t being adequately recognised, and people who are volunteering. And then on modernising family supports to reflect gender and care needs. I see Oral O’Connor here today from the National Women’s Council.
So it’s about individualisation and supporting a better balance of work and family. And then about how to pay for all of this. So we maybe need to increase funding into the system or manage expenditure. But the other one is increasing numbers of people in the labor force, because as you know, we all have aging societies, so we’re going to have less workers to support an aging population.
And I know there’s a lot of issues about immigration, but we actually need working-age people in our society to help support the aging population. It’s how we manage that and how we do that, I think, will be critical.
3. Helen Johnston – What Can Be Done in the Future
So what can we do in the future? And I know that’s the afternoon session as well. So these are maybe just a few pointers.
We can share knowledge, especially I think on child poverty because in the South we’ve just set up in the Department of the Taoiseach Child Poverty and Wellbeing Program Office. So we’re really working hard to try and reduce child poverty which is in the future. And also it was mentioned here as being important for a future society.
We can look at how the state and the community and voluntary sector and Charities can work together, and indeed, the private sector can work together rather than kind of the siloed approach.
I haven’t really mentioned it much today and I think there’s some, this is a school of law. There’s a need to incorporate socioeconomic rights into policy making.
We need to look at the exchange for a just transition. This is a digital and green. Who are the most vulnerable or who are going to be losing their jobs and what supports are going to be put in place for them?
Poverty measurement, which is done by NISRA here, and the CSO on the south, but the measures are slightly different and can we align those better so that we get an overall picture of the levels of poverty in Ireland. The links between poverty and mental health, which I think is coming to the fore, special initiatives in tackling concentrations of poverty, and we have examples of those in the south, and there’s some very good examples here as well, so we should share lessons on those. and maybe have a cross-border social security conference. So that’s maybe the next step.
All-Island Social Security Network 