Austerity has reduced safety net for poor and elderly, report says

Austerity has reduced the safety net for the poor, elderly, and even those at work, according to a report from the Council of Europe that poses serious questions about Ireland’s social welfare system, health services and its care of the elderly.

But the Government has been particularly criticised for failing to respond to many of the questions on how they are adhering to the European Social Charter to which they signed up. This meant Ireland could not be assessed in seven areas by the European Committee of Social Rights, while they conformed to just four and failed eight.

Ireland has a history of being one of the poorest countries for engaging with the process, which Colm Ó Cinnéide, responsible for much of the report, said may be down to “not getting their act together.”

He said the basic social welfare net survived the first stages of the troika measures up to 2011, unlike other countries. But even the skimpy information the council worked off and from their own research, flagged a number of problems.

They say that the right to social welfare benefits covering areas such as a minimum level of sickness, unemployment, survivors, and invalidity benefits, are not adequate.

A large chunk of the 29-page report is devoted to services and facilities for elderly people.

They ask if the elderly are aware of the services available and whether these match the demand and whether their quality is monitored.

The council also noted that 10,000 people had been victims of elder abuse in one year but noted that there is little legislation on this.

On housing, the council states that it would like to receive more information on who among the elderly is eligible for social housing, and the costs. They repeated their request for information on nursing home support and the Fair Deal scheme.

It said there should be health care programmes specifically aimed at the elderly. In particular, there should be mental health programmes for persons with dementia and related illnesses, adequate palliative care services and special training for individuals caring for elderly persons, but the report from the Government failed to address these issues.

“On the elderly, we have asked a series of probing questions and given them the final warning on the elderly — if they do not report adequately in the next cycle we will find they are not in conformity,” he said.

Mr Ó Cinnéide said they don’t rate or score countries and do not have a perfect model of what a country should be like — they just assess countries on an article-by-article basis and on what they signed up to.

“Social rights must be protected, even in times of austerity, governments must not reduce fundamental social rights. States are entitled to change budgets but not reduce rights — but this has not been the case.

“There is a clear pattern of specific types of problems — inadequate social security benefits, unequal treatment of migrants under the guise of combating social tourism, absence of pro-active government measures to stem an increase of poverty, the health care systems are under increased pressure and so is the downgrading, especially for small and medium-sized businesses, of health and safety at work.”