Balancing the books - We should do more than cut welfare
It was not that she said anything new, it was certainly not that she focused on social welfare. Neither was it that she insisted that specific cuts could not be identified or finalised until the impact of a range of cuts on families was fully understood.
What was reassuring was her promise that she would do her utmost to protect vulnerable members of our society. Though she did not use the phrase she tacitly acknowledged the “decency threshold” everyone in this country wishes to see protected would be protected.
When the McCarthy report was published it sent shock waves through every sector but, in the interim, a more considered view has begun to evolve. This is as true for social welfare as it is for every other area.
Yesterday Ms Hanafin acknowledged that the €21 billion social welfare bill was a “huge drain” on public finances but she also predicted the cuts she will impose will be less than the €1.84bn advocated by McCarthy.
If that is the case then any cuts will be a lot less than 10%. Therefore, it is hard to see why people dependent — and dependent is the important word here — on welfare should have to accept changes to their income that, in real terms, are anything more than the drop in the cost of living. In effect, there should be no change in living standards.
Because this debate is as often fuelled by emotion as it is by logic it is important to look at the figures, they are staggering. Welfare spending increased from €17.62bn last year to a projected €21.27bn this year. That amounts to 37% of all Government spending. Social welfare rates have increased by between 90% and 110% since 2000, amounting to an increase of 67% in real terms. As unemployment climbs these figures will too. These sums and that trend were hardly sustainable in the best of times much less now.
Of course there are many payments made by Ms Hanafin’s department that need not be made at all. It is impossible to argue for universal child benefit, treating a household with an income of €150,000 the same as a family struggling on the minimum wage or even trying to make ends meet on the average industrial wage.
It will be interesting to see how Ms Hanafin cuts her cloth but we all know that there are well-paid families and individuals who get welfare payments for all sorts of things — glasses, dental work, whatever — that are not vital to them. Has the time come to set a universal threshold in regard to all welfare payments?
Maybe we should have the debate that seems to still be off limits. We should discuss the role of lifestyle choices and personal responsibility in people becoming dependent on social welfare. We should consider where society’s responsibilities begin and end. We should also discuss where an individual’s responsibilities begin and end. We should also discuss, taboo of taboos, if a life lived on long-term welfare is in the interests of the beneficiary or of society and if some sort of work-for-welfare scheme would be better for all concerned. Ms Hanafin has been honest with us so maybe we should be honest with ourselves and discuss these issues.
After all, if we do no more than re-model the past in this time of crisis and change we are almost certain to repeat its mistakes.
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