The issue of child poverty is again prominent in the European Commission agenda, with the publication of the Council Recommendation for Establishing a European Child Guarantee. In order to be successful, increased political focus is required and children must be at the heart of post-Covid recovery plans. Increased European and national funding is also a prerequisite for success.
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) announced that it will lift the ban on disconnections of gas and electricity domestic customers for non-payment of an account from 1st June 2021, leaving many households with large arrears vulnerable. Ensuring homes are more energy efficient will go some way to ensuring lower costs in the future.
It is possible to implement a Basic Income for artists and art workers. Social Justice Ireland's latest study shows that the Government could honour its commitment to pilot a Universal Basic Income by introducing a Basic Income for artists as proposed recently by the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce Report. This initiative would have minimal costs to the Exchequer and could be implemented from 1st January 2022.
The Programme for Government committed to a Basic Income pilot in July last year. That November, the Arts and Culture Recovery Taskforce recommended a basic income for artists. On Wednesday, 12th May 2021, Social Justice Ireland set out our proposals on how these can be achieved. In case you missed it, you can check out the videos, presentations and papers now.
Poverty Focus examines the nature and experience of poverty in Ireland and sets out a series of solutions that could be adopted by Government. Each year Poverty Focus highlights one area of concern while also commenting on the general policy landscape. This year we pay particular attention to the impact of social welfare rates on low income households.
More than 15% of all those in poverty in Ireland have a job while more than a quarter are children. This is one of the main findings of Social Justice Ireland’s latest study ‘Poverty Focus 2021’. This scandalous situation persists despite the reduction in poverty rates in recent years. While progress in reducing poverty is welcome, Government’s failure to raise core social welfare rates in the last two Budgets will see this progress reversed.
The Pensions Commission completed its public consultation with a webinar on Wednesday, 21st April 2021. Bizarrely removed from the remit of the Pensions Commission is the Government's commitment to a system of automatic enrolment, a costly mechanism of increasing private pension coverage, subsidised by the State that will obviously have an impact on policy reform relating to the State pension as it has in other countries. Social Justice Ireland has previously published A Universal State Social Welfare Pension, an analysis of Ireland’s pension system and a fully costed proposal for the introduction of a Universal Pension in Ireland based on residency, not social insurance contributions. A better, and more equitable, use of public funds.
The Government announced yesterday (19th April 2021) the establishment of the Commission on Taxation and Welfare to look at "how best to support economic activity while ensuring sufficient resources available to meet costs of public services". While Social Justice Ireland welcomes the establishment of a Commission to consider how best to structure Ireland's taxation system to support the provision of Decent Services and Infrastructure, we are concerned that too much focus will be placed on employment activation, rather than delivering Just Taxation and functioning welfare system to support the eradication of poverty.
One of the key tools at our disposal to reduce poverty is social welfare. If Government is serious about reducing poverty and meeting the targets set out in the Roadmap for Social Inclusion then the first step must be to benchmark social welfare rates to 27.5 per cent of average earnings, and to do this over either one or two budgetary cycles.
Social Justice Ireland welcomes the announcement that the Low Pay Commission has been give terms of reference to investigate how Ireland can move towards a living wage. In principle, a Living Wage is intended to establish an hourly wage rate that should provide employees with enough income to achieve an agreed acceptable minimum standard of living.
