THE GOVERNMENT is about to reverse its policy of maintaining welfare rates and Minister for Social Protection Joan Burton is preparing the ground, Fianna Fáil has claimed.
The party’s spokesman on social protection Barry Cowen said Ms Burton was engaging in “a paltry attempt to soften the blow of a Government U-turn”.
Ms Burton had been asked twice if she planned to cut social welfare, “and twice she refused to answer”, he said.
“Given that the Taoiseach Enda Kenny and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore have both made solemn promises to protect social welfare rates, Joan Burton’s ongoing refusal to toe this line has caused confusion and concern among welfare recipients,” he said on RTÉ.
Ms Burton was criticised by a number of Opposition TDs yesterday over comments she was reported to have made.
She was quoted in a Sunday newspaper as saying “what we are getting at the moment is people who come into the system straight after school as a lifestyle choice”.
However, in an RTÉ interview yesterday she said: “What I want to do is to reform the social welfare system and to reform how we think about social welfare”.
Ms Burton’s comments were Thatcherite, according to Sinn Féin social protection spokesman Aengus Ó Snodaigh.
“The comments of Joan Burton over the weekend in which she described dependence on social welfare as a ‘lifestyle choice’ were outrageous and another example of the Labour Party moving to the right. It was like listening to Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s.”
Dáil technical group chief whip Catherine Murphy said: “The vast majority of unemployed people I meet most definitely want to work.
“They had expectations that this new Government would produce ‘shovel-ready jobs’ and a strategic investment bank aimed at getting people back to work and growing the economy.”
However, there was broad support for the Minister’s approach from Fine Gael Seanad spokeswoman on Social Protection, Senator Fidelma Healy Eames.
“We need to ensure that we do not create a welfare dependency that becomes the lifestyle of choice. I believe we have begun to do that,” the Galway Senator said.
People she met in her political work who had become dependent on welfare suffered from anxiety and “lived in fear of cuts”.
“We have to lift people out of this dependency. Welfare should be a contract between the citizen and the State of a ‘hand-up’ when needed rather than a ‘hand-out’ that becomes an addiction,” she added.
However, spokeswoman for the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed Bríd O’Brien said: “The INOU does not agree with the Minister for Social Protection’s claim that young people are choosing to go on the ‘dole’ as a ‘lifestyle choice’.
“In the summer of 2007, just before the Live Register started its initial slow climb up to the very dramatic levels we now see, young people accounted for 20 per cent of the register. In June of this year, they accounted for 19 per cent.
“At present it is possible for an unemployed person to liaise with the State and yet not meet anyone who is in a position to discuss with them their employment, education and training options,” she said.
