Annual Report 2019

I welcome the publication of the 2019 Annual Report of the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection.

Since being appointed Minister in 2017, I have been immensely proud and honoured to lead the Department. This is a Department that positively impacts on the lives of almost every citizen in the State during their lifetime. When people experience key life events whether it be the birth of a child, the loss of employment, becoming ill or retiring, the Department is there to provide income support during these life events.

In 2019, each week, over 1.3 million people received a social welfare payment of one kind or another from my Department, with approximately 79 million individual payments being made throughout the year. Expenditure on the Department’s schemes and services totalled €21 billion in 2019.

This annual report highlights the range of service and policy reforms implemented by the Department in the past year.

In November 2019, a new Parent’s Benefit scheme was introduced, which allows both parents to access an additional two weeks paid parental leave in the first year of their child’s life, in addition to the existing Maternity and Paternity allowances. Parent’s Benefit is paid at a rate of €245 per week; the same rate as Maternity and Paternity Benefits.

My Department supports the most vulnerable people in our society, providing services and payments that assist people to find work and help to mitigate the financial hardship when work cannot be found or when people are simply unable to work. During 2019, we continued to innovate and plan new measures and policies to achieve this aim.

As part of our pre-budget consultation process during 2019, a pre-budget forum was held in Dublin castle in July with over 50 community and voluntary organisations attending. The forum concentrated on six key themes including supports for children and families, retired and older people, sustainable employment and pathways to work, income adequacy and social inclusion and supporting the most vulnerable in society.

In Budget 2020, the Living Alone Allowance was increased by €5 from €9 to €14 per week for over 160,000 pensioners, widows and widowers and over 40,000 people with disabilities. An increase of €10 per week in the income thresholds for the Working Family Payment for families with up to three children was also provided in Budget 2020, as well as an increase of €2 in the Fuel Allowance payment, raising it from €22.50 to €24.50 per week, and bringing its value to €686 over the course of the fuel season for 370,000 households.

In Budget 2020, we increased the weekly rate for a qualified child by €3 for children aged 12 and over and by €2 for those under 12 – recognising that the costs of raising and caring for children rise as they reach secondary school. This was accompanied by a €25 increase in the Back to School Clothing and Footwear Allowance. Additionally, following the introduction of the new pilot program delivering Hot School Meals to 36 schools across the country, benefiting 7,000 children, an additional €4m in funding was provided to allow for the provision of additional hot school meals in 2020.

Furthermore in 2019, work continued to improve access to social welfare for those who are self-employed. This began in 2017 with the extension of Treatment Benefits and Paternity Benefit to the self-employed. In November 2019, a new Jobseeker’s Benefit for the Self-Employed scheme was introduced for those paying class S PRSI contributions.

In terms of employment conditions, during 2019 we enacted the Employment Provisions (Miscellaneous) Act 2018 – improving conditions for part-time and low paid workers. I am particularly proud of this legislation and consider it a landmark reform for workers.

Work also continued on the important reform and modernisation of our pension system and the Department completed a significant public consultation that will help to inform Government decisions on the operational structure for the Automatic Enrolment system in March 2019. Auto enrolment is a state sponsored supplementary retirement savings system, in which employees without personal retirement savings will be automatically enrolled into a quality assured retirement savings system. This new system is expected to enrol its first members in 2022.

It is important that economic recovery is broadly based and that all of society can benefit from improvements in the economy and society. Our long-term goals in this respect are set out in a new Social Inclusion Strategy - Roadmap for Social Inclusion 2020-25 - which was approved by Government in 2019, and subsequently published in early 2020.

As a Government, our top priority for 2020 was to continue our prudent approach to the economy and the management of public spending. Clearly, neither the impact nor scale of COVID-19 on Ireland’s society and economy was foreseeable. However, I am proud to say that my Department has, together with the health service, been to the forefront of the Government’s response to COVID-19. My Department’s response was quick, effective and has supported hundreds of thousands of our citizens in their time of need. It gave people confidence and ensured that they were supported throughout these unprecedented times. I am immensely proud of the contribution my Department and all the staff have made in helping Ireland through these difficult times.

Since my appointment as Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, I have been consistently impressed by the hard work and commitment of the Department’s staff. On behalf of myself and of all in our society I thank them for their dedication, commitment, and tireless work on supporting so many across our country. I have thoroughly enjoyed my time leading the Department and I am proud of the achievements we delivered together.

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