The standard social welfare rate should be increased to €250 over the next two to three years, a Minister of State says.
The Green Party's Joe O’Brien says he'd ‘challenge anyone’ to live comfortably solely on the current rate of €203 a week, the standard rate of Jobseeker's Allowance.
Today, NGOs, academics and others will take part in the Social Inclusion Forum - an annual event to discuss the Government’s plan to reduce consistent poverty.
Minister O’Brien told Newstalk Breakfast the Government aims to reduce that consistent poverty rate to 2% or less by 2025 - something he says will require a ‘dramatically different’ approach.
He said: “To put it in context, in 2008, when we were coming to the end of the Celtic Tiger… the consistent poverty rate was 4.8%.
“When we’re talking about bringing it down to 2%, that’s quite a dramatic change - and quite a challenge.
“We’re a comparably rich country in the international context, but we have still quite stubborn and entrenched levels of poverty across the country. We’ve had it during good times as well.”
The Green TD believes increasing the baseline social welfare rate over the next two to three years has to be part of achieving the goal.
He said: “It’s good to have a debate, and good to put a figure out like the one I did - it will raise eyebrows.
“Just to clarify, when I talk about the €203 rate… I’m talking about people who are solely dependent on that €203 rate. I challenge anyone to live comfortably on €203 a week.”
The cost of the proposed change has yet to be officially costed, but rough calculations by Newstalk Breakfast suggest it could cost around €3.6 billion annually.
Minister O’Brien argued that the ‘enormous’ cost of poverty has to be considered when we talk about raising social welfare rates.
He suggested: “If we’re going to cost how much my proposals are going to take, we also have to cost how much poverty is costing us over a generation as well.”
Minister O’Brien said there’s a ‘strong economic argument’ for putting more money into people’s pockets as they will then spend it.
He also suggested increasing the minimum wage is something that will also need to be looked at as part of the plan.
