Éamon Ó Cuív urges reform of capital rules harming disabled claimants

Mr Minister, I welcomed last year the increase in the capital disregard for carers and also I welcome it for the fuel allowance this year, but as you know that capital disallowance is causing havoc in the system and the whole system of assessing capital. I have raised a number of issues which you previously, for example, we have the situation of the disability allowance where, no, it is not the £50,000, it is £50,000 if we grant you that, I think you are correct, but the problem is the €4. In all these keys, the €4 per thousand once you get £20,000 over the threshold. That is 20 per cent interest and it penalises people who are thrifty or in the case of disability allowance what it penalises are people who inherited money from parents or where parents very carefully put aside maybe a small pension policy or whatever or put aside capital and gave it to them. Now, I have time and again highlighted this issue with you. A very, very disabled person, never a chance of working, ever. Can't walk, can't talk, very disabled. Parents die is the normal course of life cycle. They leave their worldly goods to their three children. It amounts to a modest £600,000 when you take a house into account and so on. So the two that are able-bodied working get £200,000 apiece. They pay no debt duties because they are under the limit. However, the person who was born with a severe disability gets the £200,000, no debt duties, but suddenly finds the disability allowance has disappeared. Gone. Gone with the wind. In all justice, this issue needs to be tackled. Tattled radically, not touched at the fringes. I also mentioned to you before, and this is one where knowledge of the system comes in to lack of knowledge of the system. But we encourage where you have a family where, and lots of these are now coming to pension age, where one of a couple worked. There were single-income families, very common, and the spouse worked and worked very hard, maybe harder even still, but rare the family. That was the work they did, making a home, rearing family, involved in voluntary committees in the community, all the things that people should do. In that situation, what happens? If they are knowledgeable of social welfare, they will do the wrong thing. In my view, i.e. they will keep the money and any savings that 50 people have, they will keep it in the primary earner's bank account and they will not share it. However, if they are very thrifty and if they have a good job and they share it into a joint bank account, or worse still, if they put it in the non-working spouse's bank account, which is totally counter sensible, it runs against everything we say about those situations and what people should do, what happens? When you come to the IQA, you will find that if you had £150,000 imputed to the spouse or partner in the one income situation, that would be imputed as an income of €470 a week, and suddenly they do not get the IQA, where the person where they either knew the system or they were the scrounge and they were selfish and put it in their own bank account would find that the IQA was intact. I had hoped this year that we would see radical reform and simple things, it does not take a commission, it does not take rocket science to change some of these things. I had suggested, and I think the committee had suggested, remember, that we go to £50,000, so let us change all the schemes to £50,000, it will not cost that much, and that we would impute no more than €2 per thousand on the higher end of the savings. Now €2 per thousand is still an equivalent of 10 per cent interest, and I do not know of any high street bank that is paying 10 per cent interest. I do not know anywhere you could invest it and be guaranteed 10 per cent, unless you were a property mogul or something, and these people are not like that. You might say, well, that is a lot of savings of £150,000, but remember, if somebody gets a lump sum on leaving employment, supposing somebody had risen to reasonably middle rank in the civil service and left with a lump sum, and they put it in since they are in bank account or suddenly, and they had all the savings through their life, and if you are 40 years working you would hope people would have savings. People can be very careful, but they are getting penalised for being careful, for being right and for being good citizens. So, Minister, what I would ask you again is, would you look at at least giving us a costing? You see, my reckoning is the reason I never get a costing in this one is that it would not cost anything hugely significant, but it is catching people up. It is tripping people up who are vulnerable, not in massive numbers, but it is tripping them up in a very unfair way. Would it be possible to get a costing at least? And would you consider in the Social Welfare Bill, it is too late for the present Social Welfare Bill, would it be possible to give us the costing very speedily as to what would happen if you raised all of the the basic thresholds of £50,000 disregarded, and then said for the next £10,000, £1,000 per £1,000, and for all the remaining £1,000, that would be £2,000 per £1,000. Would you give us a costing across all schemes if that minor adjustment was made? What would be the costing? I think it is worth noting that we are talking about these costings. I am sure you must be totally mesmerised between trying to deal with a budget in one department of £400 million and the other one £24,000 million. When we are talking about costings in Social Welfare, what looks big in another department is not, you have just blandly come in and said we did really well today, we are only £700 million over, is that it? Am I right? That is the figure. I had that culture shock in that department too, where £20 million here and £10 million there was very small money and unforeseen factors could have a much bigger effect, like the welfare going up or the welfare going up. When I say the welfare, the number out of work going up or going down would have a much bigger effect. Would you come back with the costing and would you consider just making that simple change in the spring? Now, my second question is, if I have a couple in a house and they have somebody living with them who stay on carers allowance, but that is fair enough if they are only on carers allowance, but they might be working up to 18.5 hours a week. Is it €1,000 over the basic social welfare, including the basic carers, for the couple? That is a very common arrangement nowadays and it keeps people in their own homes. If it is a single person with a carer in the house who again might be working, is it €500 over the full contributive pension plus €500? Is it €500 or how is it going to work? Because otherwise we are going to trip people in the caring situation. Again, compared to putting in the people in the nursing homes, we should be facilitating carers in every way we can in the system because it is better where possible. Of course there are lots of situations that are not possible, but where possible, first choice, and surely we learnt that from the pandemic, that first choice has to be that the person would be cared for in their own home. Now, can I say something just very briefly and ask you a question about the partial capacity? Minister, partial capacity is for self-implied and implied. You can only get it if you have a moderate or severe or profound disability, and if it is moderate I think it is 50%, 75% and 100%. Now, the situation here is that often those people can only work intermittently and sometimes they are well and sometimes they are not. And furthermore, I had a particular case, and it is typical of what is fantastic and possible, somebody with multiple sclerosis that had been quite advanced, and on a self-implied basis they were able to do translation from their own home. So some weeks and some months they made some money, and it is not badly paid when you could do it properly, but many weeks and months there was no money earned. Can you tell us how much it would have cost, because there is not that many people in partial capacity, because the threshold is relatively high, how much would it cost to give them the disability, but by definition to be moderate, severe or profound? It is not as if all the people on invalidity are eligible for partial capacity. The people who are mild or have very limited disability do not get partial capacity. Minister, can you tell us the number on partial capacity and what it would have cost and to be just that little bit extra generous? I often found that the system can be how to put a penny pinching, and when you add up the sums it would not be material, even to the cost of giving this extra disability payment out. I bet you it would be a tiny, tiny fraction of it, and I believe that decision should be amended and that it should be paid. Thank you, Deputy O'Keeve, for raising a number of issues here. Regarding the capital disregards, I have made some changes to the carers and to the over 70s now for the fuel allowance. I have made a good few changes over the last couple of budgets. I would love to do everything, but I cannot do everything in one budget. I agree with you in terms of people who are profoundly disabled, their parents are worried about what is going to happen to them when they pass on. They want to leave the money in trust for them, so they have access to that wee bit of extra that they deserve to have and it is part of their inheritance as well. You have made the point to me, and I accept that, that if they do get an inheritance, their disability payment, if it is means tested, is gone then. I take your point on that, but it is particularly for those with a profound disability. We know now of many elderly parents who are very concerned about the future of their disabled children whenever they pass on. What I will commit to do, and I have discussed this with my officials, is that I am going to review all of the means tested payments that we have in terms of the capital allowance. I know that a number of you, including yourself, brought this up, particularly to do with the carer's payment. I will do that this year. I did ask the officials to look at what kind of a cost it would be, and they did say to me it would cost you about £50 million. It is a considerable cost to change the whole thing, but I do commit to looking at it to see how I can improve it, because I do know that £20,000 is not a lot now. It used to be £20,000, well not even go back there where it used to do, but it does not do an awful lot now. I was going to say it would buy you a good car, but it would not buy you one now. It is the sort of thing that I am very conscious of, and I absolutely commit to looking at it this year to see if there is anything we can do in that regard. We have the cost of disability report, as you know, and it is in the committee at the minute. Minister Ann Rabbit is chairing a committee and they are looking at that. Again, what I am looking at there is how we can make the payment that is commensurate with whether it is either a profound disability or a mild disability. There is a difference in disabilities, and at the minute it is one flat rate across the board. The people with profound disabilities, there is no doubt about it, it costs them more. We know the report says that, so we are looking at that as well and hopefully we will move on that in the coming year. I take your point too about the giant bank account. I have seen this myself on many occasions where mainly women have not worked. They have been at home caring all their life. They go to look for the qualified ad or the parent and discover there are a few bob in a bank account and they cannot get anything. It is as simple as that. Again, that is something that I look at as part of this review. The other thing I would say that I am looking at under the report on the Pensions Commission report is how we can provide pensions for people who have been caring for 20 years or more. I think that is something that this committee recommended and I very much want to move on on that. There are many, many, again mainly women who have given up a large part of their life to look after a loved one and then they find they come to pension age and they have got nothing. We are moving on that as well. Just in the fuel allowance, can I just say that the €1,000 for a couple, that includes the social welfare payment for the over 70s. The €1,000 for a couple, €500 for a single person. The household composition still applies to the fuel allowance. For the under 70s, you are allowed as part of the means test, €200 plus the contributory pension. You are allowed to have €200 over what the contributory pension is rate. That would mean you would have €465. I have increased that in this budget for 2023. That means you could earn up to €465 before it would impact on the fuel allowance. That is an improvement in that area as well. I am including in that the extra €12 that is going on the pension in January. The other thing I did do in terms of the fuel and the carers, I introduced a disregard for half rate carers allowance on the fuel allowance scheme as well. That will be welcomed. Again, these are things that, see I do listen to you. I said that last night. You do raise these things and I do take them on board. We are all in this to try and support people. That is what social protection is about. It will always be about trying to help people when they need it. When I am coming up with schemes, I have to look at how it is not going to have unintended consequences in other areas. It might sound a good idea to you and to me, but sometimes when we look at it in a broader context, it can cause unintended consequences. The other issue was the partial capacity benefit. I know what you are saying there. We can look at that in the context of the review that I am going to be doing. The Minister for Social Protection will hopefully be doing it next year. I cannot say if I will still be here next year. I would love to be here, but it is all part of what we are looking at.