Éamon Ó Cuív demands pension parity and RSS reform

Just in relation to TOOSE, CE and RSS, I suppose question number one, will the pension arrangements that have now applied to CE apply to TOOSE and RSS supervisors? It would be totally anomalous if they don't. The second thing is, you said that there are vacancies on RSS. Have you any data as to the number of people on RSS pre-214 and post-14 by family formation? The point I'm making is this. Pre-214 you got the full payment, in respect to what farming income you had as long as you were qualified to go on the scheme, in other words you would have had to be eligible for some pharmacist, but once you were on, as long as your income didn't suddenly expand, you got the full payment. Post-14 that changed and you got the basic single rate payment, but where there was a couple of independent children that then took from the amount of payment above that they took from the farm income. What that meant was that for single people going on RSS, it was as attractive as ever. You got the full 230 payment per week, but for a couple with children with a farm income, they potentially only got the top-up, i.e. the 20-odd euro top-up per week. I think if you examine the figures, you will find that post-214 the main number of people who joined were single. It became totally unattractive to people who had a partner or dependent children, who had dependents on the scheme. Therefore, if you want to make that scheme attractive and go back to its original roots, the simple thing is to reverse the means test, the meanness of 2014, which undermined the whole principle of the scheme. The principle of the scheme was that the European policy was to keep families on the land. This is how you could have full-time farmers that were nearly full-time, because most farmers either themselves or espouse can give you 19 hours a week. Now, I think it would be interesting, I always believe, go back and get the figures, so if you could do an analysis of the make-up of the people who joined after 2014 was a disproportionately single people with no dependence and was a different mix, did a different mix apply pre-2014? I think it was 2014 was the year they changed the rules. Now, the second thing, I really, really welcome the idea that you would review 2 since you said you were talking to stakeholders, or 2 since you said you were going to talk to stakeholders. There are two points I would like to make. One is to have a special consultation. I don't think we should have to go into the public consultation. I think as a committee, before you write your report, because it is a terrible thing when we get the final report and then you can have the consultation with us, but we don't really have an input at that stage. I think the collective wisdom of the people who are doing the clinics, and you be one of them and the minister be another, is actually more valuable than vested in stakeholder groups many times. I'm not saying anything against them, but they're coming from a particular objective. I often find that recommendations coming from groups like that often miss what we are picking up on the ground, the day-to-day realities of how these work out on the ground. Can I also suggest to you that you consider flipping CE and 2s. What I mean by flipping CE and 2s is this. The long-term unemployed person that is to go on a scheme, a community scheme, would first of all be seen as an activation scheme, so get all these opportunities of education and whatever. In some cases they get activation and they get a job. However, we all know, the practising politicians here all know, that there are a fair number of people who do quite good work on a CE and a 2s scheme, who you will never commercially imply that there is a massive difference between the two. I had the experience of poor politics in employing people in both schemes simultaneously in the community work I was doing. Now the idea of 2s then was that if you weren't likely to jump out by activation and you were still capable of making a contribution to society and keeping all of these communities going, and remember this is what these people are doing at a very, very small expense, extra expense to the state, that they jumped from there into 2s. It was finance that flipped it and put the one-year cap on it. Therefore, you keep these people engaged who are very, very unlikely to get employment. Anybody who tells me that there aren't people there who you could train and educate forever, who are unlikely ever to hold on a commercial job. You might as well have told me that if I got enough music lessons I would be able to play music, I can't, I wish I could. There are lots of things that people can't do and there is nothing wrong with them really. It would be very entertaining, Deputy O'Cleave, if you were playing music. It would be very entertaining, but unfortunately I did all the music lessons, but I never learned to play music. Aristaas O'Brien, you might come back on that. Aristaas O'Brien, there are a few things there. On the pension issue, and I assume you are referring to the gratuity for CE supervisors. To my knowledge, the WRC decision was specifically in relation to… Do they now have to take another WRC decision and go through the loop, or is the government going to cap up? The gratuity for CE supervisors is ready to go. Aristaas O'Brien, I know that, but are you going to follow that up, or would we have to go and say to all the RSS and tools to go into the WRC and win the case on the precedent that what is good for the goose is good for the gander? I suppose we are constrained by the WRC decision at the moment. Aristaas O'Brien, no, you are not constrained. Generosity is never constrained. Aristaas O'Brien, indeed, that is a fair point. Are they going to oppose you if you bring it in? Aristaas O'Brien, it has not been brought to us at the moment. Aristaas O'Brien, I will make sure it is brought to you tomorrow. Aristaas O'Brien, they are bringing it to us. Aristaas O'Brien, on those other issues, you might come back. Aristaas O'Brien, on the RSS side of things, I would be very interested on the committee's input and your own input and the other deputy's input on how we look at it again. Aristaas O'Brien, we don't have data to hand here in terms of family formation pre-2014. My experience of meeting RSS participants is, as you described, they tend to be single male farmers 80% of the time that I have met out and about. This review is just RSS, not toos as well, just to clarify, but I think it has worked digging into the family formation structure pre-2014, and there were much higher financial incentives back then as well, I am aware of that. I don't know what it means, sir, it does not be doing a difference. Let the minister respond. Aristaas O'Brien, I will try to touch at least on the other points that were made. I suppose there is a broad range of people who are on CE schemes at the moment. I take your point on that. The broad qualifying criteria for most of them is jobseeker's allowance. That is where the call is made as to whether someone could theoretically be eligible for employment. It is at that stage the call is made. I would be very slow to say to anyone that they would never be able to get a job in the real labour market. I think we have to be very careful of doing that. Notwithstanding the point you make, there are a lot of people who are very distant from it, but I think it is that key call that is made when the application is made for jobseeker's allowance is where that decision is made. I think it is worth saying as well that there are flows in both directions between CE and toos, and I think it can work well for people going in both directions that way as well. There are just some initial comments, but we would be wise to take the wisdom of the broadest group of stakeholders that we can when we are looking at RSS, because I do very much want to go back to basics and see what we can do to keep small farmers on the land.