Social Affairs Minister Seamus Brennan has given an interview to the Sunday Business Post on the anniversary of his move to in last year's cabinet reshuffle to his department. At the time it was widely perceived that he was angry and disappointed at being moved from his Transport brief but now he has "warmed to his brief" and believes he "could make a difference in it".
Brennan claims to be "reform minded" and makes some very interesting remarks about how he envisages the role of his department. Mindful of the fact that his department is responsible for a third of all government spending he says "it should not be spending money like an ATM machine". But far from slash and burn cutbacks, it was not his intention to reduce income for anyone. "My top priority is to move this department from being just a payments department to dealing with social policy and trying to get behind the payments and use them to activate people rather than lock them into passive positions". "You have to be able to change things so that people move themselves to a better position in life. So that in many cases they will no longer need us."
The Minister makes much of the distinction between active and passive policy and his targetting of child poverty may exemplify this; opportunities for education and training will be made available to lone parents.
The payment to lone parents is a very good example of passive social policy. There are 80,000 lone parents. I have inspectors calling at their doors to make sure that the child's father does not live in the house. That is not good social policy in my view.
Brennan's instinct is that there should be some sort of a family friendly payment, aimed at helping the child in those circumstances.
The department should not be bothering our heads about the living arrangements of the mother or the father. That should be their private business. I'm not interested in making people nervous about social change. I was trying to move this department away from just being a paymaster general. I'm not for reducing anyone's income. They [social welfare recipients] are not overpaid. They find it hard to live on that sort of money. They find it hard to bring up a child or children and have all sorts of other pressures. But for too long, we just salved our consciences by making the payment and hoping our problems go away.
The Minister has about eighteen months to make his mark and it is a hell of an undertaking to re orientate such a bureaucratic leviathan as Social Affairs. It'll be interesting to see what kind of support Brennan gets from the poverty lobby.
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