Morally wrong for working household to be poor - Kenny

It is morally unacceptable for families with people in work to be experiencing poverty, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said.

He said work should always pay more than welfare and no household with a person in full-time employment should be poor. However he said this was not always the case at present.

Mr Kenny said the most recent data from 2013, showed that families where the head of the household was at work accounted for almost 9 per cent of those classified as being “consistently poor” – a definition that comprised measures of both income and material deprivation.

“That is morally unacceptable and economically unwise”, he said.

Speaking at the launch of the Government's new Low Pay Commission he promised that a further 80,000 workers would be removed from the scope of the universal social charge (USC) later this year, bringing to 500,000 the number of workers exempt from the measure.

He said the Government would also be introducing new targeted welfare supports for people returning to work, particularly the low paid.

“From April, the Government will pay €30 a week to mothers or fathers returning to work from long-term unemployment for each child for the first year, and €15 per week per child for the second year.

For those trapped on rent supplement who cannot go back to work because they will lose their housing support, we are now rolling out a new housing assistance payment. The assistance from the State will be based on how much you earn and not by your employment status.”

Also speaking at the launch of the Low Pay Commission Tánaiste Joan Burton said the new back-to-work family dividend was "an extremely generous and important support". She said that it meant that over two years a family with one child would receive additional support of more than €2,300 to supplement wages, a family with two children would receive more than €4,600 and those with three children will receive almost €7,000. She said this was in addition to any Family Income Supplement entitlements.

The Low Pay Commission will make recommendations to Government by next July on the appropriate rate for the national minimum wage.

The Taoiseach said that to protect existing jobs, he would be asking the Government “to look at measures to mitigate the impact any changes could have on small employers”.

He said in the past governments had reduced the rate of employers’ PRSI to offset the cost of raising the minimum wage for workers.

Mr Kenny said that for employers, “a very significant benefit of the Low Pay Commission concept is that in assessing the national minimum wage annually, any adjustments into the future will be incremental and far less disruptive for business compared with the step changes witnessed in the past”.

The Minister for Business and Employment Ged Nash urged the nine members of the Low Pay Commission to leave aside their sectoral jerseys and to seek to reach a recommendation on the minimum wage by consensus.