£3 A WEEK won't have them dancing in the dole queues but the social welfare aspect of the Budget cannot be judged on the weekly increase alone.
A lot has been done in the Budget to bring about sensible and helpful improvements in individual social welfare schemes or to remove anomalies which should have been got rid of years ago.
But people on social welfare will judge this Budget first and foremost by the £3 a week increase for individual claimants with an extra £1.50 for those with adult dependants. There is no increase in the weekly payment for children as this money has been re allocated to monthly child benefit over the past three years. This re allocation is based on the assumption that it is more beneficial to claimants because getting a job will not affect their child benefit - whereas it usually means the end of their weekly payments.
For a family consisting of a claimant, an adult dependant and two children this all boils down to an increase of 16p per person per day from mid June until September. Child benefit goes up in September and will mean an extra £2 a month for a two parent family. This will boost their Budget increase from 1.6p to 17.7p per person per day which wouldn't buy a packet of crisps.
This all represents twice the rate of inflation, a fact which will cut no ice in the welfare queues, however much it may set the economists a tutting.
The improvements for which the Budget deserves to be remembered are in the details.
Families who live mostly on unemployment payments but in which the person classified as an "adult dependant" goes out to work lose their adult dependant allowance (£40 from September) if the worker earns more than £60 a week. Typically, this affects families in which the wife brings in extra money by doing cleaning jobs. From mid June, the adult dependant allowance will be reduced in stages and will not disappear entirely until the worker is earning £90 a week. That change will make a real difference to the people affected.
So will the decision to pay a higher carer's allowance to those who care for two people. In such cases the allowance will be increased by 50 per cent.
Important, too, is the decision to give unemployment assistance at the full rate to people on the second chance education scheme in which people on welfare can apply to do second level education. This is a scheme which people can, and do, use to change their lives.
There is one sleight of hand which is worth noting. In his Budget speech, the Minister for Finance made much of the fact that with this Budget the Government will have achieved welfare rates more or less equal to the minimum rates recommended by the Commission on Social Welfare.
But the minimum rates were recommended by the Commission in 1986 as the rates which should be introduced immediately. It recommended substantially higher long term rates which nobody seems to talk about anymore.
Indeed, Mr Quinn noted that there is a commitment in Partner ship 2000, the agreement which the social partners are proposing, to implement the minimum rate by the end of that agreement. That suggests that the minimum rates are the highest people on welfare are going to get.
It also suggests a lesson for commissions of all sorts never recommend an immediate, minimum set of steps to be taken pending long term improvement the minimum is the most you are likely to get and you'll get it in the long term.
It is also worth noting that the increase in child benefit is very much a mixed bag. The extra £5 a child for the third and each subsequent child is a reasonable rise under the circumstances.
But £1 a month for each of the first two children?
It's not a lot, Ruairi, it's not a lot.