From children to construction workers, school meals to social welfare, here are 10 key takeaways from the 90-page report<\/p>\n
Spending on Social Protection has soared over the last five years.<\/p>\n
In 2024, and not even including the temporary cost-of-living measures, the bill for Social Protection was \u20ac25.2bn, up \u20ac4.5bn from 2019.<\/p>\n
The largest increase was in pensions \u2013 up by \u20ac2.3bn a year in that period.<\/p>\n
This is despite an economy with almost full employment<\/p>\n
The increase in social-welfare payments is somewhat surprising given that there are more people at work than ever, and fewer unemployed. Since 2019, participation in the labour market has increased by 3.6 percentage points, driven by a higher number of women at work \u2013 up almost 5 percentage points.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile the number of people registered long-term unemployed \u2013 that is, for more than a year \u2013 fell by 14,000. Once that trend reverses, as it inevitably will, the Social Protection bill will rise further.<\/p>\n
The number of people with a disability is increasing<\/p>\n
How can it be that the number of people in receipt of social protection payments rose even though the Live Register was down? The report says it is due to demographics, but also because eligibility for some schemes expanded, and there was an increase in the prevalence of disability.<\/p>\n
One in five people in Ireland has a disability, and the employment rate in that cohort is the lowest in the EU. Only one in three people with a disability has a job.<\/p>\n
Spending on disability services has soared<\/p>\n
It has grown by about \u20ac1bn in the last five years, and stood at just over \u20ac3bn last year. The number of people getting Disability Allowance was up 14pc, from 146,755 to 167,633.<\/p>\n
The Government does not believe it is getting value from the extra money it is spending on disability services. There has not been a \u201ccorresponding increase in the level of activity\u201d, the report says.<\/p>\n
Extra health spending is not achieving results either<\/p>\n
More expenditure on the health service, including hiring more staff, has not resulted in a commensurate increase in outputs. The biggest increase in activity are in the areas of least spending, such as emergency departments and outpatients, which represent less than 20pc of expenditure on acute hospitals.<\/p>\n
Spending on children is up.<\/p>\n
Even though the birth rate is decreasing, the budget for children grew by \u20ac225m between 2019 and last year. This is because of expansions in child benefit eligibility, with 18-year-olds in full time education now qualifying, and the school meals scheme expanding.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re short of construction workers<\/p>\n
The report points out that the number of people working in the building sector slumped after the Financial Crisis, going from 240,000 down to 80,000 in five years. Since then it has gradually recovered, and now there are about 170,000.<\/p>\n
As a share of the labour force, though, construction workers make up only 6pc now compared to 11pc at the height of the boom in 2006.<\/p>\n
Productivity in the building sector needs to improve<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the shortage of workers that\u2019s a problem, it\u2019s productivity levels in the construction industry. They are about 25pc below the euro-area average.<\/p>\n
There has to be a \u201cfocus on continued improvement\u201d in productivity, the report says, bringing it up to the average across comparable European countries.<\/p>\n
Energy and water projects are being caught up in red tape<\/p>\n
Apart from planning permission, the energy and water sectors also need to get environmental consents, for extraction, generation and waste disposal. There has been \u201csome evidence\u201d of delays in those consents being granted, the report says.<\/p>\n
The time delays resulted in \u201csignificant cost inflation\u201d for projects, and it\u2019s meant there will be several extra years where their benefits don\u2019t accrue.<\/p>\n
No specific projects are mentioned, but it is known that Ireland is among the worst performing countries in the EU when it comes to planning permission for solar and onshore wind projects.<\/p>\n
Pensioners are relatively well off<\/p>\n
For a single pensioner, the report says, the increase in social welfare payments and the one-off cost-of-living measures have more than offset inflation in the period between 2019 and 2024. That included the spike after Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, when the rate went to almost 8pc.<\/p>\n
\u201cRetired people are one of the best-insulated groups against poverty in the state,\u201d it claims.<\/p>\n
Spending on pensions is up by 28pc since 2019, but this is due to the ageing population as well as the payment rate increases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From children to construction workers, school meals to social welfare, here are 10 key takeaways from the 90-page…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60046,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,3496,20812,18,5766,19,17,26736,6501],"class_list":{"0":"post-60045","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-department-of-health","10":"tag-department-of-social-protection","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-european-commission","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-jack-chambers","16":"tag-john-burns"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60045"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60045\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}