Is anyone else cheesed off with how much people get paid on social welfare

so, does anything ever get achieved by posting on these boards. other than cribbin, frustration and time wasted.

I make my position clear to my friends, stating that I think there should be a reduction in the social welfare rates and ask any of my friends to justify the current levels.

I don't think it'd be very difficult to put together a price index based on where someone receives their social welfare payment, and use this as a weighting for additional payments to a base amount.

don't forget that people receive rent allowance completely separately from their social welfare payment.

In these times, if you can pay your bills, light, heat, rent etc. buy your essential shopping and have some left over, I think it's enough.

It was all well and good raising minimum wage levels and social welfare payments when the tiger was roaring and money was growing on trees.

No-one wants to see cuts in education, the health system etc. but the cuts in spending have to come. We're done for otherwise.
 
"uncle Yellow Belly", why did the guards take away my mommy? Because it was my duty to report her, dearest niece.


Agree with Sandrat, this is not about social welfare fraud. My original question was about whether the social welfare amount is too much.
 
It's funny how wage cuts focus the minds as to where the nations money is being spent. I don't think €204 is too much when you take in the expenses every day living costs in Ireland, but whether we can afford to pay it is another thing.
 
I think it is too much but I would prefer the amount to be maintained and a time-limit of 6 months put on the dole once that time is up you should be taken off it.
 
iambrilliant said:
I think it is too much but I would prefer the amount to be maintained and a time-limit of 6 months put on the dole once that time is up you should be taken off it.
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And what do you live on then? We have going to have at least 12% unemployment. Where are the jobs for all these people going to come from?
 
Sunny said:
And what do you live on then? We have going to have at least 12% unemployment. Where are the jobs for all these people going to come from?
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Jobs coming from? We could use the 12% of the labour force to do refuse collection, road maintenance, drain cleaning, maintaining parks & local authority amenity areas so that it would save another area of public finance some money?

Agh damn sorry I forgot- we can't ask these people to "actually" work now can we?

Apologies for the synical statement above- not my real feeling. Although on second thoughts a more humanely acceptable version of above would have merit?
 
The simple fact is that the country can't afford to pay over €200/week to people not working.

Could anybody give info about how much people get on the dole in other economically advanced countries in the EU, i.e. Germany, France, Denmank, Sweden, UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium (i.e the countries who were in the EEC from the early days of the Union)

Anyone know how much an American on the dole gets ?

If Ireland pays a lot more to people on the dole than other countries, then it really is outrageous.
 
Yellow Belly said:
Jobs coming from? We could use the 12% of the labour force to do refuse collection, road maintenance, drain cleaning, maintaining parks & local authority amenity areas so that it would save another area of public finance some money?

Agh damn sorry I forgot- we can't ask these people to "actually" work now can we?

Apologies for the synical statement above- not my real feeling. Although on second thoughts a more humanely acceptable version of above would have merit?
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I don't understand. Are you saying we replace the people already doing those jobs with unemployed people who will do it for cheaper?
 
Sunny said:
I don't understand. Are you saying we replace the people already doing those jobs with unemployed people who will do it for cheaper?
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That maybe so- what is worng with having these social tasks completed at the lowest cost possible- do you not agree with efficency?

Inefficency in our economy is what will ultimately kill us. Have a look at Aer Lingus as a micro example- here was an organisation losing hundreds of millions of euro (mostly due to inefficiencies). Willie Walsh goes in making almost 3,000 people redundant and within 18 months the company is profitable again. Ireland is now akin to Aer Lingus- we can no longer afford an "excess baggage" (pardon the pun) and unless the social welfare system & public sector pay issues are reformed we are heading for a serious crash landing internationally.
 
I'm not going to complain about the rate of social welfare as I may need it myself one day. When you consider some people on SW are getting rent allowance on top of dole then that is too much. There is just no incentive to work at that stage. I do think more should be done to catch dole cheats though. There is widespread social welfare abuse.
 
Yellow Belly said:
Jobs coming from? We could use the 12% of the labour force to do refuse collection, road maintenance, drain cleaning, maintaining parks & local authority amenity areas so that it would save another area of public finance some money?

Agh damn sorry I forgot- we can't ask these people to "actually" work now can we?

Apologies for the synical statement above- not my real feeling. Although on second thoughts a more humanely acceptable version of above would have merit?
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Then why make the statement at all? Like sunny said are we to get rid of people already working in parks etc to make way for your proposals?

When you say we can't ask these people to 'actually work' you seem to fail to realise that most of these people have actually being working most of their adult lives and have had the misfortune to actually lose their jobs and are finding it ever more difficult to actually find a new job.
 
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If Ireland pays a lot more to people on the dole than other countries, then it really is outrageous.
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We didn't have a problem in paying wages higher than other countries so why change now.
 
LouisCribben said:
The simple facts is that the country can't afford to pay over €200 to people not working.

Could anybody give info about how much people get on the dole in other economically advanced countries in the EU, i.e. Germany, France, Denmank, Sweden, UK, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, Belgium (i.e the countries who were in the EEC from the early days of the Union)

Anyone know how much an American on the dole gets ?

If Ireland pays a lot more to people on the dole than other countries, then it really is outrageous.
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It probably does rank high up but so does our minimum wage, wages in general and our cost of living. I am not against cutting social welfare as such for sound economic reasons but I object to the generalisation that it should be cut because people are milking the system.
 
LouisCribben said:
If Ireland pays a lot more to people on the dole than other countries, then it really is outrageous.
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Paying more money in social welfare is socially desirable (IMO) as long as it does not act as a disincentive to work and we can afford it.
The latter is no longer the case, the former may well be the case soon.
 
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How is the latter the case. Are you saying we can afford to pay for social welfare? When did you come out of the coma?

Again, how can people talk about cutting wages when there is no proportate cut to social welfare? It did my nut in when, combined with a 1% increase in income tax, social welfare payments also increased in the last budget. Seriously wrong.

I think it's a fair statement to make that almost everyone in the private sector expects to be earning at least 10% less than last year, those who manage to keep their jobs.

We need to get to grips with assessing exactly how much everyone needs to live on in this country.
 
If people are in receipt of allowances on top of their dole, then the amount of dole they receive after these allowances should be lowered to reflect them. That way, they will have enough to live on, well, I think so anyway. Once they have a roof over their head, food on the table and heat/light, maybe even a couple of bob in their pocket to treat the kids etc. then I think that is good enough. Anyone agree?

There is a huge probability that I could be redundant in a few months time. I won't get any rent allowance, I have a mortgage. This 204 would pay my mortgage for the month and a bit on top for everything else. I would be happy enough with that.
 
I have no problem with people who have actually worked claiming Jobseeker's payments (Benefit or Allowance).

What really bothers me is that school leavers can sign on in the following October after leaving school and also get Jobseeker's Allowance of €204.30 a week if their parent(s) are getting a social welfare payment.

Any thoughts on this?
 
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