The Taoiseach Enda Kenny has claimed that anyone who is currently in full-time employment should not be “poor” and that the new Low Pay Commission is the only “possible route out poverty”.
Mr Kenny said: “Work should pay more than welfare and no household with a person in full-time work should be poor. This is not always the case at the moment,” he said earlier this morning.
The Taoiseach made his comments whilst he and the Tanaiste Joan Burton was attending the launch of the new Low Pay Commission in Dublin. Mr Kenny told reporters: “ It is morally unacceptable” that nine pc of families, where the head of the household is employed, are classed as “consistently poor”
The Taoiseach also believes that the new “targeted welfare support” scheme, the ‘Back to Work Family Dividend’, aimed at bringing parents out of long-term unemployment will also act as “a real incentive for people to come from long-term unemployment back into the world of work”.
Although Mr Kenny said that social welfare scheme will be on offer to families from April, with back payments until January available. Parents who are planning to return to work after long term unemployment will be eligible to apply for the scheme, which will provide them with €30 per week for each child for the first year. After which they will receive €15 per child for the second year.