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SOCIAL PROTECTION MINISTER Joan Burton has formally requested than the Oireachtas approve €685 million in extra funding for her Department – for the 2012 calendar year.
Details of the request were supplied to the Joint Oireachtas sub-committee on Social Protection this morning – only hours before the Department’s spending requirements for next year will be confirmed as part of Budget 2013.
Funding for the Department of Social Protection under Budget 2012 currently stands at just under €13.4 billion – but proposals being put to the committee for approval this morning would see that total grow to just under €14.1 billion, an increase of 5.1 per cent.
Most of the extra funding falls under two categories – payments for Jobseeker’s Allowance, which is now set to cost the government €3.07 billion this year – €271.4 million more than originally expected.
The Department is also contributing €417.9 million more to the Social Insurance Fund, the fund from which payments such as Jobseeker’s Benefit are made. This fund, which is funded by employee PRSI payments, is in deficit.
Reports suggest that Budget 2013, being announced this afternoon, will remove a system where a certain amount of an employees’ earnings are exempt from PRSI.
This is seen as an attempt to help address the deficit in the fund – but will mean that all employees in the state will be hit to the tune of €260 per year.
Fianna Fáil’s social protection spokesman, Willie O’Dea, noted that spending in some areas – such as fuel allowance, farm assistance, rent supplement and JobBridge – had actually been less than budgeted for in Budget 2012.
His Sinn Féin counterpart, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, said nobody would oppose the approval of extra funding going towards the country’s most vulnerable people – but was disappointed that details of the funding shortfall only came on the day that Budget 2013 was being announced.
Burton explained the delay by saying her Department could not predict how much money it would need for 2012 until the November Exchequer returns were published. Those returns were released only yesterday afternoon.
She said that without the approval of extra funding, the Department would not be in a position to continue its full range of welfare payments for the rest of the year.
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I could say the alphabet backwards when I was 19
there was no support for me in school, i was reading at a 14 year old level and doing calculus by the time i was 7, i was reading dinosaurs latin names at 3,there were no resources in the 70′s and early 80′s when i went to school so i had to endure mind numbing boredom for 6-7 hours a day for 11 years, there was nothing the teachers could do, it put me off academia for ever, i just couldnt wait to get out of there
How about a case of a gifted young person whose financially challenged parents were repeatedly told their child had a “great future ahead” – which was interpreted by the parents as a great big dollar sign. The child was then told when they grew up they could “help” Mammy and Daddy which of course was correctly interpreted by the said child, who went off on a self destructive collision course to sabotage their own future as best possible, eventually culminating in a 6 month disappearance at the age of 28 leaving plenty of unpaid debts. A cautionary tale, but a lesson that parents should not have their child’s future framed in terms of how much their potential earnings are.
i should also mention my own laziness there and not put all the blame on others…
I could do my 7 times tables in 6.9 seconds when I was eight, now it takes me 6.9 days………
It would have been better to talk to the kids themselves than an educator who just speaks for them, no?
Of course any child’s talents should be supported but it is better to let children follow their passions. In terms of education problems (as being a genius isn’t a ‘problem’ per se), I’d be more worried about falling standards in schools and about kids who go to uni and can’t spell properly, can’t formulate an argument and will only do something if it is “on the exam”… because that’s how they’ve been conditioned by the Leaving Cert. Doling out A’s and B’s just seems to enhance ‘entitlement’ culture that flourished during the Celtic Tiger debacle…
Try being a gifted kid growing up in a working class Catholic family, educated at a Catholic state school where any deviation from the norm made you a potential delinquent or a target for bullying. There are gifted alcoholics propping up bars in towns and villages all over this country, those who managed to avoid being labelled and institutionalised as many gifted adults were and still are I suspect.
there probably are gifted alcoholics propping up bars everywhere…..but they have no one to blame but themselves….
“So, here, they can make friends and talk about whatever they want – comics, girls, cars, sports, whatever – just like any other group of kids.”
Girls?
How very inclusive of all bright kids.
CTYI doesn’t accomplish a lot of its stated aims. Back in my day, a lot of the people who went there were hippie-stoner types. At least they had more then enough brain cells to murder with weed fumes…
Could easily be confused with Asperger Syndrome based on the behaviours these gifted children exhibit.
have your say