Congress General Secretary David Begg today (Feb 6) warned that without a "national understanding" on income distribution, Ireland will struggle to "maximise the life opportunities" of all citizens, leading to deeper inequality and growing social division.
Addressing delegates at the Public Service Executive Union's Social Protection Divisional Conference in Athlone, Mr Begg said that public services "are an important form of social solidarity and source of social cohesion," in a market society.
He said there were "formidable difficulties to be overcome in pursuit of a distributional settlement that maximises the life opportunities for all our citizens.
"Nevertheless, without some kind of national understanding on (income) distribution we are not going anywhere fast," he explained.
Mr Begg said that social protection – with a budget of €26.8 billion – "is central to the political economy of the nation."
But policy choices were hamstrung by a massive debt burden, which cost almost €8 billion a year to service.
'the fiscal freedom available to Government to advance important public goods like childcare...is limited," he said.
Mr Begg said this and other impediments meant it was time to reimagine our concept of social services and move to the 'social investment" model that would equip people with the skills necessary to participate fully in the labour market and ensure good quality jobs.
'the post-war welfare state model is based on the concept of a male breadwinner household and an extended family caring network.
"But family structures are changing. The feminisation of the labour force means that family provided child care and elder care is much less available. Also active labour market programmes are increasingly essential to maintaining the employability of people.
"As argued by Anton Hemerijck (2013) this calls for a shift towards a social investment welfare model. The concept of investment is important because it is predicated on equipping people with the skills and public goods (e.g. childcare) to allow high levels of labour force participation in well paid, high productivity jobs.
"In that way a tax base capable of funding the social investment can be sustained. It is about creating a virtuous circle," Mr Begg said.
