'The Poor can't Pay'?

Is it time to take a new look at social welfare?

Social welfare is the one part of the economy that goes up and up in a recession making it harder and harder to afford Our social welfare bill alone accounts for 35-40% of public spending and yet at €196 per week the basic jobseekers payment is barely enough to survive on.

But the raw figures disguise as much as they reveal. There are a myriad of social welfare allowances - lone parents, medical card, family income supplement, rent supplement etc. etc. - and it's very difficult to tell who is getting what, how many people have less than they need and how many households may be bringing in more in social welfare than is reasonable or affordable for the Irish economy.

Some argue that so many benefits are so easily lost as soon as you get a job that in reality many people are better off not getting a job - others see that as a back-door way of arguing that the poorest in society should pay for the recession.

You can see a couple of those arguments here in a document published by "The Poor Can't Pay" and a very different take here in an article based on a recent OECD study

The author of that study, David Grubb, will join us on the programme as will Sean Healy of CORI, Ed Walsh (ex President of Limerick University) and financial advisor Suzanne Kelly. In the audience will be many people claiming social welfare, employers who say they can't compete with what social welfare has to offer the unemployed and people who illustrate the many anomalies in the system including one man who says his family have to split up to make ends meet!

We're on at the earlier time of 9.30pm for tonight's special programme - you can text us on thefrontline@rte.ie or post your comment below.