Welfare bonus cut 'will take €9m out of economy

The Government's abolition of Christmas bonus payments for 36,000 social welfare recipients in Meath will mean a loss of up to €9 million in shopping power to the county in the run-up to the Christmas period, it was claimed this week. Mayor of Navan, Cllr Joe Reilly, said that "the most vulnerable" people would be hit by the absence of the traditional double payment and a retailers' leader said that the scrapping of the bonus would make the situation "even more difficult" for shopkeepers who were already under strain. Navan stands to lose €1 million to €1.5 million and Meath up to €9 million as the welfare money is taken out of the economy, Cllr Reilly claimed. "There are serious consequences for everybody here, not least for the social welfare recipients themselves. "Because we don't have the exact figures, we guesstimate that Navan and Meath in general will lose out to a serious level through the absence of this bonus," he said. He said that the Christmas trade was central to every retailer's business. It was their "harvest" time of the year and the decision to eliminate the bonus would have serious repercussions for jobs and income. The Sinn Fein councillor said that he did not want to paint a bad picture in the run-up to Christmas but the reality was that there would be "absolute hardship" for people suffering the social welfare cutbacks, but also for hard-pressed retailers in the towns and villages of Meath. He took the view that social welfare recipients were people who were most likely to stay in the county to shop due to the fact that many might not have access to cars. "I don't think there'll be too many of them jumping into cars to cross the border for shopping," he said. Kathryn Lynch, chairperson of the retail committee of Navan Chamber of Commerce, said the abolition of the Christmas bonus for social welfare recipients would make the situation "even more difficult" for retailers who were already struggling against the economic tide. She said that retailers in Navan had already noticed a big fall-off in trade due to the current economic situation. "The absence of the social welfare bonus will make it very difficult for everybody across the board," she added. Ms Lynch said that she "begged to differ" with Cllr Reilly that social welfare reciepients would not be in a category of people who would stay at home in Meath to do their shopping rather than go across the border into the North. "The only way we can mitigate the effects of the cuts and maintain jobs here is if people do stay in the county in the run-up to Christmas," she said. She said that many people in business were struggling to pay taxes and rates and to keep as many people as they could in employment. "Every cut creates another difficulty for them. For instance, we don't know what is coming up in the budget in December. Pending that budget, it appears that people who have money are not spending it." Ms Lynch said that the latest figures for the retail trade had shown that takings were down 10 per cent. "However, that's only half the story - the other half is that the actual value of transactions has fallen immeasurably. We don't want to get into a doom and gloom situation but I would say that the social welfare bonus abolition is only one of many difficulties facing retailers this Christmas," she said. Cllr Reilly had put down a motion at a recent meeting of Navan Town Council calling on the Government to restore the bonus payments. He said that the cuts would have severely detrimental effects on the welfare recipients and depress local economies and put businesses and retailers who relied on the Christmas trade under further pressure.