A disgracefully mean cut that targets the bereaved

THE Government now looks upon widowhood as akin to a lifestyle choice. That is the only conclusion one could come to after their recent decision to deny working widows who become sick their social welfare entitlements. Every worker who unfortunately gets sick is entitled to claim a weekly payment on the basis of their payments to the Department of Social Protection. But in a new ruling introduced in the last Budget – but never mentioned until it was buried in the Finance Act – widows and widowers, regardless of their payments, are not going to get sick pay.

This is a bizarre, cruel, mean and petty cutback. When a spouse dies we cannot begin to imagine the emotional, social and financial catastrophe that befalls the husband or wife and their family.

In many cases, it means the surviving spouse is forced to get paid work simply to make ends meet, and especially if there are children involved.

Imagine the shock that awaited a number of working widows recently who, when they got sick, were told they were no longer entitled to sick pay.

They were informed it was because they were already receiving a social welfare payment, the widow’s pension. However, the working widow’s colleague, who has made exactly the same tax and social insurance payments and is not a widow, is entitled to social welfare sick pay.

As a number of widows pointed out to me this week, this makes employers wary of employing them, because most employers continue to pay the full salary of sick employees who then, in turn give the employer their social welfare sick-pay cheque. Except, we now discover, a working widow no longer gets a sick-pay social welfare payment.

And it gets worse. A number of widowers contacted me this week to reveal that they have been told that because they are recently widowed, they must now give up their work on Community Employ- ment schemes. Imagine a recently bereaved worker being told he must make a choice between receiving a widow’s pension or get- ting his modest payment earned through his work with a local community or disability group.

One recently bereaved husband told me he will go demented if he is forced to give up his job, simply to avail of a payment to which every widower is entitled. This cutback was introduced 10 years ago by the then minister for social welfare, Fianna Fáil’s Mary Coughlan. However, after a sustained public protest campaign, vocally supported by Labour and Fine Gael – the Government did a U-turn within three months.

Now Joan Burton, the current Minister for Social Protection has slipped the cut back into the system. It was simply never publicly announced.

Initially the full impact of the change did not register – after all, at any one time there are, thankfully, few working widows or widowers out sick.

But now, as time passes, more people have been affected.

Most people can see this as a callous cutback that should be reversed immediately.