Comments on: Civil Partnership some initial observations…

By: tipster

tipster — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 21:10:55 +0000

“the term marital status is no more in terms of equality legislation – civil status will be the new phrase not rolling off your lips seemingly”

Oh Joy. Two complicated terms to confuse people. Civil status and family status.

By: admin

admin — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 00:36:19 +0000

Omegar et al – I’m not just referring to visits to peoples houses in terms of Social welfare assessments – I’ve had experience of dealing with people who’ve been deducted money for ‘enjoyment of free accommodation’ because they shared with a partner who owned a house/apartment. A quick pointing to the fact that they were not married, or could not marry eventually sorted out the mess.

All sorts of assumptions are probably going to be made about the way people live now in terms of social welfare assessments and put huge pressure on ‘relationships’ and the dynamics within – a lot of the problems reported to Citizens Advice Bureax in the UK have been about the way in which relationships which are not registered are determined or forced out when maybe people are not ready to name the type of relationship they are in.

There will be more on this no doubt as it’s all rolled out.

By: omegar24

omegar24 — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 18:28:05 +0000

I see that you mentioned the DSFA aspects of this bill. In truth you answered one of the questions i had in relation to the bill.

I used to work in a Social Welfare local office, and so this is something that i was interested in finding out about.

I should point out that if you are looking for the guidelines that the SWI should be working under should be filed on the website here:

http://www.welfare.ie/EN/Pages/azindex.aspx?tab=guidelines

Always worth a look see, if you can read through the excess complexity.

By: Fluffy Links – Saturday June 27th 2009 « Damien Mulley

Fluffy Links – Saturday June 27th 2009 « Damien Mulley — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 11:20:02 +0000

[...] has some initial thoughts on the new civil partnership bill that the Greens are lauding up. They’re even marching in the Dublin Pride parade today. [...]

By: Gerard Cunningham

Gerard Cunningham — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 10:05:43 +0000

Can you imagine the training courses the inspectors will get in how to spot that two men or women living together may well be shacked up and therefore considered financially dependent on each other! Many an interesting social welfare interview to come…. A new form of poverty due to sexual orientation?

Around 1990, I was involved with a group called the Scheme Worker’s Alliance, an offshoot of the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed set up to look after the particular concerns of people on FAS and SES/CE work schemes.

We organised a conference, invited along a few politicians and senior civil servants from the departments of Labour and Social Welfare, and voiced our complaints. One of the main concerns from the floor was a protest against co-habitation rules. Although the senior civil servants from the Dept of Social Welfare assured the conference there was no practice of investigating if people claiming a single persons allowance (or occasionally, a lone parent allowance) was living with someone else, the floor was full of complaints about welfare inspectors doing just that. I remember one woman describing how the inspector looked under her bed to see if there were a man’s shoes there.

The senior civil servant dutifully promised to look into it, since it wasn’t kosher. They may or may not have issued new regulations since then, I moved on and lost touch with the issue a few months after the conference.

Harassment by welfare inspectors isn’t a gay or a straight issue. It’s a poverty issue. If you start hearing odd stories, get in touch with the INOU, they should have some idea of that the Department’s form is, and what is and isn’t currently legal.