Iceland’s finance minister says that the country’s debt situation is no worse than in neighbouring countries and better than many. Despite this, next year’s budget includes cuts to both maternity/paternity leave and child benefit.
The parental leave fund aims to spend a billion kronur less next year. Plans to achieve this include shortening the period of legally ensured maternity/paternity leave and decreasing the maximum pay-out from the fund. There are, however, also plans to increase payments to the parents with the very lowest wages.
At the same time, the government wants to make further savings on child benefits for children seven years and under. The ISK 60,000 (USD 531) part of the benefit which is not linked to the parents’ wages will be abolished.
A couple whose combined monthly wages are ISK 190,000 will receive ISK 154,000 a year instead of the current ISK 194,000. Parents with a combined monthly income of ISK 250,000 will not receive extra payments at all.
These money saving plans were revealed yesterday on the same day as Steingrimur J. Sigfusson assured journalists that Iceland’s sovereign debt is very much comparable to neighbouring countries and actually better than the UK and the Republic of Ireland. He also pointed out that Icelandic unemployment is not above the OECD average.
(Sources: RUV and Visir.is)
” There is a lot of women that claim they are single mothers just so they can get more benefits from the government even though they are living with their partners. And the fact that the more children that these women have, the more benefits they get from the government is just plain ridiculous. ”
Yes there has been more enforcement of this — because this is money that should not be claimed — this should not be there at level it is and is going to go down because it is free money and there is no free money left.
Except of course for Unions in Iceland that do get they nice fat 1% of all people pay checks under mandatory member ship of unions.
Not pension funds. I am talking about fat money going to coffers of Union organizations them selves.
They should start selling some of those large number of summer house that they do provide to Union members. Instead give that money BACK to wager earners.
1% instead of fixed fee is unacceptable.
If the government really wants to save money then why are all those people undeserving of benefits still getting money from the government?
There is a lot of women that claim they are single mothers just so they can get more benefits from the government even though they are living with their partners. And the fact that the more children that these women have, the more benefits they get from the government is just plain ridiculous.
I know of a women claiming to be a single mother with one child and is unemployed who gets around 130.000 isk per month. But she lives with the father of her kid but his ‘lögheimili’ is somewhere else. It was so easy for them to make the arrangement so that they get the single-mother benefits. For what I can observe, this is not an isolated case, there are lots of people in Iceland that are taking advantage of the system.
For Icelandic residents to pay all the taxes that finance such atrocities, why is the government cutting back on income-based benefits that really count??