Ray Butler (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for my late arrival. I had an engagement in my constituency with the Minister of State, Deputy Brian Hayes. Will the Minister indicate if any changes are to be made to social protection for the self-employed this time around? We are entering our third year in government and I am aware that reports have been commissioned. We have yet to see those reports but we must start making decisions about the self-employed. I am on record as saying the Minister has been very good to the self-employed in lowering the threshold to allow them to get social protection. Based on the last figure the Minister gave, between 24,000 and 30,000 self-employed people were on social protection in the past three years but we have to look to the future and put a new system in place. We are talking about adding another 1.5% to the 4% a self-employed person pays in terms of an S class stamp. I welcome that because we must start to move forward in 2014 and recognise self-employed people. I would not like anybody else to go through what I had to go through as a self-employed person when I lost my business because of the recession. I had a young family to feed but I was not entitled to anything. I am adamant about that. I am sure the members are fed up listening to me talk about self-employed people in the Chamber but I would love to see some system put in place to recognise self-employed people and for the country to move forward because there is no incentive to be self-employed here. We have to put a safety net in place to ensure that if somebody makes a go of a business, employs people and puts their heart and soul into that, they will have that safety net if they get sick, become disabled or their business fails.

I plead with the Minister to start recognising self-employed people. I know that is difficult in difficult times but my argument would be that in putting the 1.5% on to the 4% one is paying in one's business through income tax, even if one is not making a profit, one is still paying it on one's drawings. Revenue might not like me for saying this but I would rather put something into a type of class stamp to ensure that if things go wrong, my family and me will have some protection.