Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy might let me know. The contract that exists between this taxpayers' money and those who need help at certain times is there to support them, not to make their situations any more difficult than they are already.

Without answering the question Deputy O'Dea asked on the specific legislation, the best thing for me to tell him is that I am currently seeking advice on the information that was requested of me with regard to what he suggested. Certainly, I do not want to see a stand-over scenario where we bring in legislation that allows someone in a casualised or precarious environment but who has an established and practiced work pattern of, for example, 25 hours a week for the previous 12 to 18 months to find himself or herself given a contract for 20 hours a week. That is because the purpose of introducing the legislation is to allow that lady or gentleman to bring that contract to the bank regarding a mortgage or whatever else. The Deputy knows what I am talking about. The very last thing we will allow to happen is for somebody with a practiced and established pattern of work to be given a contract that is for fewer hours. The Attorney General is looking at that for me and I will certainly revert to the committee with his view. My aim is to do what the Deputy aims to do. Perhaps we will talk about that again.

On self-employment, I do not favour the compulsory approach. If I gave that impression, I apologise. I favour recognising the entrepreneurship that exists among the hundreds of thousands of self-employed people in this country by extending to them whatever rights the State can, in particular employment rights. That is our priority. It will not be viable to do it all in this year's budget, but that is the overall ambition. It is to try to obtain an equilibrium for someone who is in a self-employed position as opposed to being in an employed one. It costs money. It is not going to be cheap, but they are no less deserving than those who are in employment situations, in particular since they have been brave enough to provide their own employment and, as I said, employment for others in a lot of cases. The actuarial review of how we fund the Social Insurance Fund going forward, the potential to merge USC and PRSI, and a future social insurance contract are all in the mix. What I will certainly not do is have a scenario where some self-employed people are paying in while others are not. It is either all in or the State pays for it. That is the scenario that is on the table. Deputy O'Dea is well aware that if we only had the people who were paying in, it would create increased risk for the Social Insurance Fund, which is not a tenable situation for us.

I am not sure I already know what is in the report on lone parents but it does not take a genius to figure out some of the changes that need to be made. I have been very vocal on them in the last couple of weeks and I will state them again. I recognise completely that it is far more difficult to raise a family alone than it is when there are two people in a household. We are going to do whatever we can to improve that. I am going to do whatever I can to ensure that is raised at the highest level to which I can bring it. It is certainly the ambition of the Department to improve the take-home pay of people who are single, working and raising families. As to whether it will feed into the budget, if I get the report today and it strengthens my hand, I will be happy. The report is only days away but we can all probably guess what will be in it. I thank Deputy O'Dea for his support, which I really appreciate.