Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

Yes refundables, in a way to try to protect those who are in poverty. That people who are working are in poverty in this day and age is a serious issue. The report is called Poverty Focus 2018, if the Minister wants to check it out.

I refer to the pension legislation brought in this year. This Government and previous Governments have been very creative in creating situations where people who were hiding money in offshore accounts were protected by way of the amnesties and so on. They did not have to pay the tax they owed. Here we have a cohort of people, particularly women, who over the last six years have been discriminated against because of legislation that was introduced in 2012. The Department should have the knowledge and experience to be able to come up with an amnesty for those people, or something that would declare this legislation was discriminatory. There should be some sort of compensation scheme, or something like that, for that period of time. Those who got their pensions in 2012 have lost out big time, financially, over a period of six years. It was highlighted in 2012. It was not as if it was under the carpet, or Members of the Dáil did not raise with the then Minister how it would impact on people. It was only when the good people of this country realised what was going on, in critical numbers, and went out on the streets that the Minister was forced to review the situation. Something has to be put in place. Pensioners will continue to campaign to get that money backdated to 2012, and I will certainly support them.

I refer to the youth employment scheme the Minister will introduce later this year. Can we get a report on that? How exactly will it be run? Who is running it? What is the whole protocol around it?

I refer to community employment schemes. I was at a meeting of the canal communities local drugs task force where people were devising a strategy to link in with the national drugs and alcohol strategy. They made the point that they have heard that community employment schemes are now being told that workers have to be job ready. Community employment schemes will now be geared towards people being job ready. That will raise the question of how the community will be supported through community employment schemes into the future. That is a serious question if that is the way the Department is approaching community employment schemes, namely, being geared towards people being job ready rather than playing that important role in a community, which needs support for task forces and that sort of thing.