Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I understand 300,000 people to be in receipt of the PUP as of today. Those people are in receipt of the PUP due to the restrictions the Government has introduced. The Government has therefore taken their ability to earn an income from them. The restrictions in this country are, for better or worse, the sixth most severe on the planet at the moment. A significant number of these individuals have had a radical income reduction. If they were on the average industrial wage, they would have a reduction of about 60%. I notice when the Minister discussed this, I think he said that at €350 per week the PUP was "very, very, very high". These are individuals who have, on average, had a 60% collapse in their particular incomes. Their expenditure, their family costs usually mirror the income that they had before. Many of those costs are still in existence, yet PUP recipients have a really reduced income as a result. Even if the Minister says the average tax annually is about €350, he is talking about removing 300,000 people from an ability to earn an income and then taking off them a week's income the State provided.

Compare that with Amazon, whose income is currently soaring due to the fact that 51% of retail is now online in this State. Amazon, like many of the large multinational IT companies, is not being tackled with respect to taxation. It feels like the Government is taking a very different approach to two groups in society who are experiencing this pandemic in very different fashions as far as their incomes are concerned.