Ms Teresa Leonard:

I thank the Deputy. I will take some of the operational questions and then yield to Mr. Hession. We may both comment on some of those issues. The Deputy's first question was about the change in the rate of payment from €203 to €350. I would like to provide some context for the change. We introduced the Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment very quickly, as the committee acknowledged. The initial rate was €203, which was the standard rate of jobseeker's allowance at the time. The Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment was initially introduced to ensure that people stayed at home when they were expected to or to compensate them when their employment disappeared. With that in mind, the payment was increased to €350 to make it equivalent to the rate for a two-family household and to make sure people did not feel they had to go to work. Mr. Hession will explain the work issues a bit more.

We have been in constant communication with Aer Lingus on this issue. The company is very aware of what will be needed if an employee approaches them seeking information for the review we are carrying out.

It has agreed the documentation with us, meaning there is no issue with that matter as far as we are concerned at this point.

The genuinely seeking work, GSW, conditionality has been brought into the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP. It is being treated lightly and sensitively. In fairness, we are not pursuing anybody at this point in time. Activation services are available to anybody on PUP, should he or she require them. However, we are not actively at that nor are we applying any penalties or reviews now.

It is a scheme, however, for which people are available for work. That is part of the conditionality for it. As of now, we have not done any review of anybody. We are encouraging people, should they wish, to get any activation services as they are available to them. We have not formally invited anybody to our activation services, however.

The arrears project is well in hand at this point. We have done a huge amount of work over the past number of months to get it organised and ready for payment. We hope to make a payment next week to most customers who are due arrears. There will be some particular candidates who may not get arrears, however, because of the complexity of it and that the relevant information is not fully available to pay them should they have an entitlement.

It is important that the committee realises the complexity of doing arrears. When calculating and issuing arrears for customers, we have to look back over the customer's whole record. It is important to bear in mind that we have had over 800,000 customers with just under 1.4 million claims for PUP and we have issued over 13 million payments so far. With that in mind, in the same period, the temporary wage subsidy scheme is in place, which is not compatible with PUP, but there was an interaction between the two. Some customers have blanks in their records in that they may have been employed during that period and may have received the temporary wage subsidy scheme. If they missed a week's period, they may have been paid by the community welfare service. We have to check back on those payments over that period.

In addition to that, if a payment fell out, we did pay them the following week. PUP is not compatible with other primary schemes with the exception of some schemes like carer's allowance, disability allowance, one-parent family and working family payments. We have paid it in conjunction with these. There are other schemes, such as jobseeker's and illness benefit, with which it is not compatible. In those cases, we have to check to ensure somebody was not in receipt of those during the same period.

The actual complexity of arrears and getting them out the door lies with the comparisons and checking we have to do to make sure we are actually paying people appropriately, not overpaying or underpaying them. We hope next week that the majority of cases will be paid. There will be a small minority which we will have to do manually. These will follow. Due to the complexity of their actual cases, we feel an officer needs to look at them because we cannot programme any solution to pay them. That will be done manually.

Somewhere between 250,000 and 300,000 is our expected number of customers to be paid. We will know more later on in the week.

The Christmas bonus, as my colleague stated in his opening statement, will be paid on 8 December. It is for anybody who has to be on PUP on the week ending 3 December. The 17-week period to qualify for the bonus payment can be made up of any period in the past 36 weeks. This is week 36. Yesterday, we paid PUP for that week. It is any week in that. If there was a period of unemployment in that period, that can be used to add up to the actual 17 weeks. It is very much a case of working through the 17 weeks and giving it to people. However, they have to be on PUP the week of 3 December. Even if they sign off to go back to work, anytime during the week, they will get their bonus payment.