Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I join in thanking the staff of the Department of Social Protection. We certainly get a good and interactive service, which is important. The staff are willing to talk to Oireachtas Members as they recognise we represent people. When we get on to the Department on behalf of constituents, we obviously have their permission. It makes our life a lot easier.

It is a pity that not all other agencies in the State operate with the same kinds of interactions. It is not only that the Department comes back quickly, but it also comes back with comprehensive answers when we ask further questions. There is a great willingness to deal in detail with the kinds of issues that arise. Social welfare, by its nature, is complex.

I have a few questions. One of the most significant things that jumps out to me is that those who are getting the full rate of €350 on the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, are only, on average, getting 58% of what they were earning previously. That is a significant loss of income. I have mentioned this time and again. Some of that cohort are renting and entitled to rent supplement, as far as I understand, if they qualify under a means test. However, further up the income scale, a fair number of the people affected would have significant mortgages and young families. I understand that such a person would not be entitled to child dependent allowance and there is no mortgage interest supplement. I do not know if our guests covered the philosophy of the policy when it was introduced but was consideration given to reintroducing a scheme that existed for as long as I can remember until 2014, namely, mortgage interest supplement? That would have been an option instead of depending on the banks. We all know how kind banks are, as charitable organisations. They are not. They are run by hard-headed business people and if someone gets a moratorium on repayments, the banks will come after them, looking for that money back. I am thinking of the cohort of people who might have been on €1,000 a week and paying a big proportion of that on their mortgage, people with a family and the costs that go with it. Those people were hit by the pandemic and, we now know, are only getting, on average, 58% of what they were earning. The higher up the pay scale one goes, the lower that percentage. The percentage is higher the nearer a claimant was to earnings of €300 or €400 a week. Was consideration given to the reintroduction of mortgage interest supplement as a policy instrument?

I do not know whether our guests have the figures I am going to ask them about now but it is a matter about which we should think. As Mr. Hession pointed out, there is a minimum wage in the country and any company that was not paying the minimum wage was breaking the law. That means that people who were earning less than €350 were, by definition, part-time workers. That is a mathematical certainty. Do we have any information as to how many of those are voluntarily part-time workers? There are quite a number of those. I often come across people who choose, for family circumstances or whatever, to work on a part-time basis. On the other hand, how many are forced part-time workers - in other words, workers to whom the employer does not give the work and so the worker has no choice other than to be a part-time employee? There is also a third cohort. Do we have any idea how many part-time workers were students who were working to try to put themselves through college? Those people worked particularly in fast food, retail and so on and lost out on that income on which they were totally dependent in order to keep the ship afloat while they were trying to get an education. Those figures would tell us something about student grants and a whole lot of other things that are not the immediate concern of our guests. We should learn from everything that has been going on with the PUP. There are a lot of good lessons, and some hard lessons, to be learned.

The PUP was due to end and I now hear noises that this might not happen. Can our guests confirm that if there are to be continuing lockdowns of sectors of the economy, or, for example, restaurants and so-called wet pubs are allowed to open over Christmas but are locked down again in January and February, that there will be a PUP for which workers in those affected areas will be able to reapply? Workers might move away from the PUP before Christmas but be forced be back to it in the new year, although please God that does not happen. Can our guests confirm that such people will be covered by the PUP?

I thought it was strange that the "genuinely seeking work" caveat came in, whoever was responsible. I know it was said that the rule is not being applied, and I welcome that, but I hate rules that are not applied because some day, somebody will wake up and decide to apply it. When asked why they are applying it, they can then say it was the rule for the past six months, or whatever. My view is that if there is a rule, apply it. If a rule is not going to be applied, do not have it. Otherwise, we get into the area of Alice in Wonderlandwhere we have a rule but do not apply it before some day, someone suddenly starts applying it, saying that we have had this rule for ages. People are concerned about this. Consider somebody who had a good job for all their life and worked for the past 30 years in a restaurant. The job will be there for them when the restaurant reopens, please God. The person does not need a job because they have one, albeit they are out of work in the short term, in the greater scheme of things, because of a situation that will not happen again on a recurring basis. It is a pity that the caveat was put in. These sorts of things seem perennially to get thrown in and it does not seem to make sense.

A valid question was raised about the Social Insurance Fund. Back in 2010, the fund ran dry. In the noughties, there was quite a lot of accumulated savings in the Social Insurance Fund. In other words, the social contributions that were being put aside for the rainy day, pension budgets and so on exceeded expenditure out of the fund. As a result of the downturn between 2008 and 2012, the Social Insurance Fund ran dry in 2010. The Exchequer gave advances at that time and if one looks at Exchequer returns for the following few years, one can see the advances and their repayment. Some time in the middle of the 2010s, all the money was paid back and no advances were needed during the year. Can the witnesses tell us how much was saved in the Social Insurance Fund? In other words, what was it worth on 1 January 2020, before we were hit by the Covid-19 tsunami? The Department has stated that €5 billion over and above has been spent. Is the fund still in credit or has it gone into deficit? If it is in deficit, I presume the Exchequer is temporarily funding it and will recoup its investment in the Social Insurance Fund as things get back to normal. Those are my questions.