Mr. Rónán Hession:

I will quickly run through them because there are some housing issues there that I may be able to deal with up front and my colleague might come in on anything I miss. We may have to come back to the Deputy on one or two points.

The Deputy made a legitimate point about the position of a cohort of those receiving the PUP at a rate of €350. Approximately 46% of PUP claimants are on that €350 rate and, even with that support, we recognise there is a significant drop in income for a large number of people in receipt of the payment. The means or income test for rent supplement was adjusted to reflect the payment of PUP at the €350 rate so we were not giving people a PUP which was affecting or knocking out their rent supplement payment. At the start of the year, rent supplement was approximately €15,000 or €16,000. It went up to over €20,000 and it now back to just under €20,000.

The Deputy asked about reinstating mortgage interest supplement. He is right that the scheme stopped to new entrants in 2014. It is not an issue at which we looked. I know that there have been various other statutory protections introduced by the Minister responsible for housing to try to address the position for people who are under pressure with their mortgages. The mortgage interest supplement was not a part of our thinking at that stage of the process. To be honest, in terms of the size of the problem we were dealing with, our immediate focus was primarily to lead on the income supports and try to make sure we could address those. The wider housing complexity would have been difficult for us to take on at that stage.

I do not have the figures here with me on unemployment - voluntary, forced or otherwise - but I know there are figures produced by the CSO on the degree of underemployment among those who are currently working part-time but have the capacity or ability to work more than that. I am happy to send those figures to the committee after the meeting. The number of students receiving the PUP is around 26,000. As the Deputy has said, there were many people who were studying but also working to try to support themselves through college. Like others, they lost their employment after 13 March because of the pandemic. They have an entitlement to the PUP and are being paid at a rate that is linked to their prior rate of pay. I can confirm to the Deputy that, arising from a decision taken yesterday by the Government and announced by the Minister, the PUP will remain open to new applicants until the end of March 2021. In cases like that outlined by the Deputy, where people go back to work for the Christmas period and then go into unemployment, the PUP will be available for them to submit a claim after that period.

I note the Deputy's points on the genuinely seeking work rule. To some extent, I cannot comment on the merits of Government policy on this issue other than to say that the PUP is an unemployment payment with the standard features that entails, and the genuinely seeking work rule is part of that. I accept Deputy's point that a rule is a rule and we should not decide in a spontaneous way when to apply it or not to apply it. Bearing in mind that the pandemic is a very different economic environment, however, we do not think it is a problem for a person to fail to look for work while their sector is closed. If a person is working in the hospitality sector, for example, their job is not available to them because their workplace is closed due to the shutdown of the wider sector. We take a proportionate view of that.

I do not have the figures with me on the opening balance of the social insurance fund, but we will provide the Deputy with those figures in a follow-up response. Perhaps my colleague, Ms Leonard, has something to add.