Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I emphasise and agree with the remarks of the Minister, Deputy McGrath.

We are in a public health emergency and have emergency economic measures in place to help our society and, indeed, Europe deal with this pandemic. This week we are directly supporting the income of just over a million of our fellow citizens in terms of those who were on jobseeker’s payments before this crisis and those who are now on the pandemic unemployment payment and in receipt of the employment wage subsidy scheme. We have major levels of support in place in our economy. As our public health conditions improve, we will need to begin the journey towards how we can put in place more appropriate budgetary policies that support our country in its recovery but move away from very high levels of support that are needed when many people are not in a position or not able to work. That is the approach we are taking in Ireland and it is paralleled by the approach being taken across the eurozone and the European Union. For now the measures we have in place are needed. They will be needed for a while yet and over time as our economy begins to open up again, I hope we will be able to get hundreds of thousands of people back into a good job putting in good work which, in turn, will not require the level of support we currently have in our economy.