Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for his contribution. There was relief last week when he talked about no cliff-edge for Covid-related income supports but in recent days that relief quite quickly gave way, certainly on my part and I suspect on the part of many people out there, to deep concern at suggestions that the PUP payment might be cut in the near future for sectors where there are still large numbers of people unemployed through no fault of their own because of the impact of Covid measures. I want to get an assurance from him that people who have lost employment and income, as a result of the pandemic, are not going to be further punished because they happen to be in the sectors that are worst hit. I think it is important to put it that way. Some sectors have been hit much worse than others and they are going to be the longest impacted, or scarred, by Covid. The idea that there would be a withdrawal of PUP payments from, for example, taxi drivers, whose industry is on its knees, musicians, arts people, cultural workers, areas linked to aviation, certain parts of retail, and hospitality, and that they would be punished by cuts in the PUP in the short term, when we are still a long way from the recovery of those sectors, would be unacceptable. I want to get an assurance from the Minister that that is not the case.

I would like the Minister to comment on the reports that the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, is talking about troika-style monitoring of public service budgets, which is a very alarming echo of the austerity policies that failed us so badly in the aftermath of 2008. Surely one of the things we have learned from Covid is that in areas like health, ICU capacity, hospital capacity and public health infrastructure, we do not need retrenchment; we need more investment, more spending and more capacity building. The same can be said about education, higher education and, obviously, public housing and affordable housing. We do not need retrenchment in these areas. We need significant increased investment because big deficits in these areas have been further revealed because of Covid. Again, I want an assurance that that is not the case. Indeed, I could add climate-resilience infrastructure to that list as it needs significant increases in spending and investment. Any talk of troika-style retrenchment would be extremely worrying when we need to move in the exact opposite direction. Perhaps the Minister could respond to those points.