Michael McGrath (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will take the Vice Chairman's questions on FEMPI first. As committee members know, under the 2017 Act the pathway for the unwinding of FEMPI cuts was laid out. There are complexities but in simple terms people earning up to €70,000 at this point have had full restoration. Those earning between €70,000 and €150,000 under the 2017 Act are to have restoration by July this year. Then the remainder of the FEMPI tail, as it is called, is to be dealt with in 2022. I can provide further detail on those issues if committee members wish.

One issue I have been looking at is the overall need for retention of the FEMPI legislation given that we are now in the process of unwinding the reductions imposed under the FEMPI Acts. Some provisions in the FEMPI Acts will now become defunct but other provisions are still valid and needed. These relate to a legal basis for the benefits of the public service agreements up to 2020, a legal basis for pay restoration to continue to 1 July 2022 and several definitions in the FEMPI Acts relating to public servants, public bodies and so on. I can provide a more technical briefing on that point if people wish. In broad terms we are well down the road of unwinding the FEMPI cuts. It has been completed for those up to €70,000. We regard those above that level as the FEMPI tail.

The Act lays out what needs to be done in 2021 and 2022. They are issues on which I have been engaging with the Attorney General in regard to legal advice and so on. There will be further restoration later this year in respect of the FEMPI.

On infrastructure, we will look right across the span of Departments and sectors. As I signalled earlier, the core priorities will be housing, climate action, transport, education and health. All the areas will be dealt with as part of the NDP review. We will give Departments certainty as to their budgets for the next five years because it takes time to plan the delivery of projects through the pipeline. We will then lay out the overall capital budget for each year beyond that, that is, for the second half of the new ten-year plan.

To respond to Deputy Farrell in regard to the continuation of the supports, the position remains as we have outlined. We are working through the detail and examining different scenarios. We expect to come to a conclusion in the next two to three weeks and will then lay out the plan for the supports beyond the end of June. I restate there will be no cliff edge or abrupt end. We are deeply conscious of the importance of those supports for people who remain unemployed because of the pandemic. For many of them, their jobs will not have come back by the end of June and I have said publicly we will have to take account of that. Not every sector will have had an opportunity to reopen fully, so we are conscious of how vital that form of income is for people who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Equally, on the issue of the business supports, there are decisions to be made on the employment wage subsidy scheme, the local authority rates waiver and the Covid restrictions support scheme. The third issue will kind of work itself out, depending on whether businesses will be allowed to open. The key one is the employment wage subsidy scheme, which is supporting the employment of more than 300,000 people. It comes at a cost, of close to €400 million a month, but we need to be very careful in the changes we make because we do not want to result in people moving from the wage subsidy scheme to the PUP. We believe the retention of the connection between employer and employee is vital. The scheme has been a lifesaver and will have a role to play into the future. Any changes we will need to make will be laid out in the next two to three weeks.

In overall terms, these supports are temporary in nature. We cannot continue indefinitely with emergency-level expenditure. The stability programme update, on a technical basis, sets out the full unwinding of Covid-related spending by the end of next year, but it will be for the Government to make decisions in the weeks ahead that take account of all the issues the Deputy raised.