Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independents 4 Change) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief and to the point. I want to come back on the temporary wage subsidy scheme. I take the point made by the Minister that people pay tax on their income. However, the scheme was brought in under extraordinary circumstances. There must have been an arrangement between the Department of Social Protection, the Department of Finance and the Revenue Commissioners to forfeit the original tax that would have been due on the gross pay of those workers. There was an arrangement to forfeit PAYE tax at that point. Many workers did not realise they were on the temporary wage subsidy scheme because they were getting net pay and their employers did not have to inform them. We know that thousands of employers availed of the scheme. Therefore, thousands of workers were affected by it.

The idea of taxing those workers under an extraordinary scheme brought in on net pay has to be reviewed. Under the initial scheme the Government was able to forfeit tax on gross pay. It should be able to forfeit tax on net pay. Effectively, these workers are taking a cut in their wages. That has to be looked at by the Government from the point of view of these workers. These workers were going into work. It was the first phase of the restrictions. They had no idea what was going to happen. They were afraid of their lives. This was especially the case for pharmacy workers who would have gone back to their families thinking they were probably bringing home the virus and so on. Given the extraordinary circumstances we were dealing with in respect of the scheme, the Government should look at the impact it had and the unintended consequences for those workers in taking a pay cut. I will leave it at that and ask the Minister to look at it again from that point of view.