Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The school teacher in me very much agrees with you, Minister. The more hot meals we can get to children, the better.

I will inflict my scattergun approach on the Minister again. I will begin with two of the measures announced by the Minister in the July stimulus plan, namely, the work placement experience programme and the JobsPlus programme. The Minister touched on this already. How are we doing in terms of take-up? Are we getting the employers? It has been a difficult context to roll out those schemes. Are we hitting targets? Are we getting anywhere close? What are the sectors where we are seeing deployment?

Young people have been mentioned repeatedly. That is appropriate and I will mention them again. We know they have been disproportionately affected by the contraction in the labour market. It has been very much in hospitality and so on. They will now face a reduction from the pandemic unemployment payment to a lower level of jobseeker's allowance, especially for people under 25 years of age. I am concerned this will affect young people with lower social capital in particular. They are less likely to be in education and they may now find themselves more distant from the labour market. Are we specifically planning ahead for how we deal with that so that we do not have young people falling into long-term unemployment?

Some issues have been raised with me relating to people whose income dropped during the course of the pandemic. Maybe they fell behind in their rent or mortgage payments or utilities. I am concerned we will have an overhang of Covid-19 debt. People will fall into hardship. Certainly, we do not want to see people cut off from utilities or losing rented accommodation. Is there any contingency within the departmental budget to deal with that as we begin to come out of this Covid crisis? In a more general sense are we beginning to see the new policy direction of this Government and Department reflected in the figures?

I think it was Joe Biden who said: "Don't tell me what you value; show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value." Are we beginning to see that support for lone parents, the cohort most likely to be affected by issues such as deprivation or isolation? There are very ambitious targets in regard to consistent poverty of about 2%. Are we beginning to see forward planning on the Department's part in regard to how we will achieve this, not just in this budget but over the lifetime of the Government?

We always talk about base rates in absolute terms and cash figures, whether that is the €5 increase in the pension or whatever it is. That tends to apply to both pensions and jobseeker's payments. Has the Department considered the potential benefit of benchmarking payments against other measures, such as the cost of living or as a percentage of the average industrial wage? Are we considering different ideas for how we measure these payments?