Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

When I read through the proposal, I thought "Hang on a second." Many people are either in partnerships or couples, and this means that they are not entitled to jobseeker's allowance. This is an increasing phenomenon of unemployment at the moment when one person comes out of employment. They would have needed two incomes to survive, to pay mortgages, to put the kids through school and do all of the other things they need to do. When one of the couple becomes unemployed they get jobseeker's benefit because that is not means tested but the minute that is over it is game over. They cannot go on community employment schemes and they receive no payment whatsoever. If asked myself what I would do if I was faced with somebody's partner who is in this situation coming to visit me at my constituency office. I also asked myself whether we would be better off giving them six months' pay-related benefit - their income would then fall off a cliff into the abyss - or just doing the simple thing, namely, giving them jobseeker's benefit for 12 months, as used to be the case. The committee must consider the answer to that question. I hope Mr. Hession will also consider that as well.

There always seems to be means testing of non-contributory pensions. If a person is in employment, he or she can earn €200 per week. If a person is self-employed, however, he or she cannot earn anything without being means tested.

There seems to be a kind of allergy to self-employment in the Department. On the second page of the document we had, it stated that this scheme would not be open to the self-employed. It gives two reasons. The first is the lower contribution paid by the self-employed. I accept that. That issue should have been addressed years ago. Once we started to introduce a whole lot of benefits for the self-employed, it would have been reasonable for them to pay more PRSI. It would be fantastic value to the self-employed even in its crudest form, with just the State pension available. On an actuarial basis, it is better value than the employer-employee contribution. In the context of the pension age, we have already discussed the fact that the self-employed contribution will have to go up. If we lived in a world where things were joined up, we would say that, if a given self-employed element was to be covered, a rise in the self-employed contribution would be required, whether that be 0.5%, 0.6%, 0.639% or some other figure.

The second reason given was that the Department does not know how much income the self-employed earn. However, self-employed persons have to make a tax return. If they had to make a tax return for the previous year to be eligible for this scheme, so be it. I do not think that would be a very big cost for those who suddenly find themselves unemployed having been self-employed, which was the case for many during the downturn. Again, it comes back to the issue of jobseeker's allowance and jobseeker's benefit because many such people will have partners who are working and are not entitled to jobseeker's allowance.

It is also stated in the document that extending the scheme to nine months could cost 50% more. Of course, this implies that everybody who goes six months will go nine months. However, the document then stated, as the witnesses have just reiterated, that people begin to drop off at 11 weeks. That is my understanding. The document stated that 70% of jobseeker's benefit recipients exit the scheme within six months, so you are actually only dealing with 30% after six months. That is at the threshold of six months and many of those 30% then fall off between six and nine months. In fact, it is my understanding that, once a year is over, a very high percentage are back in employment. It therefore seems that keeping it at the nine months would not be that expensive. It certainly would not be as expensive as this document says it would be. Those are just points I picked up on when I read this document. It is useful and the concept is interesting but the big overarching question is whether to shorten and increase or to lengthen and keep flat. For an awful lot of people, payment for a longer period would actually be better because an awful lot of people have partners who work.