Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

People are caught on one side or the other. I have an issue related to what we are dealing with today. In his evidence here this morning, Mr. Hession made the point that this really came to the fore during the pandemic in terms of the impact of the pandemic unemployment payment. The current rates were insufficient to meet the costs and commitments that people have. There is an issue that I have taken up with Mr. Hession and the Minister previously when she was here, namely the whole area of long Covid. While what is before us is motivated by the Covid pandemic and the initial illness that people have had, the longer term implication is not yet being addressed by the Department of Health, never mind the Department of Social Protection.

Two weeks ago I published new poll data which shows that 10% of the adult population has now experienced long Covid symptoms after a period of initial infection. That has gone up from 6% in the last four months over that poll period. Of those people, 17% have reported that their ability to conduct their daily activities has been severely effected. It is disproportionately impacting more women than men and as a result of that, it is disproportionately impacting on those on lower income thresholds and households. Long Covid is having a significant impact on the workforce and in welfare, both in terms of the welfare claims and the impact on lost work. The Department of Social Protection has provided me with figures that show that 0.8% of those who contracted Covid-19 and claimed the enhanced illness benefit payment were medically certified as being unfit for work 12 weeks later. If that was extrapolated across all the people who contracted Covid-19 we would be talking nearly 22,000 adults across the country. That excludes people who relapsed after the initial recovery. The Department of Social Protection data is also showing that 35% of workers on those disability payments after Covid who did not return to work, were still out of work six months later.

I have two questions for Mr. Hession. First, when the Minister was last before the committee, she gave a commitment to look at listing long Covid as an occupational illness. I know she has already engaged with the Ministers for Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Health on that. Mr. Hession may not be able to answer me here today but I would be grateful if he could come back to the committee and update us on the progress that has been made to date on defining long Covid as an occupational illness for front-line workers and allowing them to avail of illness benefit.

The second question is related to the illness benefit and the strawman proposals. I hope, in the context of the Department’s consideration of the supplementary supports including illness benefit, that it would look at this particular issue which is also related to the jobseeker's issue. The emerging medical evidence now shows that the recovery for people who have been diagnosed with long Covid involves a phased return to work. The difficulty is, under both illness benefit or disability allowance, there is no mechanism to do that. You have to be in receipt of a payment for at least 12 months before you can then apply for a partial capacity payment to allow you to go back part time to work. This is not an issue at the moment because it is taking in excess of 12 months on average for a person with long Covid to get to see a consultant or to get to a specialist clinic but hopefully if the Department of Health were to get its act together and allow swift access into these clinics, people could start the rehabilitation far earlier. But they are in a predicament where it is now an all-or-nothing access to work. The emerging medical advice is that they should go back a couple of hours a day, one day a week and increase that maybe to two days a week and so forth. That is the medical evidence. The difficulty is that the Department of Social Protection, under the schemes as they are structured now, does not allow for that because of the rigidity in illness benefit.

In the context of what the Department is doing here, Mr. Hession has acknowledged that Covid has changed the whole dynamic in terms of unemployment payment rates. I am making the point to him that long Covid is having a similar impact in terms of illness benefit and that there is an opportunity to allow these people to go back and actively engage in the workforce again, much quicker than the timelines that are facilitated within the social welfare schemes. Can Mr. Hession give a commitment here that he will look at this specific illness and a more flexible approach to allowing people to return to work on an incremental basis where it benefits their recovery, ensures that they can return to productive work as quickly as possible and reduces the overall burden on our welfare system?