Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Senator. On the means test abolition, we are working towards that over the lifetime of this Government. As I said in my opening remarks, we will be making a major improvement in two weeks' time. I want to continue that income disregard with a view to phasing it out over the course of, I hope, four budgets and possibly five. We are very committed to doing that. We had our carers' forum a number of weeks ago in the Department. We all hear it at first hand; none of us are immune from hearing the amazing work carers do day to day and the pressure on them. We are focused on doing that but it has to be done in a sustainable way so that a future government does not have to reverse it. I assure the Senator of our priority in relation to carers.

On the Wellman situation, my thoughts are with the workers there. The jobseeker's pay-related benefit will be available to them. I cannot comment on the specifics; it is a matter for the company. We operate the redundancy scheme on behalf of the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment. I do not have any specific knowledge of the company. We will make the services of the Department available, as well always do in a job challenge situation such as this, in the supports we can offer such as retraining supports. I am happy to work with the Senator in providing her with details of that support.

Regarding disability appeals, there is always a high number granted. I am watching that. I am conscious that we have put a lot of work into domiciliary care allowance, DCA, appeals in particular, and I have asked the Department to prioritise and reduce those. Inevitably, in an appeals process we get a lot more information that clarifies issues, and that is possibly why there is such a high turnover.

In relation to the issue around gender and gender recognition, that is a Scottish legal decision that has no impact on the Irish legal service or on Irish legislation.

We relaunched the wage subsidy scheme last year with a view to increasing the number on it. I am not happy with the number of employers on it. We will also be enhancing the publicity around the wage subsidy scheme. Many employers want to take it on but have concerns. One of the lessons is that if they get assistance from other employers with regard to taking it on, and get advice from other employers, they will be more inclined to do that. There are about 2,000 people on wage subsidy at the moment and I want to increase that, particularly the number of employers. We have an event next week with employers to encourage other employers to come on board with the scheme and to answer any queries they have.

I will say to the entire committee that if there are any employers with queries about the scheme, we have a brilliant series of videos available from all sorts of employers to encourage people to come on board, and they can access them through gov.ie/wss. Again, if committee members know of employers who have queries, they should put them in touch with me and we will put employment advisers in touch with them to assist. If members have any suggestions as to how we promote WSS even more, I am more than happy to take them on board.