Ray Butler (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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No, it is not my phone. During the crash, based on the figures in the last report we got, roughly 20,000 self-employed people were in receipt of social welfare. Hopefully, that figure has fallen since then. Basically, the workers who paid PRSI were paying for those social welfare benefits. Why should other people be paying for the benefit paid to the self-employed when they can pay for themselves? The new stamp would cover sick pay and disability pay and if it the payment was for a longer term, the applicant would be assessed. We could bring in the measure in stages.

We are another four years down the road and nothing has been done for the self-employed. It is a major issue. One or two in every ten people I talk to when I knock on doors asks what is being done for the self-employed. It is evident from the statistics that a quarter of the workforce are self-employed. We should look at the Mangan report, move forward on this issue and put it in place.