Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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I thank the witnesses for their presentations. My first question is for FLAC and concerns the pandemic unemployment payment rules. What happened around the changing of the rules was, to be frank, sinister in a number of ways. It is part of an attempt to manufacture consent around generalised cuts to the PUP and it was an arbitrary change in the rules after the fact to make it fit with an interview given by the Tánaiste. There was also the targeting of a particular nationality; I understand that 1% of flights from Dublin Airport are to Romania but that over 50% of the checks of flights took place where the destination was Romania. It was very blatant targeting.

I want to focus on the data protection aspect. There is at least anecdotal evidence to suggest the Department had access to the registers of the ferry and airline companies, which would, prima facie, be a breach of data protection legislation. In investigating this matter, I have been informed of previous cases where people have had child benefit cut because they were out of the State and it seems there is no basis on which the Department could have known - there were no inspections - except from having information from either airline or ferry companies or the immigration authorities at Dublin Airport. Is this a matter that has been encountered previously in the context of other payments whereby the Department has access to information that it certainly seems it should not have?