Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)
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Just to respond briefly, the Minister is picking me up wrong on the point I have been making about this scheme. I am fully conscious that these measures are under the management control of the Revenue Commissioners.

The legislation has probably been pushed to its outer limits in allowing for payments that are in excess of the upper limits of what has actually been legislated for. This is appropriate because there was political consensus, not only from the Government, in the form of a commitment to deal with this in future legislation, but also from the Opposition in supporting the measures and the direction of travel regarding what the Minister wanted to do. I cannot understand why somebody would challenge it but if there were a legal challenge, we could be into difficulty. This is the whole point. This is the core area I was suggesting.

There is no provision in the Bill to turn on higher rates of the EWSS if we go to level 5 again in the future. That is the problem. It is a fact that the Minister does not have the ability to turn it on or turn it off. We could all be at level 2 in a matter of weeks but the supports will continue to run to the end of January. I am not against this, I support it but I believe the supports are too low even at less restrictive times. The point is that we could be at level 5 again in March and the Minister has no ability to do this without introducing legislation. Even allowing Revenue to pay these at higher rates requires legislative change at a given point. This is my contention with regard to it not being thought out. It is not that the scheme is not worthy. The scheme is worthy and we have been arguing for additional support for the scheme. What is not thought out is that we do not know where we are going to be and, therefore, we do not have the flexibility in the scheme to increase the payments again because the payments will reduce as we, hopefully, enter a period of fewer restrictions at the end of January. We may need them again in February or March and this would be impossible without legislative change. This is where I contend this has not been thought out.