Mary Hanafin (Dún Laoghaire, Fianna Fail)

With regard to the self-employed, the scheme is designed to help people who are employees. There are other ways of supporting people on low income who are self-employed by bridging a gap between what they can show they are earning and what they would get on jobseeker's allowance.

When one considers the number of people currently benefiting from the scheme, which is growing all the time and is now 26,081, it shows we are responding to the growing need that exists. It is often felt that the right number of people were not actually accessing the scheme yet, when the Department in 2008 examined a review sample of 3,000 families whom they felt should qualify for it, in fact, only 23% of the families were actually eligible. There is a very high rate of awareness rate of this scheme but, while people know it is there, they do not know the criteria. Nonetheless, I accept we need to find as many ways as possible of getting the information across to people, including through the citizens information centres, our own offices and, in particular, employers, as they know exactly what people are actually earning.

With regard to the number of hours that people are working, we must distinguish between part-time and full-time work. While there is no definition of the number of hours which constitutes full-time work, 19 hours would in many cases be far more acceptable than 15. There is probably an argument in what the Deputy says about not taking the number of hours worked all in one week but spreading it out over two weeks. I will certainly consider that to see whether an issue arises.

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