Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 8:

In page 15, between lines 4 and 5, to insert the following:

“(4) Retained firefighters who have previously applied for a jobseeker's payment before the enactment of this Bill and have not had their claim approved shall be assessed on their current application.”

As one of a number of Deputies who campaigned to try to change the way the Department had been applying the letter of the law in regard to jobseeker's allowance for retained fire fighters, I welcome the measure proposed in this section, as I did when the Minister announced it in the first instance. It was logical and a recognition of the very valuable service retained fire fighters play throughout the country. The recent interpretation was causing grief to a number of people so I welcome this change.

Amendment No. 8 in my name was bizarrely not ruled out of order for being a charge on the Exchequer. Somebody must have missed it because it probably would cost the Exchequer something. Standing Orders are bizarre. Perhaps it was an incidental charge. I am sometimes allowed to put forward such amendments whereas in other cases I am not.

The amendment seeks to ensure that those retained fire fighters who already had an application or an appeal made prior to the passage of this Bill would have recognition of that period of time for the purposes of arrears, rather than the effective date being the enactment of the Bill after the Seanad has dealt with it. That would mean each of these fire fighters would have to make a new application and their payment would only be from that date.

The amendment is a recognition that a number of individuals from various parts of the country who have been in contact with me are at various different stages of application, review or appeal. The number of individuals is not huge. If the issue could be dealt with practically, it would not have required this amendment but the information I received is that the Department was still adamant that they were not entitled to it in the past and they will only be entitled to it if and when this legislation is passed. I am asking for a common sense approach to these applications. As I said before, the change the Minister brought in was common sense. It dealt with the legacy issue from the 1970s and there will now be a proper procedure for the future. I am calling for some recognition of the transition period during the past year. While I am not suggesting we would go back to the 1970s, I ask that people with live applications at various stages get that recognition.

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