Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Everybody present in the Chamber will recall that the set of circumstances outlined by Deputy Pringle was a strong and sad feature of the 2011 general election campaign. Each of us met many people who had been left in this precise situation. It seemed to be taking years for them to have success in applying for the means-tested jobseeker's allowance. When I became Minister shortly after the election, I changed the way the applications worked by allowing people to detail their current circumstances. The previous Administration had based the applications on having full sets of accounts, tax data and everything like that.

See this speech in context