Thomas Pringle (Donegal South West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the outline with regard to class P but that is not the question I asked. We have attempted through the Joint Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine to tease out this question with the Minister's Department on a number of occasions in the past six or seven months and that is the stock answer we are given. The crux of the issue is that there are fishermen who are owners of their own boats, who are self-employed and treated as self-employed for tax purposes, who depend on the catch for their income. They are inshore fishermen. I am not talking about big trawler owners; they are small inshore fishermen who are excluded from class P because they are not share fishermen employees. They are the employer but they are in the same situation in that they are dependent on the catch. However, for long periods during the storms last year they were prevented from making a livelihood. The Minister will say they are entitled to jobseeker's allowance on a means-test basis but what they want is the right to make a social insurance contribution, which would give them a sense of security in periods of bad weather.

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