Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The people will cast their judgment shortly on the Minister's management of the system. I look forward to it eagerly. The Minister made a statement which is patently false. She said there was no example anywhere of a voluntary contribution providing for extra benefits. I have named six OECD countries which operate just such a system on either the jobseeker's benefit side or the illness benefit side so I ask the Minister to retract that statement. It is perverse that the Government should announce, as it has done about 142 times, that it will encourage the self-employed sector by extending a tax credit to people who are already in business, while at the same time it is doing nothing to extend illness benefit, at a minimum, for people who want to become self-employed or those who lose their businesses because of illness.

Is that not perverse? Is the Minister also aware that the leader of her sister party in the United Kingdom, the Rt Hon Jeremy Corbyn, has now put this issue at the very centre of Labour Party policy in the United Kingdom?

We are facing an election. Many people are contacting me about this issue to find out if anything is happening about it. Can I now report back to those people that the Government intends to do nothing about this issue?

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