Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We definitely have a problem here and it will take between now and possibly the next budget to figure out a solution. Employers contact me all the time saying that they have staff and would like staff to work more hours but staff will not work more hours because of the way the social welfare rules work and because they would lose their payments. At the same time, there are people earning €19,300 per year and couples earning up to €33,000 who are claiming jobseeker's allowance. I do not think that is right either. There are lots of people working for salaries lower than that who do not qualify for jobseeker's allowance. We need to look at the rules between now and the next budget and see how we can get them right but as with any change to rules, you will have issues. If we did what Deputy Harty suggested, huge numbers of people who do not qualify for jobseeker's allowance would qualify for it and that would come with an unsustainable cost to the State. One thing that is not well known enough is the part-time job incentive scheme. Under this scheme, a long-term unemployed person who takes up part-time employment for less than 24 hours per week - it does not matter on which day they do it - can qualify for a weekly payment.

Only 460 people in the State currently avail of that and it is hours based not days based. I think the uptake is low because people and employers do not know about it.

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