Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I presume the Minister will arrange for a copy of his reply to be circulated. Apart from the last 15 seconds of the Minister's reply, and I timed it, everything he said prior to that was not relevant to the Topical Issue I raised. He has told me exactly what I know but I asked about the report. I am pleased the report will be available soon and I hope it will provide some solace to all these people. I note from an internal review in the Department that this is happening and that it will go to the deputy secretary and the Minister soon. I hope it will deal with the real issue.

The Minister spoke of the changes that were made recently, of the 70 schemes and services run by his Department and that it tries to process claims as quickly as possible. That is not relevant to the question I asked. The question I asked was about the commitment made by the Minister on 22 November to come back to this issue. We withdrew an amendment to the legislation, in good faith, which we could have pushed but the Minister said at the time if it were to be included in the Act, the process would go on for much longer. It could not have gone on much longer. We did that in good faith.

The Minister is doing a disservice and the review will do a disservice unless it improves the lot of these seasonal and part-time workers. This has been going on since 22 November. I know the Minister met a lobby group in Donegal last week. In fact, it was not the Minister but his colleague, Deputy McHugh who told them that Pat The Cope Gallagher's pronouncements on this was not helping the case. I am not casting any aspirations on the Minister because I know that is not his form but that was suggested. Now we are being told that as a result of that meeting a review has commenced. The waters are muddied and there is a great deal of being economical with the truth. I would like the Minister to clarify in his final response that the review did not start as result of his meeting Donegal and that it had started post 22 November. His colleague should stop reinventing and playing with other people's toys.

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