Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am always being given out to for speaking too quickly. I decided to speak slowly today but perhaps I will speed up.

The issue the Deputy raises is genuinely not in contention. We return to the fact that one of the conditions of jobseeker's benefit and jobseeker's allowance is that the recipient must be available for work. A special condition was inserted in the legislation to recognise that retained firefighters are not always available for work. In all of the activation programmes, whether community employment, the Tús scheme, the rural social scheme, jobs clubs, JobPath or the Intreo services, there is a recognition that retained firefighters are not available for work on the days they are on call or in training. However, we cannot discount the days on which they are not on call or in training because these days are the reason they qualify for jobseeker's payment in the first instance. The ambition of all those in receipt of a jobseeker's payment is to secure a job. That is not my ambition but their ambition, which is the reason the support schemes and payments were set up as they were. The purpose of the payment is to keep recipients ticking over, albeit at a basic level, until they find a job. The Deputy appears to suggest we should leave retained firefighters alone. I am not sure that would be the right thing to do.

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