Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for her reply. She referred to the fact that farm assist was introduced in 1999. At that time Deputies O'Dea, Durkan and I, as well as most Members of this House representing rural constituencies, were very strong in our advocacy for replacing the smallholder's allowance with farm assist unemployment assistance. The Minister's predecessor at that time, Dr. Michael Woods and the late Joe Walsh, the then Minister for Agriculture and Food, were to the fore in introducing the new scheme which took account of present income circumstances, unlike the smallholder's assistance payment, which was very much based on historical income for the previous 12 months. As we all know, farm incomes can change very suddenly if there is an outbreak of disease and a total or partial depopulation of a herd, for example.

In the instances I have come across, those farmers who took up farm assist for a short time continued to make tax returns but were not informed by Revenue or by the Department that they needed to make a contribution to maintain their insurance record. There was always an understanding that if one was in receipt of a social welfare payment, one's social insurance record was maintained but that did not happen in this instance. The cases with which I am dealing all involve people who did not employ an accountant to file their tax returns because they were not in a financial position to do so. They made their returns themselves and were not aware that their insurance contribution record was being broken. They had always hoped, through making their insurance contributions, that on reaching pension age they would be entitled to a full contributory pension. Unfortunately, that is not happening now.

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