John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am pleased to have an opportunity to speak on the Bill. I welcome the extension of jobseeker's benefit to the self-employed. Sinn Féin supports this Bill, which has been a long time coming. Any extension of social welfare supports to the self-employed must be welcomed. The self-employed do not have access to the full suite of social welfare supports available to other workers. A survey of class S PRSI contributors carried out by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection and published in 2017 gave a useful insight into the social protection supports that self-employed people would like extended to them. Some 82.3% of those surveyed identified short-term illness benefit as such a support. KPMG has calculated that cost of extending illness benefit to the self-employed would be €72 million in 2020, which is not a significant amount. I urge the Minister to consider this. The self-employed face barriers in accessing the State pension when they retire. They must ensure they have the necessary number of contributions to qualify. The Government is continuing to examine the best model for the total contributions approach and the new auto-enrolment pension scheme for workers. The nature of the working lives of the self-employed must form part of the model that is implemented in both cases.

I refer to the section that outlines the obligation on the self-employed in receipt of jobseeker's benefit when it comes to attending activation meetings. I would be concerned if these activation meetings included JobPath, which was set up for the long-term unemployed, and I ask the Minister to clarify that.

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