Roderic O'Gorman (Dublin West, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Like other Deputies, I begin by offering my sympathies to the families of those who have lost loved ones due to Covid-19 infection. We can only begin to imagine what a difficult time it is for them. I also join Deputies in thanking the front-line workers who continue to make such huge efforts to contain the spread of this disease across the country. It is also important to acknowledge the efforts everybody is making in their lives to limit their interactions with others, practise social distancing and practise cocooning where necessary. When we look at the rate of increase each night we acknowledge that it is not the worst case scenario at this stage even though the figures are scary. Much of that is due to the efforts being made by the general population and we should always remind people that their efforts are bearing fruit.

I thank the Minister for the opportunity to deal with some of the social protection elements in this legislation. An issue that has been raised to a significant extent with my and my colleagues is rent supplement. The Minister, former Deputy Regina Doherty, has said that she intends to bring forward proposals on this in the next week or so. Families where the wage earner or even both wage earners are self-employed only qualify for the pandemic payment, not the higher wage subsidy scheme. Those families, particularly those where there may be only one wage earner, are very nervous that they will be left with significant rent debts once the rent moratorium period has passed, which we are voting on today, and be at risk of eviction. There are various options we can take. There was talk about continuing to grant welfare officers discretion as regards going past the rates of rent supplement, but my view is that we must increase those rates. In areas such as my constituency of Dublin West rents are already very high. As regards putting it in a discretionary model for the social welfare officers, unless a direction is given to raise everybody there will be an avalanche of claims and the discretionary model will not work in a practical sense.

A number of other issues have been raised with me and my colleagues in respect of social protection by our constituents over the last few weeks. There are people on short-term contracts who would often work above the contracted number of hours. They will only receive 70% of the contracted hours under the temporary wage subsidy scheme. We propose that there should be a baseline payment of €350 to protect workers in that situation. Another issue is where somebody is of pensionable age and only receives a partial pension because the person is still in work at present. Those people are concerned that this payment is a working age payment only. Perhaps the Minister can provide some clarity in that regard.

Employers need clarity on whether inability to pay is required to qualify for the temporary wage subsidy scheme. Different advice is being received by employers I have spoken to. Again, the Minister might take the opportunity to clarify that issue.

An issue that has been raised with me is the need to protect workers against the potential opportunistic misuse of the payments to rationalise workers, perhaps by taking the opportunity to lay off longer-term employees who might be on higher rates of pay in favour of younger employees who might receive a lower rate. We should do anything we can to prevent that. Like Deputy Brady, we have had representations in respect of the cross-Border issue, particularly in the case of people who might work in Northern Ireland but live in Letterkenny or elsewhere in the Republic, and their ability to receive the payments.

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