John Brady (Wicklow, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will aim towards five minutes. This is an important question to lead with. I welcome the Minister. Since the outbreak of Covid-19, we have introduced emergency legislation and had a number of sitting days dealing with social protection, and this is the first time we have had a senior Minister before the House with responsibility for social protection to answer questions and provide some accountability.

As the Minister outlined in her contribution, more than 585,000 people are currently in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment and many of those will not be able to go back to work since the introduction of the restrictions the Government has brought in, which I fully support, to put the economy to sleep. Many of those people will not get back to work until 10 August, for example, in phase 5 of the road map. There has been a lot of speculation that there will be changes to the PUP on 15 June. The Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, has said the issue is being looked at. What people need is certainty. They do not need to come to a cliff edge. They need to be assured about the €350 payment, which is a lifeline for so many people, a fact the Minister acknowledged, not just for the families but local economies as well, because it is putting critical money into those economies. I will ask the Minister a direct question. Will that payment be extended and, if so, for how long?

See this speech in context