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

I thank colleagues for their comments regarding the hard work of staff, which I will pass on to them. The PUP scheme, as I said earlier, was introduced at speed and is due to finish its first round on 9 June. I put it categorically on the record that the scheme will, of course, be extended. It was introduced to support the income that was lost temporarily by people as we closed down the economy. We obviously will have to support people until the economy reawakens, and that is going to happen in different phases. The actual dimensions of that support are being considered by my Department and the Department of Finance. As soon as the decisions have been made as to the guise it will continue in, we will make the relevant announcements. We will continue to support people as we have done.

The wage subsidy scheme is under the remit of the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, and I will pass on the request in regard to the names as opposed to the number of people to see if that can be tweaked.

Several Members raised the matter of Safe Ireland's request and others may do so in due course. A model was originally established a number of weeks ago when we knew this issue was going to come to light as we closed down the economy and difficulties in certain families would be accentuated. The model that was established probably is not working 100% and Safe Ireland came to me just over two weeks ago, as did the National Women's Council of Ireland, to ask us to look at it again. What we have been doing, in the absence of having a formal setting, is that anybody who has come to us has immediately been put in emergency accommodation, such as a bed and breakfast establishment, for two weeks. After that, we have been looking after rent supplement, which they are absolutely entitled to make an application for in their own right.

Deputies may be aware that we have really relaxed the criteria for rent supplement and changed what was a 28-page application form down to four pages in the past couple of weeks in recognition of the difficult situation people are in. In recent days, my Department has formulated a new response on this issue in co-operation with the Departments of Justice and Equality and Children and Youth Affairs, and that was communicated to Safe Ireland and, hopefully, to the National Women's Council of Ireland this afternoon. There is and will be no delay in accessing these supports. There are now a number of parties who can make referrals, not least of which is the individual himself or herself, as well as the Garda and Tusla.

We are trying to cover all bases. There might be some difficulty in that certain parties would like another party to be the responsible person for referring. From our perspective, one is either entitled to rent supplement or one is not. We do not really mind who makes the referral. We just need to make sure the referral gets turned around, first of all compassionately and sensitively and, second, in absolutely the fastest manner it can be. I reassure Deputies that anybody who comes to us will immediately be put into emergency accommodation in a bed and breakfast until the application form is turned around and we will look after every family as holistically as we can.

A number of speakers referred to the groups of people they feel, maybe rightly so, have been excluded from supports. That certainly was not our choice. Some speakers referred to front-line workers and others mentioned people aged over 66 and another group which is probably much smaller than the latter, namely, the under 18s. We did not choose to exclude anybody. Colleagues are well aware of how fast the legislation was put in place and, it is probably fair to say, how simple that legislation is, which was passed by this House unanimously, thankfully, to set up the PUP and the wage subsidy scheme. The provisions are based on section 202 of the 2005 legislation and other legislation that currently stands either in this country or in the European Union which governs how we look after working age supports.

More than any other Member, I have probably had more people come directly to me or to my office to tell me how they feel about being excluded. There is not a single case that has not broken my heart because these are people who are working. In fact, I have spent the past number of years trying to encourage people over the age of 66 to work. However, the legislative code that governs employment benefit in this country allows payments to be made only to people aged between 18 and 66. I do not mean to be smart but if we need to change that, then it is the House that needs to change it and we can do so collectively. We are governing and being governed by the legislation that is the law of the land. It was never intentional to exclude anybody, which is why I was adamant that the wage subsidy scheme should cover absolutely everybody we could cover, which included those aged over 66. It is why we made supplementary welfare, which is governed by different legislation, available to any person over the age of 66 who was working and had extra expenses which were not covered by their current pension. A number of people have made applications and been successful on that basis.

Finally, one of the Deputies raised the case of a person who was only on a reduced contributory pension and has now lost their income. That person is absolutely entitled to apply for a full non-contributory pension and they absolutely will get it.

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