David Cullinane (Waterford, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Brady. I will be taking ten minutes and he will be taking five. The Minister is absolutely right in saying that a failure to pass these Estimates today would create a real challenge for people who depend on all of these payments. We will certainly be supporting the Revised Estimates. We want a constructive debate so I will give way to the Minister if she wants to interject at any time during my ten minutes. The Minister will accept that pointing out what we see as problems, failures or concerns is also being constructive and that doing so is part of our job.

The first and most obvious point to make, which was made by the previous speaker, is that the fundamental flaw in the Estimate being presented is that it operates on the basis of making no change to policy when everybody knows that policy will be changed. The Estimate operates on the basis that all of the Covid emergency payments, including the two main ones, the pandemic unemployment payment and the wage subsidy scheme, will come to an end at some time in early June and that people will then transfer on to social welfare payments. We received mixed messages from the Taoiseach and other Ministers yesterday. I have no reason to doubt what the Taoiseach said but while he stated there is no reason for people to fear and that the current emergency payments will continue as they are, he also stated that no decision had yet been made. He said that Cabinet had not made a decision and that it might be a decision for a new Government in the future. It cannot be both. I am assuming that the Taoiseach meant the Government foresees these payments being extended in the short term but that a decision will be made in the medium to longer term, perhaps after the formation of a new Government, as to the rates that will apply and for how long they will remain in place.

The difficulty in all of this is that it sows confusion. People depend on these payments and the vast majority of them want to go back to work; let there be no doubt about that. Despite all of the unnecessary rhetoric associated with some of these measures - the previous speaker spoke about percentages of people who may be slightly better off or much better off - the vast majority of these people are working and want to go back to work. That is their first objective. They also, however, have bills to pay. As we sit here today and debate these Estimates, none of these workers has any certainty. The Taoiseach made a commitment on the floor of the Dáil that the payments would continue but we do not know for how long or how much they will be worth. These people have mortgages, rents to pay and food to put on the table. They have to plan for the future.

The payments are due to end in two weeks' time. It would be helpful if the Government were to make a firm decision on them and give those workers the certainty they need. I am sure the Minister will accept that these are people who are worried and concerned. It is not a case of the Opposition or others trying to add to that fear and anxiety. We are all being lobbied and asked questions by people who are on those payments about what is going to happen in two weeks' time. We cannot give clear and firm answers because what the Taoiseach said yesterday, on the one hand, is that no decision has been made yet by the Cabinet, but he also said that the payments will continue. People are confused and it would be helpful if the Minister could clarify that.

It is important to point out that the decisions we make economically and fiscally are hugely important. All of the international evidence, as we see today in more reports coming out of think tanks and others, is that what we need is investment and stimulus and to continue with all of the income supports that are in place. If we do not, small to medium-sized businesses are in real trouble. If we start, as we did in the past, taking the axe to social welfare and cutting the incomes of people on low pay, they will not have any discretionary spend. They do not have very much anyway, if any at all, on €350. If we start cutting their payments, they will be in real trouble and we will end up creating more problems for ourselves, as we did in the past, because they will not be able to pay their mortgages and that will create problems for the banks. They will not be able to pay their utility bills, which will create problems for those companies. They will not be able to pay their rents and that will create problems for those tenants. All of these issues are intertwined and inter-tangled. We need to make sure we make the right political choices regarding investment and stimulus.

Our first priority has to be to get people back to work, and we do that by making the right choices. We have to accept, as I am sure the Minister will accept, that there are some sectors of the economy that will take longer to recover. We know what sectors they are, including hospitality and tourism. Unfortunately, they will take longer to recover and we need sectoral recovery packages for them. For the people who work in those sectors, there is going to be an emergency for some time to come. When we introduce emergency payments, we cannot then say that, at some point in the future, we might revise those schemes and cut them back, even though the emergency still exists and people still have bills to pay. We are making a reasonable assertion to Government that for as long as the emergency continues for those workers, the emergency payments should continue. It is very simple.

I come now to the notion that there are anomalies in the scheme. The Government wants to focus solely on those anomalies based on the perception that there are people who are gaming the system, are much better off getting the payments and do not want to go back to work. That is nonsense. The vast majority of people want to return to work. There are several issues with the table that is presented on page 13 of the Revised Estimates document. First of all, the figures are based on returns data for 2018. We had discussions with officials yesterday and they told us the 2019 data will be available shortly. The income bands into which the data are broken down are far too broad. The information presented does not take into account a number of very obvious points, such as that some of the people who are part-time workers, including students, would have been anticipating working full time during the summer months. That is not taken into account.

The second issue with the data is that they do not take into account seasonal workers. However, the main issue that is not taken into account is one on which the Government and all of us should be focused. It is an issue on which I have had numerous debates in the past with the Minister and her Government colleagues. The issue is that we have people working full time but earning less than €350. That is the problem and it is all the more reason that we need to deal with low pay. It is all the more reason that we need to deal with precarious work and that we need a living wage. That is something which is glaringly obvious from all of this.

I want to put an issue on the record even though it is not directly relevant to the Revised Estimates. We need clarity regarding the STOP67 campaign and the people who are concerned about the pension age. There were a lot of promises made in this regard but we heard yesterday that some of those promises may be rowed back on. That would be absolutely unacceptable and I want to make it very clear that we in Sinn Féin will not be resiling from our commitment that workers should have the choice to retire at the age of 65 and there will be an end to mandatory retirement.

I will give the Minister a couple of minutes to respond to the points I have made. To be fair, she has not interjected and I will give her a chance to come in after I make a final point.

We are going to have to examine the issue of household debt. Already, many families have put off paying their mortgages, electricity bills, telecommunications bills and rent even with the incomes they have. We will have to consider a debt resolution process, possibly overseen by the Money Advice & Budgeting Service, MABS, or some other organisation, to adjudicate on all this as we emerge from the crisis. We need to do the same for business but we are now discussing social protection and we will have to ensure that we do the same for families.

There is a great deal in what I said and there is approximately one and a half minutes left for my contribution so I am happy to give the Minister that time to respond.

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