Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I am sharing time with Deputy Barry. The Minister has sought to assure people that there is no plan to cut the pandemic unemployment payment, and we heard similar assurances from the Taoiseach yesterday. I will outline why people have reason to be distrustful of those assurances. First, it is worth remembering that the original proposal from the Government for support for people who lost their jobs and income was for €203. It was only because of an outcry about how unacceptable that was that the Government was forced to backtrack and increase it to €350.

Second, we had an unmistakable narrative from both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over the past week, which they seem to be pulling back from now, suggesting there was some problem with the fact that people who might have been earning less than €350 when they were working before Covid were now, shockingly, getting €350. It should have been a cause for celebration because what it highlighted was the scandal of the working poor, which is particularly acute in this country, where we have one of the highest levels of people who are poor but working in the OECD.

To add to this distrust, cohorts of people who should have received the income support were denied it, despite appeals from this side of the House and from those groups. I refer to people under 18 who were working before, in many cases where that income would have been very important for those family households, being denied the payment unjustifiably, and to people over 66 who were denied the payment even though they had been working. The majority of taxi drivers, although some of them are staying at home, are among the over 66s and they are not getting the €350 payment. They are the most vulnerable cohort of taxi drivers from a health point of view but they are working because they were denied the €350 payment.

People in the gig economy who simply were not working on the specified day on which one had to be working to get the Covid payment, but who might have had a gig, a festival, a theatre performance or whatever the next week, were denied it unjustifiably. The Taoiseach stated yesterday there should not be two classes of benefits, but that is an example. The Government should do something about it. We asked it to do something about it but it did not nothing about it, so why do we not trust the Government?

I turn to the Estimates. The briefing we received yesterday states: "It should be noted that additional expenditure has been provided to fund jobseekers' payments, also reflecting exits from the PUP in June."

It is there. The plan is to exit people from the pandemic payment in June. It says it in the briefing we got yesterday. It is on page 12 and I refer anybody to it. I asked the Taoiseach about Lisa from Debenhams. Prior to Covid-19 and prior to getting sacked by Debenhams which dumped her on the scrapheap, Lisa worked every single day of her life since the age of 16 and has never been on a social welfare payment. Lisa was earning marginally less than €350 but her overtime would bring her slightly over that amount sometimes, yet she could have the payment cut. This is even though she has applied for jobs every day since being sacked by Debenhams. The Taoiseach said that it was not planned to do it immediately. It appears that all of this is qualified by being not yet, and so I do not trust the Government's assurances. If the Minister's assurances are for real and if she really cares about the people who have been impacted, in many cases for the foreseeable future, people like taxi drivers, those who work in the gig economy, people in episodic work or retail, hospitality and tourism and whose cases I have highlighted on many occasions, then will she say that the Government will not touch the pandemic unemployment payment until those sectors and their representatives come into this House for a special committee to deal with these groups, beyond the Covid-19 committee? I have asked for this before. Let them come in here to state their case before there are any changes to the pandemic unemployment payment, be it cuts or tapering, which are clearly planned for, as the Revised Estimates set out.

I will respond to the Taoiseach's taunting yesterday when he said that we want everybody to earn the same. I will tell the Minister what we want; we want nobody to live in poverty. We also want to end the situation where some people earn ten and 15 times what other people earn and we want a little bit more equality because we are all in it together. If we are all in it together then let us make that meaningful and not just for an emergency when the Government needs people to protect public health. Let us make it a reality in future society.

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