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

I wish to take the Minister up on his earlier offer to listen to ideas for the July stimulus package. I will focus on a few specific groups. The pandemic and the lockdown affected huge numbers of people in terms of their income, employment and livelihoods but particular groups have been hard hit and are likely to be hard hit for the foreseeable future as long as Covid-19 remains with us. As well as big, broad measures and schemes, such as the Microenterprise Loan Fund (Amendment) Bill 2020 before us, we need to be specific in looking at sectors that are particularly hard hit and which are not specifically captured by big, broad policy moves.

It is even more important to make that point on the day that is in it because I have been receiving calls from individuals in two of these sectors all day. I raised repeatedly with the Minister in his previous Government role - he is still in government but it has been in slightly different form since the establishment of the new Government - the position of taxi drivers and people in the arts, light entertainment, music and the gig economy. Today, many of them found that their pandemic unemployment payment had been cut from €350 to the €203 rate. This was due to a failure to recognise the specifics of their particular situation. I warned the Government that this was coming. People whose incomes, livelihood and future have been devastated for the foreseeable future as a result of the Covid pandemic are being kicked while they are down. There is no other way to describe it. They were kicked this morning when they received letters informing them that their pandemic unemployment payments were being cut. More of this is likely to happen next week when people who do not jump through a number of other hoops will also have their payment cut.

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I will be more specific in this regard. Taxi drivers whose income was deemed to be less than €200 face a cut in their payment. This will affect a huge cohort of taxi drivers, in part because the income is based on the figures for 2018, which is a random selection in its itself, but also because taxi drivers have very significant outgoings that reduce their income, which outgoings continued during Covid when their income disappeared and against a background where if they do return to work - there is pressure on them to do because their payment is being cut and some of them might not want to do because they are still concerned about the health situation - they will be returning to an employment where their income is not likely to cover to anything even close to pre-Covid levels for the foreseeable future.

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