Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The PUP was a necessary blunt instrument at the beginning of this crisis. We hoped that a number of the problems with it would have been rectified but this has not happened. Some of my colleagues have spoken about the weaknesses in the payment such as those relating to those of pension age.

There are difficulties now that the rate has been cut. There are problems for particular sole traders. Travel has been a farce, given that one cohort of people in receipt of the payment were being dealt with adversely in terms of payments because they had travelled while others were not.

7 o’clock

I will have to check the detail on this but I also got news of somebody on the carer's allowance who, while travelling to a funeral, may have been stopped at an airport and questioned. On that basis, their allowance was cut. I believe it has been reinstated since but again we are in a quagmire with no clarity.

A big issue in my constituency was the fact the PUP was not made available to people who work in towns such as my own of Dundalk and who came from the North, paid their PRSI and all their necessary taxes, including the USC, and who played a vital role in economy. We were told that it was basically done and it was inferred it related to the EU. However, the European Commission has given us information that the Government made the determination itself 100%. That is an absolute travesty, particularly given the promises that had made by the previous Taoiseach and Government on never leaving Northern nationalists behind again.

We have a difficulty now that people who were living in the Twenty-six Counties but working in the North were covered by the PUP but they have now been cut to the lowest rate no matter what wage they were being paid. Somebody came to me in the past couple of days regarding this and she was automatically cut. She will be at work within a short period but this is absolutely ridiculous and, once again, it is an anomaly that needs to be dealt with.

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