Gary Gannon (Dublin Central, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge that there is much merit in this Bill and short of a couple of important points I would like to support it. When I came into this Chamber in February, I wanted to be somebody who would be constructive in my engagement, who would try to find merit and who would try to work collaboratively and not simply oppose a Bill just because it came from somebody who had different beliefs about the world from mine. However, there are significant parts of the Bill that would make it enormously difficult for me to support. I want to tease those out with the Minister and, if possible, try to amend them to make a Bill that is fair and equitable, has a sense of decency and treats people equally.

When the PUP was introduced in March, it was an extraordinarily appropriate measure from the Government. It was done promptly and it gave a sense of safety to people. It acknowledged that the previous welfare rate of €203 was simply not enough to live on. Many of us had been advocating that for a long time. It recognised that to afford decency to people so that they might feed their families and not have to worry about the next bill coming through the door, it was an appropriate measure to give them a payment of €350. I recall talking to the then Minister, now Senator Regina Doherty, about the measure, and being sceptical and wondering if there would be a clawback. We were assured that would not happen and that the €350 would be spent very quickly in the local economy. It would be spent in butchers' shops and on the local high street. It would help rejuvenate an economy that was asked to stop. That is what the PUP was supposed to do. It fostered a sense of cohesion and gave us a sense that we were all in this together and the State had our back.

Then the dark clouds started to emerge and the Government started to fall back into bad old habits. The first group to receive less than the PUP was students who were told that as they were not working full time in March, they would not get the full €350. We did not even take into consideration that the same cohort of people would be working full time now and would be using the money to spend throughout the economy over the next year or so. Then we found the TWSS would not apply to women returning from maternity leave. That created another couple of weeks of furore and that still has not been addressed. Now here we are falling back into that old trope that people on welfare are somehow gaming the system. Sometimes I have to acknowledge the fact that this seems to happen at times a Government is under pressure. We are presented with a distraction that people are in our airports, taking our money and going overseas. That will not be allowed. We need to confront that mentality every step of the way.

When did the Covid-19 pandemic end? One would think that such a victory would have merited more headlines but it seems that I missed them. What other explanation is there for the Government's insistence that people on the PUP should return to work? Entire sectors that shut down must have reopened after the Tánaiste's television appearance at the weekend, or did it happen on 10 July when the Minister signed the statutory instrument to the effect that travel advice issued by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade effectively had a legal impact on just one small section of society who happened to avail of social welfare supports? Or is there a far more sinister explanation, whereby the new Government, which is not too dissimilar to the previous Government or the one that came before that, is using the bogey person of those on social welfare as a scapegoat? For this Government it is not as simple as telling people to get a job. The pandemic has made it much more difficult now because we all know the reality. Aside from the economic implications for small businesses of encouraging their staff to seek other jobs, ensuring that they incur costs and delays in recruitment when they intend to reopen, it means that staff now have to be issued with their P45s and redundancy payments, except, as I understand it, workers on the PUP cannot seek redundancy. How can they seek employment, therefore, if they are not technically unemployed? This is a huge gap in the Bill that will need to be rectified before we can pass it.

The Bill seeks to change the rules. Seeking work will have a massive implication for employers and employees, in particular around links between employers and employees and also access to redundancy. The Government should not go ahead with these changes at all because they will destroy any sense of social cohesion that we so successfully fostered during the pandemic and because the work is not available. The Bill must not go through with these changes until statutory redundancy rights can be restored. This is not a minor point.

We are more than 120 days into the situation whereby Debenhams' workers are still sitting outside Debenhams stores throughout the country because they were prohibited from accessing redundancy. We need to make sure we change this and we should not let the Bill pass without acknowledging that. Will the Minister provide the urgently required reassurance that employers will not be able to make employees redundant without them being able to seek redundancy? This abuse of workers, ignored in recent weeks by the Government, is not something that should be further sanctioned by changes in public policies just because the Taoiseach went on television over the weekend and had a rant. In recent days, backbench Government Deputies have gone on the airwaves and told the Government and anyone who will listen what a terrible and unfair idea this is.

I have a second question for the Minister. Will she assure us of the legality of the welfare morality checks that are happening at airports? I listened to the radio in recent days and the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, ICCL, which is far more of an authority on this than any Fine Gael Minister or parliamentarian who wishes to advocate this measure, has been very clear. The checks on passengers to establish if they were in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payment of €350 were discriminatory without any real justification being offered by the Government for their use. My colleague, Deputy Shortall, asked the Taoiseach during question time earlier about the legal grounds underpinning the measure. He could not really answer the question but he mentioned the Social Welfare Act 2012. That has been proven to be incorrect. The issue first came into the public consciousness on Sunday. We have had any number of television and radio appearances from Ministers and Government backbenchers. We have an all-day session in the Dáil today and we still have no clarity on the legal grounds on which people are being discriminated against in our airports. Mr. Liam Herrick of the ICCL raised some serious concerns on the radio this morning. The advice on travel is just for one section of society, namely, those who are not on welfare, yet it has the force of law for all those who are on welfare. Are they welfare checks or are they morality checks?

My third question relates to how, as the Tánaiste put it, Departments are getting information from airports. Does the Minister accept that raises very serious concerns with regard to where the information came from and whether it has been lawfully obtained and shared? These are dangerous issues that require clarification, in particular regarding freedom of movement and discrimination. We must ask how people are being targeted at our airports and before we can pass this Bill we must understand the ramifications of it for people. Is racial or ethnic profiling ongoing? Are people from minority communities being targeted in our airports?

I would also like questions answered immediately on where the advice to start targeting people at airports came from. Did it come from the Cabinet? Was it brought to the Cabinet? A senior Minister said today on the radio that it was not. Is that correct? Did the Minister seek advice on its legality from the Attorney General? Given her continued insistence that we do not need a travel ban, did she have any evidence of mass fraud or even of hundreds of people leaving the country while in receipt of the payment?

Those are important questions.

I will touch briefly on another sector of society which is being unfairly discriminated against by this measure, namely, the arts community. It is welcome that all the previous speakers have raised this issue. The Minister was previously the Minister with responsibility for culture and the arts and introduced some very worthy measures in that area. Does she accept that the arts community is crying out for assistance at this time? We will need the arts more than ever as the economy reopens. We will need them to help us gather once again with friends and be comfortable in that situation. We will need them to help us laugh and cry, and understand the trauma of the months of this pandemic. While we expect them to meet those needs, the Government is once again asking members of the arts community to live in poverty. That is what is being asked of them with this measure. They will not be able to avail of the payment of €350. We have all been contacted by hundreds of artists in recent days who will be living in poverty if this measure is passed tonight. That is unacceptable. We ask so much of our arts community and have offered it little in return. We have gone from having one of the lowest levels of arts sector funding in the EU to bringing in a measure that afforded artists some sense of dignity during the pandemic. Now we are about to strip that away while at the same time asking artists to keep creating world renowned work as they have done up to this point. That that needs to change. We need to respect our artistic community.

I seek your advice, a Cheann Comhairle. I have an amendment to this Bill. Is now the appropriate time to move it?

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