Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am sure the Taoiseach is not suggesting that those 287,000 recipients of the Covid payment are scamming the system or that they qualify as scammers. I would like him to make that very clear. These are people who have lost work and hope to return to work as soon as they possibly can. They are out of work because we are in the throes of a public health emergency. It is the case that the Government is singling out a section of the population for special and negative attention, because the fact is that there is no penalty, financial or otherwise, for citizens who are not on the Covid payment should they choose to travel to one of the green list countries, yet the Government is saying to all of those citizens who are out of work, through no fault of their own, that they will face a very significant sanction, that being the removal of their single and only source of income. That is a very harsh measure to take.

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