Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The discrimination against PUP recipients is a shambles worthy of the Government. Ten minutes before Leaders' Questions began, the Minister responsible was in the House announcing what sounded like a partial U-turn on the policy. It leaves PUP recipients wondering if the discrimination has ended. It leaves those who have been penalised wondering if their money will be reinstated. They need clarity on this. After Deputy McDonald asked about this issue, we got five minutes of speechifying from the Taoiseach about everything other than this issue. Can the Taoiseach please provide clarity for PUP recipients?

I have to hand a copy of a letter sent to a new social welfare applicant last week. It refers to important information about the person's jobseeker's benefit, and in respect of holidays states the person may take up to two weeks' paid holidays in a calendar year and that the person must tell the Department before he or she goes. There is nothing in the letter about a travel advisory, green lists, red lists or anything else. The person may take holidays and has to tell the Department. If the person takes holidays, he or she could lose all of his or her income. Billy Kelleher, MEP, has suffered no loss in income, the tax exiles are facilitated and special assignee relief programme, SARP, recipients suffer nothing at all. It is deeply immoral to have this blatant discrimination. It is not just immoral. The problem in which the Taoiseach finds himself is that this is illegal. There is no legal basis for the discrimination, as has been pointed out by the Free Legal Advice Centres, FLAC.

Yesterday, I spoke to a man called Ciarán. He is 25 years old and has paid taxes all his life, and is in receipt of the PUP through no fault of his own. On Thursday, 7 May he took a flight and was stopped at the boarding gate by plain-clothes gardaí who said they were conducting an immigration check and asked for his passport. He handed it over, and they took it and gave it back. He got on the aeroplane. He came back to Ireland and found his PUP had been stopped. He contacted the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, which told him he was on a particular flight and, therefore, his PUP was being taken off him. On what legal basis did gardaí ask for his passport and then transfer information to the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection? There is no legal basis for that. That is why, when representations were made by his constituency representatives, Deputies Nolan and Stanley, his payment was restored.

If there was no legal basis then for stopping payments, there is still now no legal basis for this discrimination. The statutory instrument introduced on 10 July explicitly related to jobseeker's benefit and does not reference the PUP. What about the case of a woman who is reported in The Irish Timesas having booked a ferry trip that she did not take, but lost her PUP simply for having made a booking? I do not want to hear long rhetoric around the coronavirus crisis, the point of the PUP or anything else. Rather, I want clarity on what is going to happen.

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