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

Notwithstanding the U-turn the Government was forced into on the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and travel I do not think the Government really gets the anger that is being felt by the economic victims of the Covid-19 measures. I have been trying to explain to the Taoiseach and to other Government spokespeople for weeks now that there are particular cohorts of people who have been savaged, decimated and put on their knees because of the economic consequences of public health measures. These people are likely to face the devastation of their livelihoods for the foreseeable future through no fault of their own. They are taxi drivers, people in the arts, music and live entertainment, as well as the crews behind the scenes in those areas. To that list one might add people in the bar sector. The Government has completely shafted those people, who faced the same hardship as everybody else and who are still facing it.

Let us start with taxi drivers. Taxi drivers are now being whipped back to work because of the cuts the Government has imposed on the PUP via the new conditions. The work available to them is about 20% of what was available pre-Covid because their livelihoods are linked to tourism, music, live entertainment, theatres and so on. This will be the case for the foreseeable future. What has the Government given them in the Bill debated last night or in the Bill before the Dáil today? I am trying to get in an amendment in respect of the latter but apparently I cannot. My amendment deals with a question, namely, whether the Government give taxi drivers access to the wage subsidy scheme as a step-down payment in the same way it has given companies access. The answer is "No". The Government has given taxi drivers nothing. Did it give them access to the restart grant? The answer is "No". Did it give them measures that would not even have costed the Exchequer anything, such as the ten-year expiry date on their vehicles being extended to 15 years? The answer is "No".

The Government has given taxi drivers nothing; it has shafted them. They are suffering through no fault of their own. The same is true for arts workers. Musicians have been shafted as well. They do not get the grants, they do not get an income subsidy and now they have had their pandemic unemployment payments cut. What is the Government doing for these people who are suffering and are likely to suffer as a result of the economic fallout of measures the Taoiseach's Government has imposed? The answer so far has been nothing. It is not fair and it is not right. I can tell the Taoiseach that the Government is storing up a big revolt among these sectors of society unless some supports are offered to them this week. They are angry. A lot of them are people who used to vote for Fianna Fáil and they are angry. There are going to be protests unless the Government does something. It is driving a coach and horses through the principle that we are all in it together. Unless the Government gives these groups some support, it is stabbing them in the back. So far they have got nothing.

When I have asked about this in the Dáil over the past few weeks, the Taoiseach and other Government spokespeople have wittered on and said that these groups would get some of the business grants. This morning their representatives called both the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection and the Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation asking whether they could access the business grants. The answer was "No". Why are they being refused? Why are companies getting these grants and a taxi driver cannot? It is not fair.

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