Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

While protecting the individual who contacted me, I wish to speak further to the debate and this amendment with a message I received. It states:

Minister Donohue assured the people that when the PUP was altered to a two tier system, that no one would be worse off after rerate than before the Pandemic. I however am. As you know, myself and [my husband] run a [public house].

Going back a few years, in 2016, this couple realised that an extra income was necessary in order to take pressure off their public house business. Therefore, between March 2016 and December 2018, this person worked at another business and then came back to their public house business in January 2019 and was there until the pubs were asked to close on Sunday, 15 March. The message continues:

We were relieved [and very grateful] when we heard that we would receive €350 each week each as apart from running a home, there were still unpaid bills relating to the [public house]. Not least of these was the monthly €460.00 insurance, which [is obviously a considerable sum of money and which payments] we have managed to keep up every month. No mean feat as you can imagine. I fully agree with the two tier system that has been put in place. It makes perfect sense. However. As a self employed recipient of the PUP, we were reassessed on the year ending December '18. The reason given for this is that some businesses would not have made their 2019 returns yet. So despite earning an average of over €315 per week last year and well over €250 in January/February (I took less for this period as business at this time of year is understandably quiet) of this year, I am now in receipt of €203.00 per week. I have appealed the decision and provided documentation but to no avail. It seems unjust that a PAYE employee has their 2019 and January/February 2020 wages assessed to ascertain which is the higher average wage but as a director of our [small] business who also pays PAYE/PRSI through payroll I am being penalised for taking on a job [in the other business] in 2018. Apparently, the only year that can be used to assess eligibility for the higher rate of PUP if you are self employed (although we are employees of the company) is 2018. I have explained that our returns for 2019 have been made. I sent copies of weekly payslips showing my wage for both 2019 and 2020 but it falls on deaf ears. Surely this can't be right? That the rules are so rigid that they cause the very thing to happen that Minister Donohue assured us would not. I am worse off. Considerably.

This person asked me to raise this with the Minister. The reason I am doing so, with the Leas-Cheann Comhairle's permission, is that the case is indicative of an awful lot of other cases of people who have contacted me with the exact same type of anomaly. Neither the Minister nor his Department can foresee every eventuality that will arise, but I am only one small person, a public representative, and if I am getting a lot of calls about this anomaly, surely other colleagues in this Chamber are having the same types of concerns raised with them by constituents who have contacted them. It is a common-thread problem. I am very grateful to get the opportunity to raise it on the floor of the Dáil with the Minister for Finance. I ask him in his considered time to address this anomaly, if he can, for respectable people such as this woman. All she is guilty of doing is her best all the time, trying to run her public house and, as I said, subsidising her businesses by going off to work in another business to try to bring in an extra bit of income to keep the public house afloat. As I said earlier today to the Minister, people are only trying to keep their businesses going. I thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle for allowing me the opportunity to raise this case.

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