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

We face a grim and depressing fact that while we might have hoped, when the Dáil broke up, that the situation with Covid-19 would incrementally improve, those hopes have been dashed and we are facing an ongoing battle with Covid-19 for the foreseeable future. That means the economic and employment impacts on vast numbers of workers, who have had their income and employment stolen by the pandemic and by necessary public health restrictions, leave them facing a precarious future. Given that, I believe it is no longer, if it was ever, justifiable for the Government to go ahead with the plan to cut the pandemic unemployment payment on 17 September for 264,000 workers who do not want to be unemployed but who lost their jobs and incomes because of compliance with public health measures and when many of those workers would like to go back to work but cannot because of measures that are out of their control and because of the fight of Covid-19.

It is nothing short of punishing the worst economic victims of the Covid-19 crisis for the Government to go ahead with a plan to cut their pandemic unemployment payments on 17 September. I am appealing to the Taoiseach not to do it. It is not justified. It is not fair. Those workers, who cannot return to work or, if they do, will only be able to earn a tiny fraction of what they previously would have been able to earn because of public health restrictions, should not be punished. They have contributed just as much as everyone else in the public health effort, but they, unfortunately, are not able to return to work or full income-earning capacity.

The taxi drivers decided last night that they have to protest on 15 September - there will be a drive-by protest - because they are faced with a dilemma between the devil and the deep blue sea. They either stay on the pandemic payment that the Government is going to cut or they go back to work, where they can only earn a tiny fraction of what they previously earned through no fault of their own. Music, arts and entertainment workers face their payments being cut even though there is no work or virtually no work for them to return to. It is not fair. Regarding the Debenhams workers, who will be marching here this evening and who lost their jobs as a result of a cynical company using Covid-19 as an excuse to throw them on the scrapheap, how is it fair to cut their income when they would like to be at work but they cannot go back to work, or if they do go back to work, they will not be able to earn a viable living that will allow them to pay their bills, mortgages and rents? It is not justifiable. It is not fair.

I am asking the Taoiseach, ahead of 17 September, not to do that to people, not to impose further hardship when all of us are facing into a very difficult period with Covid-19. Are we still all in it together? If we are, the Taoiseach cannot justify cutting the PUP on 17 September.

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