Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

As we saw in the July stimulus package, this new Government is investing in key projects and supporting workers and businesses at an unprecedented level at an unprecedented time. The massive scale of the response underlines our commitment to protecting jobs and communities.

With the July stimulus package, the State is spending approximately €87 billion in 2020. There is one category of worker, however, which has been adversely affected by this pandemic and which urgently needs further supports from the Government. That category is the self-employed. Every day they are often the first people up in the morning or the last to head to bed. They run their businesses from their vans or mobile phones and they were hot-desking in their kitchens long before the rest of us. They take home all the worries of that business on their shoulders, with few assets, resources, supports or working capital, yet they are the backbone of many of our local economies.

The Government rightly supports PAYE workers to the tune of €203 per week per employee in businesses that have seen more than a 30% reduction in their turnover, and that support will continue until next April. As one business put it to me, it just would not be open without the payment. A self-employed person, however, in arts, tourism, hospitality or other sectors impacted by Covid-19 receives no such income support. Such people are asked to leave the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, and to go into a market that has often been reduced not by 30% but by much more. We are treating two categories of worker differently and should address that. We are supporting PAYE employees significantly but are not doing the same for the self-employed.

To take taxi drivers as one example, they are forced to come off the PUP to claim the Government restart grant of €1,000. They then receive no further State support and rely on a market that simply does not exist at the moment. I spoke to one taxi driver on the rank in Finglas this morning who said his business was down 60% today alone. There are other sector-specific measures that we could take to help taxi drivers, such as extending the nine-year rule, a temporary pause on new entrants, or providing a restart grant before they come off the PUP. Ultimately, however, some step-down payment that provides a basic income is the most important step we can take to helping them and many other self-employed people.

One such solution could be a special Covid back-to-work enterprise allowance, or a pandemic payment like that which is given to professional artists on jobseeker's allowance, or any other step-down alternative. Employers are encouraged to keep employees on their books, supported by the employment wage subsidy scheme, but no such support exists for those who are self-employed. One of the criteria of the wage subsidy scheme is that the employer is operating at 70% of its turnover, and I firmly believe that self-employed people should be given State support at the same level. We need to give these people a helping hand. We cannot load the tools into their vans for them or unpack a delivery that arrives, but we can put our hand on their shoulder and say we have their back. This is a matter the Government urgently needs to address.

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