Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I want to ask the Minister about her plans to tax the pandemic unemployment payment. The recipients of the payment are victims of the Covid crisis; they are workers who lost their jobs in the Covid crisis. Many of these workers did not just lose their job, but their incomes fell off a cliff. There are people who would have had incomes of €600, €700 and €800 a week that were reduced to €350. That was the money which paid the rent and put the food on the table. Now, the Minister and the Government are planning to tax it. This is another real blow to those workers and their families. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of people. I ask the Minister to give the House a justification for taxing these workers, the victims of the crisis, and dealing them another blow. Can that be justified?

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