Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The issue of tax is a matter for the Department of Finance. We all know that if we earn over a certain amount of money, we are all liable to pay tax. As I understand it, that is the rule across the board.

It is important to say we have paid out a considerable amount of money to support people through the pandemic unemployment payment. This week, we issued €130 million in arrears to 286,000 people. The Deputy will be aware that when the payment was brought in last March, some payments were not made because there was missing information and so on. We worked with those people and we got them into payments and it just took some time to get the arrears sorted. Those arrears have been paid this week. Next week, we are going to pay out a record €389 million on the Christmas bonus and over 311,000 people on the PUP will receive that bonus. Normally, people would have to be 15 months on a social welfare payment, such as a jobseeker’s payment, to get the Christmas payments. However, in acknowledgement of the very difficult year people have had, we have agreed that if they are on the pandemic unemployment payment or a jobseeker’s payment for more than four months in total from last March until October, or perhaps November, but if they are on it for four months since then-----

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