Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this legislation. At the outset, I wish to ask the Minister and her Department what they have got against the fourth child in working families. I put this point to the Minister's officials when I spoke to them earlier in the week. Is it the case that when the Minister was in the schoolyard years ago, a fourth child pulled her pigtail or something?

It seems there is an agenda at present because every child under the social welfare system where the parent is in receipt of a social welfare payment is getting increased financial support in budget 2021 except for families with four or more children that are in receipt of the working family payment. I find it bizarre that this small number of families across the country are the only ones who are receiving a payment from the Department of Social Protection and are being excluded from an increase in the rate of payment in this year's budget. Therefore, an unemployed family with four children, two of whom are under the age of 12, will receive €728 more next year in the child dependent allowance. A one-, two- or three-child family in receipt of the working family payment will be €936 better off next year. The working poor with four children or more are the only ones being ignored in budget 2021.

Many of the increases in these payments are to offset the increased costs of living due to the hikes in carbon tax but the working poor who happen, unfortunately, to live outside our cities can forget about it. Those people would be better off staying in bed. By the time 2030 comes along and we have a carbon tax of €100 per tonne, half of the households in Dublin will be paying less than €9.11 per week in additional transport costs when the Dublin Bus subsidy is taken into account, and yet, their rural neighbours who are commuting will be paying €39.50 per week more. That is four times more than those who have a bus passing outside their door every five minutes.

The message, therefore, being sent out by this Social Welfare Bill to working families on low incomes with more than four children is to not do it; it is not worth it. They are better off staying at home or living in separate homes claiming the one-parent family allowance. It is all to save the princely sum of €2.6 million out of a €25 billion budget. That is 0.0000000001 of the Minister's budget. That is ten decimal points below 1%. Next year, the Minister's Department will spend €47,500 every minute. I am seeking for the Minister to reallocate €5 of that €47,500 to those working families with four or more children who are on a low income and in receipt of the working family payment.

In fairness, it is not just in this budget. The Minister's predecessor, the then Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Senator Doherty, did the same thing on two occasions. In this budget, however, every other child has received some additional payment because the child dependent allowance has been increased. These small numbers of families and children, however, are the ones being blatantly discriminated against by this legislation. That is wrong and I hope the Minister will review it before the passage and enactment of this legislation.

I will turn to another issue. It is an aspect I am surprised is not included in the Bill. As the Minister will be aware, the Government has taken the decision to provide for medical indemnity for the six Covid-19 vaccines it has signed up to and pre-purchased. I believe the Government has pre-purchased 8.5 million doses of vaccine. There are more to come in terms of vaccine doses and we will probably have four or five more vaccines.

As part of the vaccination programme discussed by the Minister at Cabinet on Tuesday, recipients will have to receive two vaccine doses, which will have to be administered two weeks apart. We are talking about two vaccine doses taken two weeks apart and six different vaccines floating around. That is a recipe for absolute and utter chaos and we are asking the Health Service Executive to manage it. This is the same organisation that lost 600,000 flu vaccines a few weeks ago and did not know where they were because it has not got the data systems to manage a handful of them. How in God's name will it manage 8.5 million vaccine doses and more?

We do not have a unique health identifier, which we legislated for here probably six years ago at this stage. In the short term, while it is not ideal, the only solution is to use the personal public service number, PPSN. It is the best short-term option to be able to monitor and manage the vaccination programme across this country. To do that, however, we need an amendment to the existing legislation covering the operation of the PPSN. It is not in this legislation. Without having some type of tracking mechanism, which in the short term is only the PPSN, then managing indemnity by the State Claims Agency in terms of these vaccines will be next to impossible. We need detailed and accurate records. They are vital to flag up adverse reactions to specific vaccines.

It is imperative that we have as a matter of urgency a full debate in the House on all those related issues.

I welcome the move the Minister is making on the pension age threshold. People should be able to work beyond their 66th birthday if they wish to do so, and to continue to make PRSI contributions into the Social Insurance Fund, but they should not be forced to do that. I have come across what I believe is an anomaly in the calculation of the total contributions pension, the new pension that has come in. A constituent contacted me about the matter and the Minister might clarify in her response how it works. Under the existing social welfare law, the PRSI record is based from the first day that a person pays his or her first stamp in insurable employment until the final full tax year before his or her 66th birthday. That did not cause many difficulties when the number of stamps were averaged out over, say, a 40-year period, but with the total contributions approach, if someone's birthday is in December, he or she will lose out on 11 or 11 and a half months of stamps. That could be the difference between the person getting a significantly higher rate of contribution and over the lifetime of the person's pension, it could have a dramatic impact on the rates he or she is paid. The total contributions system should be calculated until the very last stamp is paid when a person reaches his or her 66th birthday or if he or she wants to continue paying pension contributions.

As the Minister will be aware, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Social Protection, Community and Rural Development and the Islands sent her a submission yesterday evening on our deliberation regarding the pandemic unemployment payment. I again ask her to consider the issue of self-employed people over the age of 66 who are not eligible for a State pension. They should be deemed eligible for the pandemic unemployment payment. We need to send out a message that it is okay to work beyond one's 66th birthday. In this case, however, we are penalising those people who work beyond their 66th birthday and who have been forced to shut because of Covid-19. On the one hand, we want people to work later in life and to contribute to the economy and the Social Insurance Fund. On the other hand, those people who are leading in terms of those measures at the moment are the very ones being penalised by the pandemic unemployment payment.

The Minister will also be aware that in that submission, we made quite a number of recommendations in respect of the music and entertainment industry and included a detailed submission from that industry in our final document. I hope she will examine the submission received from the music industry. It has recommended that the existing earnings cap of €480 be doubled and I hope that can be considered. Furthermore, the committee and I believe that the current structure in the calculation of that cap is too inflexible to meet the needs of the entertainment industry, and that we should also consider averaging that over the term of the pandemic unemployment payment. We should remember that the objective is to get people within the music and entertainment industry back into full-time work. That will not happen overnight - we all accept that - but any opportunity they have to get gainful employment needs to be facilitated in every way possible. I acknowledge that the Minister intends to come forward with a statutory instrument, which she will present to the committee over the coming weeks, concerning how the Department, when calculating these figures, will take into account the costs of gigs borne by entertainers, and I hope a fair approach will be taken to that. Nevertheless, we need flexibility. That €480 threshold really needs to be reconsidered, as does the period over which it is calculated.

We need immediately to review the interaction of the pandemic unemployment payment with the wage subsidy schemes. I fundamentally believe that every person possible should be kept on a wage subsidy scheme rather than being forced down the road of the pandemic unemployment payment. It is imperative to keep that connection between employers and employees. It is better from an employer's point of view in getting people back on an incremental basis to full-time work and it is better for the employee in trying to maintain his or her current level of income, rather than taking a drop to the level of the pandemic unemployment payment and having to sign on for that.

Finally, I compliment the Minister, her predecessor and her team of officials in the Department, and in particular the officials in the regional offices in Roscommon, Longford, Sligo, Letterkenny and other places throughout the country on the tremendous work that was done in processing a phenomenal number of pandemic unemployment payment applications over a short period. I commend them on their efforts in responding, often late at night and sometimes at weekends, to queries we raised with them. I say "Go raibh míle maith agaibh" to them for that.

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