Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Bill. We will support it and seek to amend it in places if that is allowable. I will start with the issue raised by the Minister regarding incentives provided for uilleann pipe makers and the exemptions that are proposed relating to income tax. The uilleann pipes, as I understand it, carry UN heritage status, which we all support. They are deemed to have UNESCO intangible heritage status similar to that of the hurley or, the hurl, depending on which part of the country one is from. In my part of the world, in Cork, they are called hurleys. We know there is a crisis with regard to ash and a considerable challenge in providing for hurling, which has UNESCO intangible heritage status. If the Minister could see fit to look at the game of hurling and the value of the hurl, or hurley, she would receive the broad acclamation of this House in devising a similar scheme for hurley makers.

For some time now, we have been advocating for increases in the thresholds for the fuel allowance. All of us on the Opposition benches were carrying to the Minister stories of our constituents whereby they had become marginally over the threshold, in some instances by a matter of cents, and were deemed ineligible. This happened in the over-70s category in particular where there would have been a small occupational pension and, for the most part, people who were living in older housing stock with D and E BER ratings or exemptions in some cases. I welcome the move by the Minister to increase the threshold on the fuel allowance because it will bring many people into the net.

In my constituency office, I field many queries about the fuel allowance and the increase in the threshold. We are teeing up an increase in the number of people who anticipate that they will apply. We are facing into Christmas. If there is any possibility that it could be fast-tracked to before Christmas, there would be many more applicants in the system. If there is any way to do that, I respectfully ask the Minister to consider it, given that we are in the midst of a fuel crisis. I realise it may not be possible. I acknowledge that the Minister has made a substantial change to fuel allowance policy to ensure that more people are brought into the net. That has to be acknowledged.

I could use the cliché and say that I am glad the Minister listened to the Labour Party on this. The zeitgeist was captured and, knowing the Minister to be a sound constituency worker in her own constituency, I am sure she was listening to many people who were put over the threshold and took on board the views of people in her constituency and made changes accordingly. I would like to think we influenced the Minister in some respect with regard to this policy change.

I would like to raise a broader policy issue. The debate on this Bill is the appropriate time and place to raise it. My colleagues and I are increasingly finding issues when people are making applications for schemes where medical evidence is necessary, there is a pro forma protocol to go through, with a doctor's letter or medical evidence depending on whether it is illness benefit, disability allowance, invalidity pension or partial capacity payment, or whatever else the payment is which requires medical evidence. The issues I am picking up when assisting people in our office to make applications involve a lag in getting medical evidence because of the challenges that people face in getting general practitioners, GPs. People will want something signed by the GP and will phone the GP's practice, then will speak to the gatekeeper, which I do not say in a pejorative way, the secretary or administrator. It can often take a long time for that form to be signed. That creates a follow-on lag time before people can benefit from a payment that they are eligible for anyway.

Can we look at the need for people to go into pharmacies and get print-outs of their prescriptions, where they have to go to the GP surgery to get access to a signed form from a GP? Is there a way to streamline the process by making it more efficient, to facilitate the applicant, including with the option for a paper-based system in accordance with citizens' rights and wishes, and also to make it more streamlined for the GP, pharmacist, and person who is dealing with the case in the Department of Social Protection? I make that observation based on the dramatic increase in the number of applications that we are fielding in constituency offices where there are illness-related payments to be made and particularly in light of Covid, since we are seeing a greater preponderance of respiratory-related illnesses. One can call it long Covid. I perceive a significant increase in the number of people looking to claim disability allowance, invalidity pension, illness benefit and so on. I make that point in the hope that the Minister might respond to say that some internal work is going on to try to make it as streamlined as possible to ensure that the applicant can have a decision with a shorter lead-in time, if possible.

While I am on the issue of medical assessments, some applications have to go to a Department-appointed medical assessor. Is there scope to appoint more medical assessors in the Department? What is the Minister's view on whether there is a sufficient number of medical assessors to decide on an initial application or on appeals? I perceive that it is taking longer now than it used to for caseloads to work through the system. I have great sympathy for employees in the Department of Social Protection, where it seems that caseloads are increasing. I am not sure whether that is because of a lack of additional staff being assigned to appeals. The Minister's perspective would be helpful.

I refer to people who are carers and, wanting to use the right language, to people who are neurodivergent or who have an intellectual disability. When they are over 16, they are not eligible for a domiciliary care allowance but a carer's benefit or allowance may have been applied. Deputy Kerrane referred to this too. I share her view that there are circumstances where if somebody is caring for an adult and has been eligible for that carer's allowance or benefit heretofore, a spouse may work overtime, which then has a massive consequence for the carer. Carers lose carer's benefit because their household income has gone over a certain threshold and they lose medical cards too. There would be great sympathy and support if the Minister was to look at what I perceive to be a relatively small number of cases where people are caring for people and have lost benefits. They may have forgone career opportunities themselves, having decided that they wanted to care for the people who they are caring for. They wanted to ensure those people were cared for and, heretofore, the State recognised that in certain circumstances. However, the spouse will rightly have sought and benefited from overtime, and so the carer is kicked out of the system and loses everything. The Minister will be familiar with such cases. If that could be looked at again, it would be greatly appreciated.

I ask the Minister to clarify the national minimum wage. With the cost-of-living crisis, we had a view that if the minimum wage could be raised to €12, it would at least go some way towards meeting the cost-of-living issues that workers have encountered. I refer also to PRSI thresholds and one school of thought. I defer to my colleague, Deputy Ged Nash, who I asked about this earlier. He said that as PRSI thresholds apply now, if there was an increase in the national minimum wage, the PRSI contribution that is due would mean that, in real terms, a person would not get the full benefit of that increase in the national minimum wage.

I refer quickly to the Minister's contribution, where she stated:

Weekly earnings in excess of €410 attract employer PRSI at a higher rate of 11.05%. The earnings threshold increase from €410 to €441 in section 4 is designed to take account of the forthcoming increase in the minimum wage from €10.50 to €11.30 per hour.

I would like some clarification on that in case there is a real-term loss of income to a worker as a result of an increase in the national minimum wage. I would appreciate it if that could be addressed.

The other issue is people who are on invalidity payments not being eligible for the bonus payment. There are so many categories of people in receipt of social welfare payments who will receive the bonus or who have heretofore and I do not understand why those on the invalidity pension do not seem to have been the beneficiaries of the bonus payments, though maybe I am misreading it.

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