Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will let the Minister of State into a little secret. I went to a Minister for Finance and he said, "Get a scheme to me by breakfast time tomorrow morning." I wrote the scheme out in one morning, it was passed in the budget and set up. If we went back to the people who participated in the scheme, and particularly the people who had dependants, they would say the scheme was a good scheme and that a lot of work was done. It was very popular in rural Ireland. There were high participation rates until they changed the rules on the means testing. Will the Minister of State reverse that rule change while he is doing the review? I cannot understand how it can take so long. I suspect that when all of the review is done and we have all the changes, it will be very little. In the meantime, will the Minister of State reverse it and stop having people working for €27.50? The reality is that people with dependants, be it children or adult spouses or partners, are not going on the scheme. Yes, it is good for people's mental health but they, like everybody else in the country, have to put bread on the table. As the Minister of State will be aware, their labour is worthy of their hire.

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