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

The problem is that this concept of working three days per week comes from when I was in short pants. The reality is someone can work up to 24 hours per week and still receive a social welfare payment if he or she does it over three days. However, if someone works two hours per day as a home help for five days per week, he or she cannot get it. The difficulty is that if he or she is working less than 19 hours per week, they are not entitled to the family income supplement either and so are caught on both sides.

These are false barriers to encouraging people back into the workforce, to increasing their hours in work and, it is hoped, to ultimately getting full-time work. We are in an economy where we have full employment. Is it not about time we started to count the number of hours rather than number of days that people work?

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