Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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35. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will change the way in which jobseeker's benefit is calculated for those in casual or part time work or on temporary reduced hours, whereby it is not based on days worked but on income, so that no person is living below the poverty line; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [39683/17]

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Will the Minister consider changing the way in which jobseeker's benefit is paid to casual and part-time workers and temporary workers on reduced hours? At present, it is calculated before it is paid based on the number of days worked rather than on the level of income people receive. Any supplementary income they receive from the State is based on the days they work rather than the income they receive. As I will argue with the Minister later, I am increasingly coming across many people who are below the poverty line and who cannot receive support income because of the way in which the payment is calculated.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The jobseeker's benefit and jobseeker’s allowance schemes provide income support for people who have lost work and are unable to find alternative full-time employment. The 2017 Estimates for the Department provide for expenditure this year on the jobseekers’ schemes of €2.5 billion.

Both schemes provide significant support to individuals so that they can work up to three days a week and still retain access to a reduced jobseeker’s payment. At the end of July 2017, approximately 54,000 people were in the category described by the Deputy as casually employed or in part-time employment. The current days-based system can provide significant income supports to jobseekers who are casually employed. For instance, an individual can earn a little over €19,760 per year and still retain jobseeker's allowance payment for the two days not worked, while the equivalent threshold for an individual with a qualified adult is almost €34,000 if they are both working. There is a significant difference.

The Department does not collect data on the number of hours a jobseeker works, as this information is not necessary to make a decision on the application for the payment. The cost associated with moving the jobseeker's benefit scheme to an hours-based system cannot therefore be ascertained.

It is recognised that a changing labour market has resulted in a move away from more traditional work patterns. However, any changes to the current criteria, such as moving to an hours-based system, could result in significant numbers of additional individuals becoming eligible for a jobseeker’s payment with the substantial corresponding costs for the Exchequer.

In addition, if there were a change from a days-based to an hours-based system, existing casual jobseekers could lose out if their current hours worked over three days exceeded the new hours threshold, creating a disincentive to work longer.

There are other schemes to support families with low incomes such as family income supplement and the back to work family dividend. The part-time job incentive scheme can provide assistance to long-term unemployed who can only find part-time employment for less than 24 hours per week. I hear what the Deputy is saying, but doing what she would like us to do would have enormous financial ramifications and IT ramifications with regard to providing a platform to work in the system.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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If I have heard the Minister correctly, she has answered the wrong question because I am not asking for the system to be changed based on the hours worked but rather on the income received for the time worked. I will give the Minister an example. At present, people employed, for example for three days, receive supplementary income for the two days they do not work. If someone works 15 hours over five days, with three hours a day, and receives €130 from his or her employer, that person will receive the part-time job incentive scheme payment for up to one year. What happens to that person after the year? Recently, I had the case of a cleaner at a famous shop in Ballyfermot, who all of a sudden was told the supplementary payment of €120 a week she received from the Department of Social Protection would be stopped because the year was up. This very distressed woman came to me, and I went to the Intreo office, where the payment was extended for two months. That time is up this month, and the woman will be living on the poverty line or will have to give up her job because her boss is not willing to pack all of those hours into two or three days as that does not suit him. Increasingly it does not suit employers to facilitate workers, and workers are being forced into precarious hours, whereby the advantage is to the employer and the disadvantage is to the worker.

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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Deputies cannot exceed the time.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I do not have the details of the specific case the Deputy is speaking about. People need cleaners on a five day a week basis and that work will not be squeezed into two days. From the perspective of an employer I totally get this. There is an anomaly and the Deputy has highlighted it. Will the Deputy send me the details of the lady in question and it will give me grounds to look further afield to see whether it affects other people? The purpose of these payments is to ensure people in low paid work get an income supplement. The last thing we want to do is to give people an income supplement and then cut them off a year later and put them back where they were a year previously. If the Deputy gives me the details I will take care of it.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I will do so but I would like my question to be answered in terms of the income received rather than the level of hours worked. That is the change we need to make, that we look at the income people receive from their jobs and we do not supplement them based on the days or hours that they work, because increasingly Ireland is becoming a low-paid economy. We earn lower wages than most of the other developed European Union countries. A total of 38% of part-time workers earn low pay. Increasingly in this country we see people fall into a poverty trap. They are not able to receive a living wage. They might be on the minimum wage but they are certainly not able to receive a minimum wage, even combined with payments from the Department. Now we find there are anomalies whereby they are not able to receive these payments. It does not suit the employer to rearrange the employee's hours to suit the Minister or the person in receipt of poverty earnings. This must be looked at and must be changed.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I am not sure where the term "poverty earnings" comes from. People go to work and they earn wages for the work they do.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The minimum wage is poverty.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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From a jobseeker's perspective, with regard to either jobseeker's benefit or jobseeker's allowance, the answer is we are not willing to change the current system. The reason we do not have to do so is we have other schemes that support families on low incomes, such as family income supplement and the back to work family dividend, which are all based on thresholds of income earnings.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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A single person is not entitled to family income supplement.

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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I go back to the individual that prompted the Deputy-----

Pat Gallagher (Donegal, Fianna Fail)
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We cannot-----

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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They are all based on income thresholds. If the Deputy knows of an individual customer who would like to come to me, I will have a look at it individually. That is no problem.

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I probably have 10,000 of them.