Results 1,841-1,860 of 28,255 for speaker:Éamon Ó Cuív

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: If I could invite carers into the group, caring for the elderly, for example, tends to be time-limited. I am probably the oldest person in the room but when you reach a certain age you see your friends die. Caring for a child born with a significant disability is a totally different situation. In my experience, in many of those cases, that is where we tend to come up against the issue of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: I believe strongly in the universal payment. I find as a politician that the challenge is not where one would like to be, but how to get there.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: It would also allow people to do up to 18.5 hours work and get the benefit.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: My point is that in my experience, what I would call big-bang change is hard to achieve. We then have to decide where we would like to be. One can say that fairly quickly but much more complex are the priorities in trying to get there.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: That is easy to rectify. In the past eight years there has been a huge increase in the ability of self-employed people to access benefits such as unemployment benefit and invalidity benefit. It could be argued that the self-employed contribution is disproportionately actuarially good compared to the normal PRSI. One is 14% and the other is 4%. However, that is an argument for another day....

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: Professor Murphy is talking about a participation income. Wikipedia describes it as "similar to Universal Basic Income in that everyone enjoys a measure of financial security, but [it] obliges claimants to actively engage in socially desirable projects as temporary or-----

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: I accept that we are in two different places.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: Yes. That conditionality could cause problems. Again, when we get to the real coalface of the real people we are dealing with there is what I call a Victorian attitude that if a person gets the dole, he or she must be available for work and actively seeking work. There are some people I know who are not disabled, or certainly would not qualify for disability allowance, but who are highly...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: Farmers are exempt.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: Professor Murphy is dead right. People who are self-employed lose 100% of their income if they do any work. It is 100%.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: We are back to all this checking and proving and proving and checking.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: As I said, for many of the people I am dealing with, it is about the means test. Everybody who comes in is unique. There are people in Ms Thyne's situation and younger people caring who have had employment and so on. Means testing is a challenge in such cases. For a lot of people who are in receipt of unemployment payments or whatever and come to me, and there is a fair cohort of them, it...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: I am always wary of the old Victorian attitude of the deserving and undeserving poor and people saying they made their contribution to society and others did not, and that determines who deserves a payment. I do not buy into that; I am totally anti-Victorian.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: I am just telling Professor Murphy where I stand.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Social Protection: Report on Participation Income for Family Carers: Discussion (11 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: Proving and checking. As I said, we are at the coalface of how this plays out.

Written Answers — Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: Passport Services (10 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: 16. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade when a passport will issue to a person (details supplied); the reason for the delay in issuing this passport; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44112/23]

Written Answers — Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: Passport Services (10 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: 17. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade when a passport will issue to a person (details supplied); the reason for the delay in issuing this passport; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44113/23]

Written Answers — Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade: Passport Services (10 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: 18. To ask the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade the reason applications for passports where additional documentation is requested and fully supplied cannot be finalised within a week of the supply of this information; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [44114/23]

Written Answers — Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport: Bus Services (5 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: 21. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport whether he will make further resources available to the NTA to ensure that it can provide capacity along rural routes to ensure that passengers are not regularly left stranded at bus pick-up points because buses are full; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42785/23]

Written Answers — Department of Transport, Tourism and Sport: Bus Services (5 Oct 2023)

Éamon Ó Cuív: 29. To ask the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport whether he is aware that there are bus routes on the rural link services where bus stops are up to 14km apart, thus rendering them unsuitable for use by people living in dispersed rural communities; if he is aware of the issue, the steps he has taken to ensure in dialogue with the NTA that all rural dwellers have access to these...