David Cullinane (Sinn Fein)

I second the amendments. As things stand, a period of ten days is permitted. That is an unreasonable timeframe because it has been stated in this House repeatedly that people who apply for benefits or who make contact with State agencies very rarely have the applications processed in ten days. Ten days is a short period and a person could be sick and not in a position to do administrative work. The 90 days notice period would deal with that. This is a reasonable request from Sinn Féin. We hope the Minister will accept.

There are also a number of amendments on the removal of the word "offence". We have difficulties with people who would find it difficult to carry out remediation work or who do not have the financial means to do it. There should be penalties but to leave someone with a criminal record on the back of this is a matter of concern to us. There are consequences for people with a criminal record. There was a good discussion lately in this House with the Minister for Justice and Equality on many minor offences where the State is considering community service instead of custodial sentences. The Minister for Justice and Equality was aware of issues in this regard broadly but we want to deal specifically with this Bill. We are concerned that people will be criminalised by the outworking of this Bill.

We hope the Minister will respond on the first issue in a positive way.