Marie Moloney (Labour)

The telephone is essential for communication between a carer and the person being cared for, where they do not live together. I hope the Minister will revisit this area when times get better and the country is back on its feet, with a view to putting that allowance back in place. It is time a carers' strategy was put in place. While this is not the responsibility of the Minister, I ask her to use her influence to speed up the introduction of such a strategy.

I note the change in jobseeker's benefit, which will be based on a five-day week from July 2012. This will have an effect on seasonal and part-time workers. It is regrettable that the Minister had to resort to this measure. I know cuts must be made and I am glad she was able to retain the basic rate at €188 per week. By reducing the number of days from six to five, the basic rate of €188 is now divided by five which gives a higher daily rate of pay. Therefore, the loss may not be as great as jobseekers feared. We must take into consideration the huge jump in the number of people working in casual and part-time employment and claiming jobseeker's payment in recent years, which obviously puts an increased demand on the payment.

I am pleased the Minister listened to people and heard what they were saying about the disability allowance. She is a Minister of compassion and is big enough and brave enough to admit that this was a wrong decision. She is dealing with the issue and helping people who are most in need. In this House we had cross-party agreement that this was a retrograde step and many of us had grave concerns with regard to people with profound, severe, multiple and ongoing disabilities being affected by the change announced in the budget last week.

Many parents whom I spoke to were in favour of the domiciliary care allowance being extended to the age of 18, at which stage their child becomes an adult, and at that stage being assessed for an income in their own right. Many children with mild and moderate disabilities are going through mainstream education, and I am delighted about that fact. Many parents do not want to see their children, at 16 or 17, being considered disabled. They know they have a disability, but they would like their children to be treated with equality and in the same way as any other able-bodied person without a disability. Many young adults with a mild disability will go on to carve out careers for themselves. They will go on to third level education and will be treated as equal to everybody else. This however is not the case for those people with profound disabilities. They will never go out to work, never marry and never have children of their own.

While I know that the disability issue is under review at present this measure has been removed from the Bill, and I hope it will not return. I implore the Minister to make no cuts to the disability allowance to people with profound disabilities.

The previous Government started the process to bring the one-parent family payment in line with those of other countries and the Minister has continued with this measure. However, the level of child care in other countries is more enhanced than in Ireland. I ask the Minister to invest in child care facilities. If that were done, returning to the workforce would not be such a daunting issue for people with young children. Many lone parents are looking to their future and are probably feeling quite scared that they will not be able to afford child care. Many are not aware of the community child care subvention scheme. That should be highlighted to make lone parents aware of it.

Due to the change to the redundancy rebate scheme many people are now worried that they will not get their redundancy payment, as some employers may say they cannot pay it. Some small businesses are very worried that when they have to reduce their staff they will find it very difficult to pay 85% of the redundancy payment. I appreciate that the Minister is trying to deter large multinational companies transferring their business to other countries. We were paying for companies to move their jobs out of this country. I trust this measure will be a deterrent to large companies moving their business to another country, thus keeping jobs and employment in this country. What looks like a bad measure may end up being a good measure which will save and retain jobs in this country.

I am disappointed the Bill does not contain a measure to help self-employed people. I had hoped the Minister might give them the opportunity to pay a full PRSI contribution, which would entitle them to benefit, because things are extremely hard for the self-employed.