Ray Butler (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank Senator Norris. The Department is dragging its feet on this issue. The new Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar, was the Minister formerly. He was pushing it. We have a new Minister now and I feel that it has been pushed to the back burner, which is not good enough. I appeal to Fianna Fáil, our partners in government. It is in the programme for Government that we progress this new stamp for the self-employed. We are the only country in industrialised Europe that does not have a stamp for the self-employed. That is an absolute disgrace. I welcome all the changes that have happened for the self-employed in the last 12 months. There have been new dental benefits, new access to eye checks and tax equalisation for the self-employed, but this has been dragging on and on. We are talking about a stamp that should have been put in place 30 or 40 years ago, perhaps even 50 years ago. There are 400,000 self-employed people in this country who go out to work every day and who have no cover if they get sick in the morning or - God forbid - if anything happens to them.