Anthony Lawlor (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Department runs the free travel scheme, which is very welcome and will be worth €95 million in 2020. It is roughly 10% of the revenue of the CIÉ group. This is a large amount of money and the Minister should have some say over the quality of the service it provides. I see old age pensioners waiting at bus stops with no shelters. I know it is not the Minister's function but perhaps she could say something. Buses do not arrive on time. A train was five minutes late this morning. I do not understand how a train can be five minutes late. There was nothing to block it and there were no signalling problems. People are waiting for a service to arrive. I visited Japan, where everything arrived like clockwork. Why can we not set that as our standard? The Department is paying 10% of the revenue of the CIÉ group so the Minister should have a say.

On 15 May 2012, I launched a report that suggested that we move to an hour-based system for social welfare payments. We are now at full employment. Certain people would like to work part time but if they work three out of five days, even if it is for one, two, three or four hours, or if they work one, two or three hours per day for four out of five days, they will not qualify for a payment. It is a day-based system. If we moved to an hour-based system that allowed people to work for three days and receive three days payment. If we allowed them to spread 24 hours over the week rather than having the three days, it might work better and encourage more people who are full-time unemployed to go back to work and still maintain their social welfare payments. I produced a report in 2012. I might send it on to the Minister.

I get a number of requests from people who are looking for the fuel allowance and have a small pension in addition to the State pension and are marginally over the level. Could we mark out a little grey area so that they might not get the full allowance but could get 50% of it? It would help people who are sometimes struggling. They are on their own and have a small pension that suddenly puts them over the limit, whereas if there were two of them, there would be no problem. Could the Minister look at that to help people who are marginally over the limit?

I welcome this Bill. It is imaginative. I would look at the overall package, which includes some health measures that were brought in, including increases relating to medical cards. We cannot take this in isolation. There is an overall package, which is the way I see things going. Sometimes when people get cash in their hands, they do not spend it on what it is supposed to be for but on something else. I know there are people who will argue that this is a decision for people to make but sometimes we need to help people to make the decision that is right for them.