Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Obviously, I am fairly new in this job and I will be guided by my officials. I take the Senator's point. For people who know that they are going to get their job back in two weeks or three weeks - that the pub is going to open or the hotel is going to scale up or whatever is going to happen - nobody will all of a sudden make them go and find another job in the meantime and they will not be taken off the payment. That is just being reasonable. We will take a practical approach here.Let us face it, this payment was introduced to try to help people. We are not trying to penalise people or catch those who are genuine, who know that they will be back in their job in a pub on 10 August, which is not that long away now. This is to help people; it is not to try to entrap them.