Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I concur with everything that has been said about this great debate and I wish the Minister of State well with all of the proposals that have been made today.

I have a different issue to raise with the Minister of State. I think it is partly in his area of responsibility but it mainly pertains to the Department of Social Protection. It is an issue I have raised before with the previous Minister for social protection. I am referring to redundancy. While I have been involved in small businesses all my life, it is nearly more difficult to close a business than to open one because one must pay creditors, banks and tax. Winding up a business is a very difficult business. During the downturn there were many businesses, and I am talking specifically about sole traders or self-employed people, which downsized or eventually closed and had to pay redundancy to their staff.

The Redundancy Payments Act 2003 mandated that an employer must pay two weeks wages per year of service to all staff, going back to whenever they started, which could be back in the 1970s, 1980s or whenever. The result is that many businesspeople, sole traders or self-employed people are now facing the prospect of their home being used to pay for the redundancy. Some people downsized, and they cashed in their private pensions to pay the redundancy. Eventually, the day of reckoning always comes and they closed. For the rest of the funds, in some cases they plead inability to pay, with the result that the State paid the redundancy to the staff, and rightly so. I have no problem at all with staff having to get their due amount of money upon redundancy. The problem I see here is that in some of those cases, and this is going to be a huge problem going forward, there are many businesses that will never open again. Let us face it, there are many small businesses that have been employing people for years that will never open again and are going to be faced with the prospect of paying redundancy to their staff whether they are closed at the moment or no. Over the last six months we have seen - and in fairness, one must congratulate the Government as there is a lot of money around - but there is no money around to pay redundancy on behalf of self-employed people or sole traders. What really happens at the finish, at the end of the day, if a sole trader or a self-employed person cannot afford to pay the redundancy is that it is going to be taken out of their estate eventually and that is the family home.

I am going to bring forward a Private Members' Bill to eliminate the family home from such cases. I hope the Government will back me. The family home should not be used in this case. In lots of cases the family home goes back generations. A small business person or a self-employed person who had been employing people for donkey's years is going to be faced with the fact that his or her family home will be taken to pay the two weeks' statutory redundancy for employees, and good employees as well. The Minister of State should bring that back to Government because I have a number of cases. There are also a lot of former sole traders and self-employed people who are afraid to talk about this issue but that is what is going to happen. I brought this to the attention of Senator Doherty when she was Minister for social protection and I must say that the Government is turning a blind eye to it. However, it is going to be more common as we face into the unknown of what is going to happen after this virus is hopefully beaten when we get the vaccine. It is a very distressing thing for businesspeople who must face into this where they plead inability to pay, where they sell their businesses to pay for redundancies and it may not be enough, and then they face the possibility that their family home will eventually being taken to pay for the redundancies. I hope the Minister of State will take that on board.I hope the Minister of State will take that on board because, eventually, some of those people may end up having to go to nursing homes. There will be problems between the Revenue Commissioners and social welfare which will look for their money back. We will have the person going to a nursing home and the problem with the fair deal scheme. It will, therefore, cause problems as we go forward. If I bring forward the Private Members' Bill, I hope I get a bit of backing from the Government.

In any event, I wish the Minister of State well. The Government has done a magnificent job on keeping the country open, and as previous speakers have said, I hope businesses will be up and running from 1 December because we need that for people's sanity. We need to get back to some form of life where people can go about and do their business, whether that is business or relaxation or whatever. I wish the Minister of State well.