Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

Section 3 deals with the amendment of provisions of the principal Act relevant to employment contributions. Our group submitted a lengthy submission to the public consultation on a pay-related benefit scheme for jobseekers. Our submission related to the paper that was floated setting out the proposals that are now in the Bill. We highlighted that employer PRSI contributions in Ireland are well below the European average of more than 20%. We proposed that employer PRSI should be the first target for increases in reforms to bring it in line with the EU average. We argued that additional revenue raised from this increase should be directed towards broad increases in the levels of all social protection payments rather than being simply earmarked for a particular purpose.

This is one of the key points. Our system, in essence, is a redistributive system, with people contributing according to their means. The additional revenue raised from the increase in PRSI should be directed to all those parts of the social safety net that make up our social protection system, including payments for disability, payments for those parenting alone, payments that support working families and payments for those who are bereaved. All of those social protection payments should benefit from the revenue increase.It is also not reasonable that low-income workers, as is currently provided for in the Bill, would see their employee PRSI rise. We believe those rates should remain at 4% and, as I said, the focus should instead be on strengthening the contributions of employers’ PRSI in a way that is directed to the whole picture of social protection payments of the State.