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

I do not accept this amendment either. For people who may be better off on a payment based on household composition, the means-tested jobseeker's allowance will remain available to them. The nature of pay-related payment is that it is linked to the earnings from employment rather than the household composition. They have the option to go for the jobseeker's allowance instead.

I am listening to different scenarios here but in the Department of Social Protection, in the first instance, we are here to help people. We help people every single day. The staff of the Department are trained and we have personal employment advisers. They work in Intreo offices with jobseekers to develop individualised personal progression plans that will identify the steps they can take to obtain or retain suitable employment. We are applying here what we do in jobseeker's benefit to jobseeker's pay-related benefit. The exact same rules and the exact same situations have been transposed into this legislation. We will continue to work with people and we are at a point here where we have very low unemployment at the moment and many people who are laid off are, thankfully, able to get suitable employment. Where they cannot do that, we want to help them. We want to help them to retrain, reskill and to progress their education if those are the choices they make. Those are the facts and that is what we are trying to do.

If people have serious problems regarding the social welfare protection system and do not think that they are being treated fairly, I ask that this be brought to my attention. Give me the exact examples and I will be happy to raise them and to check them out.