Garret Ahearn (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the changes the Minister, Deputy Heather Humphreys, is making in respect of jobseeker’s benefit for people who are working to be on a sliding scale in terms of when they lose their job. They will not just go straight onto €220 a week. The job they have is taken into account. The changes that happen for someone who suddenly loses their job and the expenses they have is taken into account for a period of six months. That is extremely welcome. However, I ask that we include people who are undergoing cancer treatment and might be out of work for a period of time. I ask that they be on that sliding scale, as opposed to being on illness benefit of €220. They have the exact same challenges, if not more, than those who lose their job. We are bringing in this really good change in payment for people who are newly unemployed. It would be a shame if we are unintentionally leaving out individuals who are going through cancer treatment.

I always talk about road projects. We need to look long term at people who travel from Munster to Dublin and Northern Ireland. As we all know, for long parts of the day, the M50 is like a car park. I was talking to a colleague of mine, Councillor Peter Doyle, at the weekend in Limerick. He suggested we should look at something like a longer ring road around Dublin, perhaps from Naas to Ashbourne, that would alleviate an awful lot of traffic. The M50 will only get worse, and we should have a long-term view of what can be done. This would make it much easier for people in Munster to travel to Belfast, it would increase tourism from the north to the south of the entire country, and it is something we should look at going forward.