Sandra McLellan (Cork East, Sinn Fein)
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459. To ask the Minister for Social Protection if she will review the current guidelines for entitlement to job-seeker's benefit in particular where a person must suffer a substantial loss of employment to be eligible ; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [27770/13]

Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour)
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Jobseeker's benefit is a weekly payment to people out of work and covered by social insurance (PRSI). If a person does not qualify for jobseeker’s benefit they may qualify for means tested jobseeker's allowance. In 2012 my Department spent some €737m on the scheme and at the end of 2012 there were some 85,000 persons in receipt of a jobseeker’s benefit payment.

The provisions governing the payment of PRSI contributions were changed from April 1991 by extending social insurance to cover part time workers. This change necessitated changes in the jobseeker’s benefit scheme. Under the then conditions a part time worker working 3 days per week would have become eligible for jobseeker’s benefit for the days of the week they are not working, even though no loss of employment had occurred. This would have resulted in their income from social welfare greatly exceeding income from employment – with a consequent diminution in the incentive to work.

In order to avoid this situation, the Social Welfare Act 1992 provided that it would not possible to work part-time and claim jobseeker's benefit unless there has been a reduction in the number of days normally worked each week. A person is regarded as having sustained a substantial loss of employment if s/he has lost at least one day of insurable employment in any period of 7 days, provided his/her reckonable earnings or reckonable income are also reduced as a consequence of the loss of employment. It may be noted that these provisions do not apply to the jobseeker’s allowance scheme.

There are no plans to change this qualifying condition of the jobseeker’s benefit scheme as this would have an adverse effect on the incentive to work and would have significant cost implications.