Billy Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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584. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection when a general scheme of a Bill to extending social protection supports to the self-employed will be published; and will she make a statement on the matter. [24849/19]

Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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The General Scheme of the Social Welfare Bill, 2019 which provides for the introduction of a new social insurance benefit scheme, to be known as Jobseeker's Benefit (self-employed), which will support those who lose their self-employment and are covered by social insurance, was published at the end of April and can be found on my Department's website at this .

Since then, my Department has been working closely with the Office of the Parliamentary Counsel to draft the Bill. This work is now very well-advanced and I expect to be in a position to bring the text of the Bill to Government in the coming weeks to secure approval for its publication and early introduction to the Dail. It is my intention that the new scheme will come into operation in November of this year.

The introduction of this new scheme, which aims to provide an income safety net to people setting up or running their own businesses, represents the latest step in the Government's work to extend PRSI benefits to the self-employed. It follows on the extension of the Treatment Benefits scheme and the Invalidity Pension scheme to the self-employed in recent years.