Róisín Shortall (Dublin North West, Social Democrats)
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266. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection if she will amend the social welfare eligibility rules in order that work is calculated on a cumulative hours basis rather than days, particularly given the impact the current binary system is having on home care staffing; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [5804/23]

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Government is conscious of the recruitment and retention challenges in the home and community care sector and is supportive of properly informed measures to increase capacity in the sector.  Towards this end, it established a Strategic Workforce Advisory Group to look at the labour force challenges facing providers of home-care services.  The Group’s Report was published in October 2022 following extensive consultation and found a range of issues impacting on the shortages in home carers and nursing home healthcare assistants, including the need for improvements in recruitment processes, pay and conditions of employment, training and career prospects, and wider sectoral reform.  

My Department supports part-time working through a number of schemes, including casual and systematic short-time work arrangements for people on jobseeker payments.  In addition, the Department provides the Working Family Payment for working families on low incomes, which is not based on days worked.  However, in providing these supports, we also need to be careful not to allow the social welfare system to be used to subsidise unsustainable employment practices. 

In line with Programme for Government Commitments, I have recently launched a Strawman proposal for public consultation in relation to a new Pay-Related Jobseeker's Benefit payment and, in doing do, set out the parameters of a new proposed Working Age Payment.  Rather than using hours or days worked thresholds, this proposed payment would utilise Revenue Commissioner real time earnings data to adjust payment levels in line with a person’s weekly earnings.  In this way it would guarantee a basic income floor and ensure that in all cases a person’s income increases when they work.  This would represent a significant change and would address any issue whereby the use of days or hours worked thresholds complicate individual decisions at the margin. 

I trust that clarifies the position for the Deputy.