Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment
Dail Éireann — 2020-07-29
============================================================

Claire Kerrane (SF), Roscommon-Galway

I specifically referred to the self-employed in my question. I would appreciate it if the Minister could give me a figure on the number of self-employed people who will see a reduction when these rates change. I know from a reply to a previous parliamentary question I asked that approximately 15,000 self-employed people had their payment reduced from the €350 to the €203 when the first change was introduced. An issue I raised with the Minister yesterday and I raise again now is that the rate the self-employed are being paid on the pandemic unemployment payment is based on their 2018 tax returns. I again ask her if she will allow the self-employed to make a self-declaration to Revenue on their 2019 income to try to reflect better their actual income and ensure they do not lose out. I was also contacted by somebody the other day who works part-time and is self-employed. That person's payment has been reduced to €203 and the only thing the Department is taking into account is their part-time employment, yet most of their income comes from the self-employed work. Where people are working part-time and are self-employed, can both be taken into account?

---

Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-07-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-07-29