Social Welfare (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2024: Committee and Remaining Stages
Seanad Éireann — 2024-07-09
============================================================

Alice-Mary Higgins (IND), National University of Ireland

It is important that we be really clear that there is a shift in how things are done. The phrase “genuinely seeking work” was used. Recipients used to have to show they were genuinely seeking work and had to bring three or four letters showing they had actually applied for work. That is a reasonable bar and most people would be very happy to comply with it. I imagine that many people who would benefit from the scheme would be, but that is not the bar that is being put in place. It is not about offering support because, as is really clear, the language is deeply prescriptive. There are problems. We mentioned that JobPath is gone. It is gone because you could not call it JobPath anymore because it was so poor and unsuccessful. The exact same thinking applied. One of the most infamous aspects of JobPath, personal progression plans, remains in this Bill, and the same structures are in it. Again, it is not simply that you have to have engaged, which would represent a reasonable bar, but that you must agree with a prescribed course, job, work or work experience. Effectively, if an official sitting opposite you states you need to work down the road, it does not count if you say you actually have a different plan, perhaps a long-term thing to speak at a certain conference where you hope to meet people and get a job from it, or whatever else you might do. You could lose your payment if you do not agree to anything “which is prescribed” for you, not agreed with you.

---

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/seanad/2024-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:53:11+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-07-09