Covid-19 (Employment Affairs and Social Protection): Statements
Dail Éireann — 2020-05-20
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Regina Doherty

There is no problem. The Covid-19 unemployment payment is payable to people resident in Ireland who lose their employment as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. European Union citizens have the right to live and work in any European Union country and cross-border workers, termed as frontier workers, arise where people work on one side of a border but live on the other and return home at least once per week. The position regarding frontier workers is that the pandemic unemployment payment is consistent with the rules of jobseeker's benefit regarding the competent state. Under the current European Union rules, the member state of the resident is competent for the payment of unemployment benefits in the case of wholly unemployed frontier workers. This means the competent state for a person living in Northern Ireland and working in the Republic of Ireland who becomes wholly unemployed is Northern Ireland and that person is not eligible for the pandemic unemployment payment.
However, it is important to note that, recognising it was probably not going to be easy to bear for those people, we ensured that the wage subsidy scheme was introduced a week or ten days after the PUP, not only to maintain the links between employers and employees, but to take account of other people. Deputies have referred to those who have been excluded because of the law relating to the payment. The wage subsidy scheme was set up to try to compensate people and alleviate any concern caused by that situation.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2020-05-20/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:48:18+00:00
Sitting date: 2020-05-20