Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment Dail Éireann — 2021-07-01 ============================================================ Heather Humphreys (FG), Cavan-Monaghan I agree with the Deputy. There have been many anecdotal reports in the media about people staying on PUP and not returning to work, which we have all heard. The fact is that the numbers on the PUP fell by a quarter of a million since February. This clearly tells me that people want to get back to work as their sectors reopen and do not want to be sitting at home. I am strongly of this view. For people who are going back to work and may only have three days per week, they can apply under the short-time work scheme and receive jobseeker's payment in respect of the days that they do not work. If a person, for example, works for less than 24 hours per week he or she can receive support under the part-time job incentive scheme. A number of options are available to people and the best thing I would say to people is to engage with their local Intreo office to see what supports are there and what alternatives can be looked at. --- 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/2021-07-01/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:28+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-07-01