As I stated, the Government will not be found wanting. I thank the Deputies for their comments regarding the staff of the Department of Social Protection. I am very proud to head up and be Minister of that Department because what the staff have done has been amazing. It has been a monumental effort across the board by staff in every county. I offer my thanks to them because they are the ones who made sure people got their payment on time and when they needed it. It was not just the PUP; there is a plethora of other…

I thank the Deputy. I will pass on those thanks from the constituency of Dublin South-West. In 2019, my Department undertook a consultation process with a number of interested stakeholders to hear their views on possible approaches to indexation of pensions and social welfare rates more generally. This process included discussion with representatives of the community and voluntary sector at the pre-budget forum in July 2019, as well as at bilateral meetings with stakeholders. The outcome of these discussions was co…

In the two most recent budgets, while the primary rate of State pension payment did not change, a number of targeted measures aimed at older people mostly at risk of poverty were introduced. These included a €10 increase in the living alone allowance and increases in the rate of fuel allowance. In addition, legislation was passed to ensure that the State pension age remained at 66 years. That amounts to a cost of €221 million this year and in excess of €450 million in a full year. Designing a system of benchmarking…

As I have said, a possible approach to pensions indexation is under consideration. That uses what can be described as a smoothed earning system whereby the rate of pension would be linked, in the first instance, to a percentage of average earnings. In years when application of the benchmark rate is less than the rate of increases in prices, it would be linked to the rate of inflation. That system addresses the two key challenges faced in the indexation system. The first is that a benchmark link to just one measure,…

I will answer the first question and then come back to the Deputy on the second. The Deputy has two questions. The first question is on the number of people who have indicated their intention to withdraw from Covid-19 support payments. The pandemic unemployment payment has proven to be a vital income support to workers, thousands of whom lost their jobs virtually overnight. Since its introduction, over 23 million PUP payments have been made to in excess of 850,000 people, providing income support of more than €7.5 …

Sometimes there is an impression that people are not going back to work. As far as I am concerned, people want to go back to work. The quicker they can go back, the better. The sooner the restrictions are lifted, which is happening now, the better. There are many people who will only be too pleased to take up employment. The number of people in receipt of payments has come down. The sector with the highest number of people in receipt of PUP is the accommodation and food service activities sector, which has 98,000 c…

I have heard that a number of people are having difficulty getting people back to work but I believe the majority want to go back to work. There is a support line for employers if they need assistance with difficulties they might face in getting staff. We want to help people retrain, reskill and find the jobs that are out there. Some will not go back to their old jobs so we want to help them. There are job activation measures in place and I will deal with that in the coming weeks as the economy continues to open. O…

Retail opened yesterday, so I expect those numbers will reduce considerably over the coming weeks. One of the last sectors to open will be hospitality and accommodation so there will be a lead-in time for those numbers to come down. There are a number of sectors but we are happy to work with them all and we will do that across the board. Many young people have been impacted by Covid in terms of losing their jobs and we want to target those. We want to try and get people with disabilities back to work. We will have …

There are a number of sectors which have been impacted more than others. The music sector, for example, has not had an opportunity since last March, which is over a year. It has been particularly impacted. We hope the accommodation services, hotels, bed and breakfast accommodation and all those facilities will come back but it is hard to say. I reassure the Deputy we will do everything to support people working in those sectors and help them in any way we can. There will be no cliff-edge reduction in the pandemic u…

I do not have those figures to hand. I will ask my officials. I do not know if they are available. There were a number of people in different sectors who closed their pandemic unemployment payment for the week of 11 May. We had the highest number of closures in the construction sector, with 3,107 that week. The previous week we had 3,729. There is a gradual reduction in that sector and that is the highest reduction. All these figures are commensurate with the reopening of the economy and we will have a better and c…

The fuel allowance is a payment of €28 per week for 28 weeks, a total of €784 each year, from October to April, incorporating the coldest periods of the year. It goes to over 370,000 low-income households at an estimated cost of €300 million in 2021. The purpose of the payment is to provide a contribution towards the energy costs of a household; it is not intended to meet those costs in full. The criteria for fuel allowance are framed to direct the limited resources available to my Department in as targeted a manne…

Deputy Kerrane will acknowledge the fuel allowance was increased on 1 January up to €28 per week. That was an important step and it would have helped in some way to assist people in meeting their fuel bills. The living alone allowance for older people was also increased. The Deputy is aware an exception was made last year for the fuel allowance, given that it is for a particular time period. This year, when you couple the fact of the increase in the living alone allowance and the fuel allowance, those are important…

It is important to say also that a lot of supports are available through the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland to assist people, in particular older people, to carry out improvements to their houses, which includes insulation, and thereby reduce their heating costs. I take Deputy Stanton's point. The cost is not something that has been raised with me previously but I will certainly look at it.

I thank Deputy Kerrane for raising this matter. Maternity benefit is a statutory payment made for 26 weeks to employed and self-employed women who satisfy certain PRSI contribution conditions. The fundamental qualification criteria for maternity benefit are that a woman must be in insurable employment and entitled to statutory maternity leave or be in insurable self-employment. The applicant must also satisfy certain PRSI contribution conditions. EU social security co-ordination regulations include provisions to ca…

I take on board what Deputy Kerrane says. We have been trying to improve the supports available to parents. We have extended parental leave from two weeks to five weeks. That has been welcomed. It is a good support and it is something I would like to see us extending further. I am aware of the habitual residence clause that is in place. It can sometimes have unintended consequences in that when you start to change the criteria for one particular cohort, it could result in a considerable budgetary demand. However, I…

There are arrangements across the EU, as I said, and there is a bilateral arrangement with the UK. Many cases would traditionally have been dealt with in terms of contributions. The convention on social security between Ireland and the UK, which was put in place in response to the UK leaving the EU post-Brexit, provides for situations where workers have moved between Ireland and the UK. We signed that agreement so all of the benefits we had prior to the UK leaving the EU are still in place, which is very important.…

I move: THAT it is expedient to make provision for charging such fees as may be prescribed in regulations made by the Private Security Authority with the consent of the Minister for Justice in respect of licences to provide a security service under the new category of enforcement guard.

I welcome the debate in the House today and acknowledge all of the Deputies who have contributed, particularly those who have shared personal family stories. I also thank Deputy Funchion and Sinn Féin for bringing forward this Bill. We all recognise the background to the issues giving rise to this initiative. My colleague, the Minister, Deputy O’Gorman, has already set out the Government position, which I endorse. I add my own views given that responsibility for the General Register Office and Civil Registration Se…

I move amendment No. 1: To delete all words after “Dáil Éireann” and substitute the following: “notes that: — the Government is firmly committed to targeting supports to those who need them most and is also committed to combatting fuel poverty by a variety of measures and in supporting those on low incomes with their home heating costs through the Fuel Allowance scheme and other supports; — the Government is constantly monitoring the supports it provides during this Covid-19 pandemic; — the budget for the Supplemen…

Thank you for your good wishes, a Leas-Chathaoirligh. I welcome the opportunity to address the Seanad on Covid-19 matters and look forward to hearing the views of Members. Nobody has a monopoly on good ideas and as Minister for Social Protection I am always open to hearing and considering how we can do things better. Since the onset of this crisis, the Government has taken a range of measures to protect public health and limit the spread of the virus and has also put in place a range of income supports that mitigat…