The first thing I have to say to the Deputy, and I hope I do not sound disrespectful when I say this, is that the Estimates are not fictitious. They are based on our guesstimate as to what the outturn of all of the topics within the Vote will be. While there is the elephant in the room of the one payment, it is unfair to call them fictitious. This is what we do every year. We do not get the Estimates exactly right, but I think we get them nearly right every year and we try to do our best again this year. However, I…

I acknowledge that the Estimates are historic, if that is the way the Deputy wants to put it, but I hope he understands that I cannot bring forward Estimates on the basis of decisions that have not yet been made. I must put on the record of the House that the presentation of the Estimates today in no way ties the hands of the next Government or restricts its ability to make any changes in how we spend. I expect that we will have a need for another Estimate, probably at some point in the early autumn. This is not a …

On the Covid-19 money, I totally agree with the Deputy. I know that the narrative is growing and I wish to God it was not, but every single euro will be spent in our economy, whether it is by an 18 year old, a 28 year old or a 38 year old, exactly in the manner he described. It is very welcome and very needed. I do not know who is leaking to any of our newspapers but it is certainly not me. Whoever is leaking is wrong because, although I will not be the Minister for much longer, I would challenge any Minister after…

I am not sure that there were any direct questions. I disagree with Deputy Barry when he says that an outcry regarding the original pandemic payment led to the changes we made the following week. I do not think that is true, given that I was at the table. I will bring the Deputy back to 13 March when we introduced the illness Covid payment of €350 per week and allocated some €3.5 billion to it in the expectation that people were going to have to leave work because they would either be ill or potentially be a source…

To answer the direct questions the Deputy asked, I am not sure it is accurate to say that only 1% of our pensioners get a Christmas bonus; they all do.

That is not the case. There are 585,000 pensioners in the country and we pay weekly payments to approximately 1.2 million. Either way, I will come back to the Deputy with a written answer on that, if that is okay. The next three things that the Deputy asked about, with the exception of the question of arrears, might be nice asks but the reason I have to say "No" is because they all require changes in legislation and unfortunately, not only do I not have the ability to draft legislation at present, I do not believe …

I refer to the difficulty with regard to the people that the Deputy thinks have been excluded. I will deal with them separately, if that is okay. Seasonal workers are not excluded from the social welfare code. They are all actively either on jobseeker's benefit, JB, or jobseeker's allowance, JA, with all of the wealth of support payments surrounding that. They are not being abandoned or left behind. With regard to the over 66s who are self-employed, we were adamant that they were included in the temporary wage subs…

I thank the Deputy for acknowledging the confirmation we gave this morning that the Covid payment will extend well beyond its original end date, which was 9 June. There is real merit in making adaptations to the back to work enterprise allowance scheme but that would require legislation. The Deputy will probably be part of the next Government and I encourage whoever is privileged to be in my position to look at that. The Finglas centre and other wonderful organisations around the country are going to require extra …

First, the Deputy raised the anomaly that exists for people returning from maternity leave to the wage subsidy scheme. From what I can gather, and I only heard it at the same time as the Deputy when the Minister for Finance said it in the last session, the Minister is bringing a memorandum to the Cabinet tomorrow. The issue has been resolved and the announcement of how it is to be resolved will be made after agreement has been reached in the Cabinet. With regard to the arrears, as I said this morning it involves in…

I could not.

That is no problem. I was asked why we established the pandemic payment in the way we did. The pandemic legislation is based on unemployment legislation that is currently the law of the land. The EU regulations are the regulations of the European Union. These determined the age categories between the ages of 18 and 66 to which we could pay the Covid-19 PUP. The EU regulations govern our treatment of frontier workers. Under the current EU rules, the member state of residence is the member state responsible for the p…

Absolutely.

I will begin by responding to Deputy Ellis, although there was not really a question. When he expresses concern that Ministers are making decisions, he is obviously referring to me, in particular, as an unelected Minister. I do not make decisions. The Cabinet makes decisions and, thankfully, it is a collective responsibility. I hope the decisions we have made in recent months have been in the best interest of the good public health of our citizens, including through the financial supports we have provided. That is …

I beg the Deputy's pardon. I had not seen it in my notes. We have worked very hard in recent months to work with the Debenhams workers to support them in seeing what is available from our offices. The workers can, of course, all avail of the Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment right now for as long as it exists. As I have already said, that will be well after the original end date of June. They will be entitled to the plethora of supports from the social welfare system, which includes retraining and re-engaging …

As the Deputy heard earlier from the Minister for Finance and Public Expenditure and Reform, he will bring a memorandum to Cabinet tomorrow and that wage subsidy anomaly will be resolved. As regards maternity benefit, I do not know how many women are involved, but a number of women whose maternity benefit had finished came to us and we in the Department sanctioned them for the Covid payment because they could follow up the declaration that their income had fallen away because of Covid as they were not able to go ba…

I agree that this set-up is weird, but life is a bit weird at the moment. I would be grateful if this were the least of our worries. I am not in negotiations with the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government over rent supplement and HAP because we were asked to respond to need. We took a 28-page application form, which requires large volumes of information, and revised it to a four-page form. We also changed the means test and some of the conditionality to reflect the new, hopefully temporary, world we …

I was not saying that we are not increasing supports and money for rent supplement because we absolutely are. Today's Revised Estimates see that figure go up to €70 million. However, it is not our job to take over if the local authorities around the country are not providing HAP because they also have a job to do. HAP was going up and rent supplement was coming down and we are only stepping into the breach now because hundreds of thousands of people have found themselves stuck for the past couple of months and we w…

There is absolutely no passing of the parcel. Last week, I told the Deputy the truth, that is, that the legislation is equality legislation. If the Deputy does not take my word for it, which seems to be common practice every time we have an interaction, she only has to Google the legislation to see it is the responsibility of the Department of Justice and Equality. I will outline where the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection kicks in. Those who have the contributions qualify for the benefit for t…

The Deputy clearly does not believe what I am saying to her so I ask her to Google the legislation. On doing so, she will see it is the responsibility of the Department of Justice and Equality. There was legislation passed in March by both Houses, but that was when we had a Seanad. Right now, we do not have one. I am not sure how the Deputy suggests we could proceed without one even if there were a collective will to change the legislation. That is the difficulty; I am not making the difficulty.

Estimates are estimates of what we are going to spend. These are no different from the Supplementary Estimate presented this time last year or the qualified substantive Estimate at the beginning of that year. This is exactly the same. It is just unfortunate that it was not done in December. Had it been done in December, however, it would not have included the €6.5 billion we have paid out to 1.2 million citizens over recent weeks through the temporary wage subsidy, the Covid payment and the Covid illness-----