Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As Deputy Ó Laoghaire said, we have for a long time been in support of a pay-related jobseeker's benefit and the idea of payments being made on the basis of money earned. In fairness, we will support this general idea. It was highlighted in respect of Tara Mines. Deputy Ó Laoghaire spoke about how many people fell into really difficult circumstances owing to the financial crash. Their personal finances crashed in a major way, putting them under severe pressure regarding other costs, including general costs, childcare costs and mortgages. We know we need to ensure we can provide people with an absolutely necessary helping hand, as it has been called. As Deputy Ó Laoghaire said, unfortunately the twinning of the proposed benefit with the PRSI increases is not beneficial at this point, particularly when dealing with a cost-of-living crisis. The Minister, like all of us here, is out knocking on doors at the minute, so I have no doubt that she is hearing about the various issues people are facing, be it the increases in fuel prices or regular running costs. That is long before we talk about our housing and accommodation crisis, the cost of housing and the cost of rent. We all deal with people who are only too delighted with rents and payments that are absolutely through the roof. On daft.ie or any such site, there are not very many places to rent in the likes of Dundalk or any other town in Ireland. That is the reality we are dealing with.

We absolutely support the linking of jobseeker payments to the percentage of previous earnings. We must examine the wider issue of job activation. When talking about social insurance and trying to capture people, we must consider best practice. I understand the current state of the economy, that we have what at times is called full employment and that we have employers that give out because they cannot get enough staff, particularly in certain sectors. Even this week, I learned from dealing with the Minister for Transport that we do not have a sufficient number of bus drivers or mechanics, which creates its own issues in the public transport system. We need to examine this.

We know about the various issues that arise with local employment services. Many talk about privatisation and say certain entities involved in job activation have always aimed at the low-hanging fruit. There is work to be done in this regard, which is sometimes done by our local employment services, to deal with harder-to-reach communities and individuals. We have a wider piece of work to do to ensure people caught in the poverty trap can be facilitated in returning to employment.

Sometimes the way we deal with these things, involving a lowest-cost tender, does not always work for the State. Everybody understands one example of this that is featuring at the minute. We would all have been happier had the national children's hospital been tendered on the basis of something more than the lowest cost.

That is a matter for another day, and perhaps, unfortunately, for many other days as we wait for it to be built.

We need to look at the entire system. We are talking about trying to protect people and ensuring we can provide. We want a minimum essential standard of living and beyond that, we want to be able to facilitate people into education and the workforce, and provide them with supports. Many of us know that at times people can face a cliff edge. To do this properly, it is not just about social protection payments but also relates to medical cards. We all deal with issues and everyone has a story about their mother or grandmother who was on a medical card when they were going through cancer treatment and saw their support cut off. In those circumstances, people come to their local elected representatives, including some of us here. At times, we would go to the Minister and get the issue resolved. However, it is a bad system and we must introduce proper universal healthcare and ensure we are providing a service to everybody. We sometimes hear gripes from people who think they pay for everything but get nothing. That is a failure of the system across the board. We need to ensure there are protections for people who lose work and that those protections give them what is necessary. We must also facilitate people into lifelong education because education now looks different from what it looked like when I was in college and school. Between courses through the post leaving certificate, PLC, programme and apprenticeships in different fields, there are multiple means for one to get to where one needs to go. However, a considerable number of people are still locked out due to poverty and the circumstances into which they are born. We need to facilitate that change, and there has been a mass failure in that regard.

We must provide those supports and facilitate people into the workforce and education, and get them out of poverty. A major contributing factor in that regard is the housing crisis. Some people would not be able to afford housing in any way, shape or form without access to the housing assistance payment, HAP. Some people are lucky enough to be eligible for HAP and if their circumstances change, they will be okay and can stay on the housing list, which is beneficial. People at certain times and in certain places are faced with very bad choices and we need to ensure they do not face that cliff edge. We have always said that we do not need the auction politics that can happen in respect of social protection payments across the board. We need to ensure payments are index linked.

I previously spoke to the Minister about some of the teething problems for the hubs. We had a number of such cases which, in fairness, the Minister dealt with. In some cases, information had been lost, which had slowed applications. My office has an issue about the length of time that some of the appeals are taking. I will send the relevant information to the Minister later but I know of a number of cases in which appeals have been outstanding since December and January. That is far too long to wait.

As I said earlier, we all welcome the direction indicated by the legislation because it helps people and offers pay-related jobseeker's benefit. However, we cannot support the Bill on the basis of the PRSI increases. That issue needs to be revisited.

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