Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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10. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection the steps she is taking to increase part-time employment participation levels among those in receipt of jobseekers payments from her Department; and if she will make a statement on the matter. [37489/24]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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This question has come up consistently at our Oireachtas committee from people who are involved in the caring profession such as home support workers, home helps and staff such as those. They find it very difficult to get staff to take on these roles and the social welfare rules, where someone can only work for up to three days per week, acts as a barrier.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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My Department delivers a range of supports to help people in receipt of a jobseekers payment to secure and sustain full-time employment. The Intreo employment service works with jobseekers on an individualised basis to identify skills, work experience and work preferences with a view to matching people to suitable job opportunities and to address skills gaps or training needs by referring jobseekers to suitable education and training opportunities or to employment schemes like the work placement experience programme or the community employment scheme. Engagement with Intreo is mandatory for these jobseekers.

Part-time employment is supported through a number of schemes, including casual and systematic short-time work arrangements for people on a jobseeker's payment. A person in receipt of a jobseeker's benefit or allowance payment can work up to three days per week, where he or she is fully unemployed for at least four in any seven consecutive days.

The part-time job incentive scheme is available to people who are long-term unemployed to allow them to take up part-time employment for less than 24 hours per week and receive a weekly income supplement. Participants are expected to continue to make efforts to find full-time work.

In addition, the working family payment provides an income top-up to employees with dependent children on low earnings who work for a minimum of 38 hours per fortnight, or 19 hours per week. While Intreo aims to support jobseekers to secure full-time employment, in the absence of this part-time employment can be a stepping stone on the pathway to full-time employment. I trust this clarifies the matter for the Deputy.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The problem is that this concept of working three days per week comes from when I was in short pants. The reality is someone can work up to 24 hours per week and still receive a social welfare payment if he or she does it over three days. However, if someone works two hours per day as a home help for five days per week, he or she cannot get it. The difficulty is that if he or she is working less than 19 hours per week, they are not entitled to the family income supplement either and so are caught on both sides.

These are false barriers to encouraging people back into the workforce, to increasing their hours in work and, it is hoped, to ultimately getting full-time work. We are in an economy where we have full employment. Is it not about time we started to count the number of hours rather than number of days that people work?

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy mentioned the case of people who want to do home help work for two or three hours per morning five days per week as opposed to working for three full days. This issue has been raised with me by these organisations as well. The aim is to get people into full-time work, not to subsidise employers because that could have unintended consequences.

There are more people working than ever before and the Deputy acknowledged that. Unemployment has never been lower and we continue to look at all of the different supports to try to get people back into work. There have been a number of different schemes. There was the pilot scheme to extend community employment eligibility to qualified adults. That commenced in 2023 and has now been rolled out right across the country. The aim is to bring more people who are currently unemployed, but dependent on welfare payments, into the workforce. The process will advise and open up opportunities for individuals to participate in community employment schemes, providing the qualified adults with valuable work experience, and that particularly applies to women. I will come back in again if I am over time.

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The fact is that under the social welfare code as it stands a person can work for eight hours per day, three days per week - that is, 24 hours of work - and still receive a social welfare support under the jobseeker's payment. However, a person cannot work for four hours per day, five days per week. He or she is denied it even though they are working four hours fewer per week as a result of that. This model was designed in an era of full-time employment. We have an awful lot more people who are working flexible hours or part of the week and the whole culture of employment has changed. The whole social welfare code should reflect that and that flexibility should be built into it.

Heather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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I have considered this issue but I do not want to be in the position where we are subsidising employers to give people fewer hours either. I want to be conscious of that and we have looked at many different ways to incentivise people to get back to full-time work because that is where we want them. I know this is an issue and it is certainly something we have looked at. I will look at it again but it applies to women in particular who want to do a few hours of work in the mornings before the children come home from school. It is as simple as that.

However, again, this particularly applies to women who want to do a few hours in the morning before their children come home from school. It is as simple as that.