Richard Boyd Barrett warns of planned cuts to pandemic payment

You have sought to assure people that there is no plan to cut the pandemic payment and we heard similar assurances from the Taoiseach yesterday. Can I say why people have reason to be distrustful of those assurances? First of all, it's worth remembering that the original proposal from the government for support for people who lost their jobs and income was for 203 euro. And it was only because of an outcry about how unacceptable that was that the government was forced to backtrack and increase it to 350. Secondly, we have had an unmistakable narrative from both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael over the last week, which they seem to be pulling back from now, suggesting that there was some problem with the fact that people might have been earning less than 350 when they were working before COVID, were now shockingly getting 350, when that should actually be a cause for celebration because of course, what that highlighted was the scandal of the working poor, which is particularly acute in this country where we have one of the highest levels of people who are poor but working in the OECD. There is also the fact, to add to this distrust, that numbers of cohorts of people who should have got the income support were denied despite appeals from this side of the house and from those groups. People under 18 who were working before, in many cases where that income would have been very important for those family households, denied the payment unjustifiably. People who were over 66 denied the payment, even though they're working. You know what taxi drivers are out on the road at the moment? Most of them are staying at home, the over 66s, because they're not getting the 350 payment and they're the most vulnerable cohort of those taxi drivers from a health point of view. But they're out working because they were denied the 350 payment. People in the gig economy, who simply were not working on the day specified that you had to be working to get the COVID payment, but who might have had a gig the next week or a festival or a theatre performance or whatever, denied it unjustifiably. The Taoiseach said yesterday, shouldn't be two classes of benefits. There's two classes of benefits. Do something about it. We asked you to do something about it. You did nothing about it. So why don't we trust you? And of course, there's the estimates themselves. Page 12 of the briefing we received yesterday. Point four. It should be noted that additional expenditures were provided to fund job seekers' payments, also reflecting exits from the PUP in June. Okay, so it's there. The plan is to exit people from the pandemic payment in June. It says it in the briefing we got yesterday. Page 12. I refer anybody to it. And the Taoiseach, when I asked him, for example, about Lisa from Debenhams, who was earning prior to her getting sacked and prior to COVID by Debenhams, who dumped her on the scrap heap, who's worked every single day of her life since the age of 16, has never been on a social welfare payment, and was earning marginally less than £3.50, but whose overtime would bring her slightly over it sometimes, she could have it cut. She could have it cut, even though she's been applying for jobs every day since she got sacked by Debenhams. And the Taoiseach said, Well, we're not planning to do it immediately, but it was all not yet qualified. So I don't trust the government's assurances. And what I would say is this. If your assurances are for real, if you really care about the people who have been impacted, and in many cases for the foreseeable future, I've highlighted them on a number of occasions, the taxi drivers, the workers in the gig economy, people in episodic work, people in retail, people in hospitality and tourism, say you will not touch the COVID payment until those sectors and their representatives come into this house, as I have asked for a special committee to deal with those groups beyond the COVID committee. Let them come in here and state their case before there's any changes to the pandemic payment cuts or tapering, which are clearly planned as the estimate sets out. And finally, let me respond to the Taoiseach's sort of, what's the word, taunting yesterday, where he said, Oh, you want everybody to earn the same. Now, I'll tell you what we want, Minister. What we want is nobody to live in poverty. We also want to end a situation where some people earn 10 and 15 times what other people earn. A little bit more equality. Because we're all in it together. We're all in it together. Let's make that meaningful. Not just for the emergency when you need people to protect public health, but make it a reality in a future society.