Is Covid pay set to be slashed?

Minister admits some being paid €350 get more now than when they worked

NO decision has been made over whether the €350-a-week Pandemic Unemployment Payment will be cut when it continues beyond its scheduled expiry date of June 8.

The Government said it will be extended beyond the deadline but hasn’t committed to keeping the same rate.

Some 579,000 people are due to receive the social welfare payment this week

Yesterday, Minister for Business Heather Humphreys admitted a flaw in the Government-approved payment, saying it isn’t ‘fair’ that some are earning more on the payment than they were when they were working. A report for the Department of Business from last week found that 38% of people on the PUP were earning below €300 while they were working before the crisis, and that this ‘disincentivised’ them to go back to work.

Fine Gael TD Ms Humphreys warned that with PUP being extended beyond June, a number of changes will be made to deal with ‘anomalies’. She told RTÉ’s Morning Ireland: ‘We haven’t made a final decision [on the value of the payment being reduced to €203], and we want the PUP to continue, obviously, for those people that are still off work due to the pandemic.

‘In terms of the anomalies, we certainly have to address those.’

She said that employers are finding it difficult to recruit people back to work as some are earning more from the €350 weekly payment. ‘It’s not fair and not sustainable that some people are earning more than before they were off work,’ Ms Humphreys said. ‘However, when the PUP was introduced it was an urgent response to an unprecedented emergency and the payments provided families with immediate assistance following the overnight loss of hundreds of thousands of incomes.’

Fianna Fáil spokesman on public expenditure and reform Barry Cowen backed Fine Gael’s stance of ‘tapering’ the payments and ending the ‘anomalies’, but called on the Government for transparency in telling the public what the plans are.

Green Party leader Eamon Ryan, also warned that the payments will have to be adjusted as the country looks to balance the budget.

Meanwhile, Labour, Social Democrats, Sinn Féin and Solidarity-People Before Profit TDs hit out at Fine Gael’s proposal to ‘address anomalies’ and potentially cut the value of the payment. Catherine Murphy, coleader of the Social Democrats, urged that the payment remain in place until the final phase of lifting restrictions on August 10.

Labour social protection spokesman Ged Nash said: ‘Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are prepared to cut the payment for some workers but they haven’t told us the full details of their plan. It would be wrong for them to cut the basic income of thousands of workers who are out of work through no fault of their own.’

The number of people claiming the PUP is expected to fall by around 35,600 as thousands of people returned to work in the last week.