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THE TÁNAISTE EXPECTS that the number of people receiving the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) will fall to a third of its current level by the end of this year.
Last week, 334,000 people received the payment, amounting to €102 million.
Leo Varadkar said tonight that the government forecasts that figure to drop to around 100,000 to 130,000 by the end of 2021.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Prime Time, Varadkar said: “We anticipate that by the end of the year, the number of people who are still on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment might be somewhere in the region of 100,000 to 130,000.”
The PUP is closing to new applications from July and being phased out through reductions in the value of the payment from September.
It is due to be abolished in February 2022 under the government’s economic recovery plan announced earlier today.
“At that point, it’ll have been in place for nearly two years,” Varadkar said.
“I was the one who created the Pandemic Unemployment Payment as Taoiseach and we thought at that time it would only be there for 12 weeks, and now it’s more like two years,” he said.
“I expect the vast majority of people who are now in receipt of the pandemic unemployment payments to either have returned to their own jobs or to have found new ones. Perhaps I’m overconfident but I honestly believe this.”
Varadkar said that “in July, we’re going to see the return of aviation and international tourism and with every adult fully vaccinated by September, I think that wedding band will be playing again”.
“I think the vast, vast majority of people currently on the payment will be back by September, and an even larger number – perhaps not all, but not far off that by February,” he said.
The government expects to “take off like a rocket” if people begin to spend money that was saved while industries were closed.
However, Sinn Féin finance spokesperson Pearse Doherty said there are “huge deficiences” in the economic recovery plan announced by the government today, including the decision to phase out the PUP.
“This isn’t the first attempt by this government to cut PUP. They cut PUP back in September last year, they cut it from €350 down to €300 and we forced them to reverse it,” Doherty said.
“They tried to cut it again in January and in March and in April, and we forced them to reverse it. And now what they’re doing is pulling the rug out from under people who are restricted from going back to work as a result of government decisions, and who will continue to be restricted,” he said.
“I believe that you’re going to see tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people come off the PUP as restrictions [ease], and we all want these restrictions to be eased and lifted. so you’re going to see that naturally happen, but there are certain sectors and indeed the government acknowledges it their own facts, like aviation, like events, like hospitality, those type of sectors are going to still have restrictions in place.”
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The tanaiste forecasting 30% more job losses than the ERSI. 100-130 thousand less private sector workers contributing tax and instead in receipt of social welfare. Count on more deficit spending. Count on more debt. When will the government figure out we can’t all be civil servants or work for Facebook. Economic Armageddon awaits us
@inflation is coming… buy physical silver.: dont worry the sinn fein magic money tree will save us
@ed w: the FFG money tree many thought was magic and free the way everyone seem to have been able to access it certainly will take some beating. And by beating I mean paying back cos this along with the debts they heaped on us in bailouts and repaying everyone else’s debt, makes this a fun time for the next few generations as they will be saddled with it all…..Great times sure
@Michael Healy: shhh… Stop talking sense. The FFG voters don’t like dissent.
@inflation is coming… buy physical silver.: sorry my bad, its all SF fault sure I forgot
@Michael Healy: I would agree with the ridiculous debt the Government are taking on but one thing I have never heard is the opposition saying that the government need to cut these services and reduce borrowings, in fact the opposite is the case. It seems all political parties are happy to allow future generations to pay for the excesses of today.
@The next small thing: because if deficit spending was outlawed tomorrow all the political parties would be screwed. They depend on deficit spending to convince us to vote for them. The cheap money party will finish when inflation rises and interest rates must rise to control it. Problem is now that with huge debt rising interest rates mean more money for debt servicing and less for public services. A perfect storm awaits us
@The next small thing: I completely agree seems none of them were willing to speak out against the borrowing, the lengthy lockdown, the closing of certain sectors without real data to back it up, and also the reduction in health services for many which has seen warning lists explode to nearly 800k. They all are in this together to coin the leaky leo phrase in putting us in this financial kaka and sadly the people who cheered and supported the long lockdowns and assumed the free money we were accessing wasn’t going to be a big deal will soon figure out that it will be a very big problem for them and their children’s children…
@inflation is coming… buy physical silver.: yes if anything has become clear this last year, it’s how few people understand the basics of economics. We’re in a complete made-up bubble, take out Ewss & PUP and we’d have a better understanding of where we are, which wouldnt be pretty. Also this “free money” nonsense because its at minus interest. Yeah getting a million euro loan and only having to pay back 900,000 does equate to “free money”.
@John Egan: and the political class will use peoples ignorance as cover when they say “we never saw it coming”. And like all the times before the plebs will vote for more of the same. It will become very clear once the cohort with flexible interest rate mortgages start to get shafted. The penny will have dropped and it will be way way too late to do anything about it except create more debt which is all the Irish government is good at doing.
That’s assuming that there’s enough public confidence out there for people to spend in sectors that are just starting to reopen. We need to be careful and not assume any job losses from certain sectors can suddenly be picked up on mass from FDI’s and multinationals. We have to make sure small businesses are surviving through this, so they can keep people in jobs too. There needs to be a clear message sent now, that the country will not shutdown again unless its an absolute last resort.
Should it not be 0 as the country should be back open fully
@Jason Walsh: unfortunately the entertainment industry which employs a lot of people still hasn’t been given any timetable to reopen in regards to music in bars and restaurants….plus the fact we still have the covid powers in place till November, is still not giving the vote of confidence needed that we won’t see certain sectors being thrown under the covid if a small covid surge hits come autumn or winter
@Jason Walsh: 0 is the amount of civil servants affected by government restrictions.
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