Doherty expecting 1,000,000 people will be supported by Covid-19 payment schemes

Ireland will come through the Easter Bank Hoiliday weekend with close to 1,000,000 people being supported by emergency Covid-19 payments.
That was the stark revelation from Minister for Employment and Social Protection, Regina Doherty, who said it was highly likely that the payment schemes put in place for workers would need to be extended or adapted as the scale of the pandemic impacts the country's economy.

The Minister said that the €350 weekly Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment as well as the Employee Wage Subsidy Scheme - where the State pays 70% of an employee's wages - had been established for a 12-week period but given the uncertainty around the spread and containment of the virus, that timescale would need to come under review.

Ms Doherty was speaking to the Meath Chronicle on Good Friday, just hours before Taoiseach Leo Varadkar outlined an extension to restrictions on public movement as well the postponement of the Leaving Certificate until late July and the cancellation of the Junior Certificate. 

"In the first week (of the crisis) we were looking at maybe 100,000 to 150,000 people potentially losing their job, three or four days later at a press conference I said that we were modelling for 400,000 people and I got my hand slapped and then sure by the end of that week we were heading for 700,000 and at the end of this week (Good Friday) we will be at 1,000,000," revealed Minister Doherty. 

"We close off our books on a Friday and I think by close of play we will be supporting close to 1,000,000 people through the Covid-19 payments and the employee subsidy schemes."

The Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection has been singled out for praise in many quarters for taking decisive action during the crisis in managing the avalanche of welfare applications of tens of thousands of people since the middle of March.

Minister Doherty said the DEASP had needed to draft in personnel from other departments to help with the volume of work and praised the team for "stepping up to the plate" to help people through the crisis.

"We brought in people from the Department of Tourism and from the Passport office, anybody with spare time because they weren't doing something that was absolutely crucial. We had a couple of days where we were getting 10,000 phone calls and maybe 3,000 of them were not being answered. 

"By Tuesday of this week we had some 507,000 people receiving a payment. I think we had pretty much ironed out everything, not that it was ever going to perfect given it was created so quickly.

Having lost her Meath East seat in February's general election, the Minister had declared she was exploring new challenges away from politics. Circumstances see her now playing a pivotal role in Government in the midst of an unprecedented health and economic emergency.

Having lost her Dail seat back in the general election in February, she acknowledges that responsibility will fall to someone else if government formation talks are successful in the coming days.

"We picked 12 weeks (duration for the emergency payment schemes) on the basis of the projections coming from the medical experts at the time as to when the peak would come and fall again. But that picture is changing on a weekly basis and we are preparing contingency plans for when we do restart the economy. 
"There won't be a button pushed and we're off again in whatever month, it won't happen like that. We'll do it step by step and the 12 weeks may be longer and that will be agreed by whoever is Minister for Finance and whoever is Minister for Social Protection. They will go back and ask for an extension or change to the schemes."
 

Full interview in Tuesday's Meath Chronicle