By Vivienne Clarke
The decision to extend the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) to the end of March is intended to give people peace of mind, Minister for Social Protection Heather Humphreys has said.
The decision was approved by Cabinet on Tuesday morning, following engagement by the Minister with the hospitality and retail sectors.
“I knew that there was concern that as staff return to work in December they might not be able to access PUP again in the new year if they needed to,” she told RTÉ radio’s News at One.
“As Minister I wanted to give certainty to people.”
Ms Humphreys said she believed this was the right thing to do: “It means that people who, hopefully will be able to return to work in the coming weeks, will be able to do so without worrying that they might not be able to access PUP again if they need it.
“Obviously we hope that people won’t need to go back on PUP, but the one thing we have seen with Covid is that nothing is certain. We didn’t want that sort of stress hanging over them.
“By keeping the PUP open to new entrants I'm ensuring that we don’t have a situation where people are worried or they choose not to go back to work for the fear that they won’t be able to access it in the future.”
Redundancy provisions
The Government also agreed on Tuesday to extend two measures which it says were brought in to help businesses during the pandemic.
The Covid-19 Credit Guarantee Scheme (CGS), which provides low-cost loans to businesses, was originally due to close at the end of the year but will now stay open for new applications until June 30th 2021.
The suspension of redundancy provisions relating to temporary lay-offs and short-time work, which arose as a result of Covid-19, will also be extended until March 31st 2021.
This was a really difficult decision for the Government to make
"I know this news will be really disappointing for some staff who were hoping to take redundancy before the end of the year," Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said.
"This was a really difficult decision for the Government to make and not one which was taken lightly. It was taken in the best interests of society as whole in order to avoid the triggering of further business failures and job losses."
The Government also agreed to fund outstanding applications to the now closed Restart Grant Plus Scheme, which has now been replaced by the Covid Restrictions Support Scheme (CRSS).
