The proposed Pay-Related Benefit Scheme

[Brendan Burgess]

I made a submission on this back in February

Public Consultation on Pay-Related Benefit for Jobseekers – open until 28 February 2023

How to take part in the Pay-Related Benefit Proposals Public Consultation for a new approach to a pay-related jobseeker's benefit. Learn how to make a submission and help shape the proposal.

www.gov.ie

The first draft of my submission on the pay related Jobseekers Benefit consultation

Very much a first draft. Submission from Brendan Burgess Piecemeal tinkering with the social welfare system without paying attention to the overall context will result in very poor outcomes. The overall context is a massive underfunding of the Social Insurance Fund The value of the...

www.askaboutmoney.com

So I was invited to meet the civil servants reviewing the submissions.

I had misunderstood one fundamental part of the proposal.

I had thought that they were simply adding PRB to current Jobseekers Benefit.

But, in fact, they are proposing to replace the JB with a completely new system: PRB.

So the level of PRB you get will depend on your recent salary. It will not matter whether you are single or married, whether you have dependents or not.

While I agree with this, I would imagine that after it is introduced, there will be calls for people with dependents to get more than single people.

Brendan

 

[Brendan Burgess]

An interesting statistic from our discussion today. Only 10% of people claiming Jobseekers claim for dependents.

It seems that there are three main categories:
1) Single people with no dependents
2) Married couples where both are in paid employment - so the spouse is not dependent on the unemployed person
3) Married couples where the spouse is dependent - this is the 10%.

I am still trying to get my head around this.

Brendan

 

[DannyBoyD]

So the level of PRB you get will depend on your recent salary.

did we not do this before back in the 80s? and folks were working for 6 months & then claiming 90% of their salary for the next six months

 

[Brendan Burgess]

Hi Danny

Yes, it used to actually be a Pay Related Social Insurance scheme. It is no longer pay related. And they are trying to go back to that.

I did raise the prospect of the increased incentive to play the system. Working for 3 months and then getting pay related benefit for 9 months and then working again for 3 months etc. But they are building in safeguards against that.

Brendan