Witnesses and members are reminded of the long-standing parliamentary practice that they should not criticise or make charges against any person or entity by name or in such a way as make him, her or it identifiable, or otherwise engage in speech that would be regarded as damaging to the good name of a person or entity. Therefore, if their statements are potentially defamatory in relation to an identifiable person or entity, they will be directed to discontinue their remarks. It is imperative they comply with such a direction that I might make.

Members attending remotely are reminded of the constitutional requirement that, to participate in public meetings, they must be physically present within the confines of the Leinster House complex. This is due to the constitutional requirement that in order to participate in public meetings, members must be physically present within the confines of the place where the Parliament has chosen to sit. I ask any members participating via Microsoft Teams to confirm that they are on the grounds of the Leinster House complex if they wish to contribute. I remind all those in attendance to make sure their mobile phones are switched off or on silent mode.

I thank everyone for attending this meeting to discuss welfare supports for the self-employed. The committee looks forwards to engaging with the witnesses and gaining insights into the range of supports and schemes available and targeted towards self-employed persons. I welcome the following officials from the Department of Social Protection: Mr. Rónán Hession, assistant secretary general; Ms Karen Byrne, assistant principal; and Mr. Colin O'Neill, assistant principal. I invite Mr. Hession to make his opening statement.

I am the assistant secretary general at the Department of Social Protection with responsibility for working age and family policy, including PRSI policy. I am joined by Karen Byrne, who is an assistant principal with responsibility for jobseeker's policy, and Colin O’Neill, who is an assistant principal with responsibility for PRSI policy. I thank the joint committee for the opportunity to attend and to discuss welfare supports for the self-employed.

Generally, self-employed workers with incomes of €5,000 or more per year pay PRSI under class S. Contributors paying PRSI under this class are a diverse group and include tradespeople, professionals, company directors and individuals whose sole income is from investment income, for example, rent. They also includes a mix of people who work alone and those who have employees. The PRSI rate applicable to this class is 4.2% on reckonable income, subject to a minimum annual payment of €650. In general, self-employed contributors pay PRSI in arrears via Revenue’s self-assessed system. Other self-employed contributors, such as company directors, pay in real time using Revenue’s PAYE system similar to employed contributors. For this contribution, self-employed workers are entitled to most of the supports available under the Social Insurance Fund.

The list of benefits that are available to the self-employed includes the contributory State pension, the contributory bereaved partner’s pension, maternity benefit and paternity benefit. Since 2017, there has been a significant extension of further benefits to the self-employed without any associated increase in their PRSI rate.

As part of budget 2017, invalidity pension was made available to self-employed workers to support those unable to work due to long-term illness or disability. By extension, this may entitle self-employed contributors to partial capacity benefit. Importantly, budget 2017 also extended the treatment benefit scheme to self-employed contributors, giving them an entitlement to certain dental and optical treatments, as well as medical appliances such as hearing aids. These treatments are also available to their dependent spouse or partner, if applicable.

In budget 2019, cover for unemployment was extended to self-employed workers by the introduction of jobseeker’s benefit for the self-employed. This was an important measure to provide financial support following the loss of a person’s business. Support for unemployment for this group was not commonplace in other EU countries at that time. Also included in that budget was the extension of parent’s benefit to the self-employed and employed workers, which now provides up to nine weeks of paid leave to each parent of a young child. Most recently, in budget 2025, carer’s benefit was extended to self-employed workers, recognising the contribution of those carers in society.

Self-employed contributors now have access to over 90% of the value of all benefits available to employees, even though the PRSI contribution rate for the self-employed is 11.25 percentage points lower than the combined 15.45% made in respect of employees. The only benefits that the self-employed do not currently have access to are illness benefit, occupational injuries benefit and health and safety benefit. However, the programme for Government commits to exploring the option of giving self-employed workers access to illness benefit by means of making a higher PRSI contribution. The Department has commenced work in this regard and would welcome any views of the committee on that proposal. As work on that progresses and we get to the stage of having a public proposal, we will be happy to come back to talk the committee through that and take any views.

The Department promotes all its schemes and services through gov.ie. A list of Department schemes for which the self-employed are eligible is available on a dedicated page on gov.ie.

Individual scheme web pages also refer to entitlements for the self-employed, where applicable.

Section 10 of the Social Welfare Consolidation Act 2005 requires that the Minister for Social Protection undertake an actuarial review of the position of the Social Insurance Fund at five-year intervals. The key objective of the review is to consider the adequacy or otherwise of the current contribution rates to finance social insurance benefits. The most recent actuarial review of the Social Insurance Fund as at 31 December 2020, published in 2023, found that even without any shocks to the economy or changes to policy, the long-term sustainability of the fund will face significant challenges. It is in this context that, under the PRSI roadmap, there will be modest, incremental increases in all classes of PRSI over the period 2024 to 2028, totalling an additional 0.7 percentage points. These changes also cover the cost of the introduction of the new pay-related jobseeker's benefit.

The Oireachtas has passed legislation to give effect to these changes that will also apply to the self-employed class S rate. The PRSI roadmap will help, as a first step, in alleviating the long-term sustainability challenges facing the fund and will support keeping the retirement age at 66.

Another finding of the actuarial reviews was that self-employed contributors receive better value for money from the fund than employed contributors, when comparing the benefits available with their PRSI contribution rate.

We look forward to hearing the committee's views on the welfare supports for the self-employed and we are happy to assist with any questions.

I thank Mr. Hession for his contribution. I now invite members to discuss it. I invite members who are participating via Microsoft Teams to use the raise-hand feature and cancel it when they have spoken.

I welcome our guests. This is a very important discussion in relation to self-employed people, who have had many questions about social welfare over a long period. I have just a couple of questions.

I want to start with illness benefit. Mr. Hession mentioned higher PRSI. The rate is 4.2%, as he mentioned. What rate is the Department considering in relation to illness benefit? What is the position on the consultation Mr. Hession is talking about? Since self-employed people do not have that many representative organisations, how do we get to them? How does the Department propose to do so to include them in this debate? They are the cohort it is considering. Maybe we will start with those questions. I have another question, on carer's benefit.

On the rate, we do not have a figure in mind. One of the features of the programme for Government commitment that is quite novel is that it would give people the option of paying higher PRSI. That is something we have done only on a very limited scale. The only other version I can think of relates to class P, which is for fishermen. There are only three people in that category.

As with insurance generally, everyone contributes and only a small proportion actually claim. Having an optional version means it is very hard to cost who might opt in and who might not. You might have a situation where the profile of people opting in is different from that of people who opt out. People may have pre-existing conditions or there may be a situation with an age difference. What I have described will all help with feeding in. There is a lot of analysis and many assumptions. We still are a while off a consultation. We are still at the early design stage. The optional parts are quite tricky. One thing we will try to understand is the behavioural aspect.

We had illness benefit for the self-employed during the pandemic. Covid illness benefit was open to the self-employed for the first time. We have some learnings from that. Other than that, there are many factors that will inform the rate in trying to make sure it is right. You do not have the solidarity and the pooling of resources to the same extent, and there are other policy-related behavioural matters to be considered. For example, if a person decides to opt out but then becomes very sick and wants to opt in, it becomes very messy. It is a question of anything like that is managed.

On the consultation period, we have had a series of consultation processes over the last number of years dealing with the enterprise sector, so we have good channels with the likes of IBEC, ISME and the Small Firms Association. We do public consultation, but as always, there is a network involving the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Enterprise Ireland through which we can get information out. We try to get people's views.

As a career civil servant, I sometimes think the self-employed can be a bit of a blind spot because their working environment is quite different. We try to make sure that we understand it. The self-employed are a very diverse group. About 60% have no employees and 40% have employees, and they are spread across all sectors. Therefore, it is not easy to make general assumptions about them.

I thank Mr. Hession. The diversity of the sector is why I am asking how we are going to get its buy-in to something like what we are discussing. In my work, I have come across the question of what is in place for self-employed people when they become sick. It is a huge issue for them, as Mr. Hession says himself. It is very important that the programme for Government has this included and that we continue to go down this road. I look forward to this. As Mr. Hession has said, it is at an early stage but it is something the committee could keep an eye on because the self-employed are a cohort that have been somewhat forgotten over a long period because of the diversity of their employment.

I have come across a matter that is not directly related to the self-employed but that matters to them. I refer to the transfer from the carer's benefit to the carer's allowance. I have encountered a number of people in the past six months who were on carer's benefit and then had to go through a whole process again to get the carer's allowance. They could be self-employed, as Mr. Hession also mentioned. Has the Department considered automatic transfer to the carer's allowance, where necessary, once the carer's benefit finishes? Maybe Mr. Hession will comment on that. Thankfully, both of the cases I encountered recently have been sorted, but it took time. One person was without payment and one had to go to a community welfare officer to get a payment. It seems there is a gap between coming off the carer's benefit when the period is up and getting the carer's allowance. It is for self-employed people as well.

The perennial issue for self-employed people is the State pension. Maybe Mr. Hession will talk us through the issues in this regard, the difficulties many have had, which I have encountered, and the current conditions for the State pension for self-employed people.

I thank the Deputy. Regarding carer's allowance and carer's benefit, there are some differences between the schemes. The disregard is going up significantly and the Government is committed to removing the means test altogether. That probably raises a question about where carer's benefit fits in, because the main reason it is available is that there are people whose income might be too high for the means test but who have the two-year period of carer's leave. If there are any particular issues on the margins of this, the Deputy might send the cases to me so I can take a look at them.

I will send on the issues.

Yes. It is not a straightforward transfer, but we will probably get to a point where, once the means test is removed, you will still need a carer's benefit.

On the State pension for the self-employed, is there a particular issue? They accumulate contributions. You pay according to class and you get the 52 contributions. We are in the process of a transition in terms of the total contributions approach. That should be okay for most self-employed people. I am aware of an issue with a three-year gap.

It is historic more than anything else, in fairness. This is what my query is about. I have come across a number of cases where it has been historic. There does not seem to be a problem for those who have become self-employed or have been self-employed in recent years, but there are historical gaps for others. Maybe Mr. Hession will mention what the Department has come across. Is it coming across cases similar to my own?

I have a note on the total contributions approach. There is a three-year gap because the individuals came on board only in 2018. I will refer to the note and if it does not answer the question, we will have to follow up. It states the principle of higher contributory entitlements for those who contribute more frequently to the Social Insurance Fund is central to contributory pensions around the world. It adds that it is recognised that self-employed contributors will be affected by the total contributions approach for the first three years of its transition. We are in the second of those three years, which are 2025, 2026 and 2027. The note adds that the reason contributions will be affected is that mandatory self-employment contributions were introduced in 1988. Therefore, it adds, the self-employed contributor would be unlikely to have 40 years of self-employed contributions until 2028. That assumes they have been self-employed only in period in question.

In that period.

The note adds that due to the phased transition, the financial impact will be limited. It states, however, that the person may also have other contributions, such as paid contributions and home care and PRSI credits, which may help to bring them back up to the maximum rate.

It is acknowledged that there is an issue about the three years. I am not sure if we know how many people are affected.

Yes, it is limited. I do not have many cases of it but I have come across some, which is the reason I brought it up today. The Department is aware of it. We can talk to it about the individual case. I appreciate that.

I thank the witnesses very much for coming in today. I have a few questions because I am aware of a few cases of people who are self-employed, who applied for social welfare supports and were refused point-blank at every turn, including on appeal. What rate of applications received are refused? What rate of refused applications are overturned on appeal?

I am not sure if we have that information but I will ask my team to dig it out. There is a note in the brief on appeals generally.

Generally speaking, the areas where we tend to have-----I thank my colleague. We can give these details in a note afterwards to save people having to scribble them down.

We would appreciate that.

For the year 2026 there were 9,000 appeals registered and 11,883 appeals were finalised. There is a mismatch there because some of the appeals came in in 2025, so they are not the same appeals. Some 42% of the appeals finalised in 2026 had a favourable outcome for the appellant. There were 7,500 appeals on hand at the end of March 2026. I want to check where we have full-year figures so I might come back to that. I will give a note to the committee on it. We are only one quarter into 2026 and some of the appeals that are being decided now are for 2025, so it does not give a proper snapshot.

In general, the areas where we tend to have higher levels of appeal are in medical schemes. That tends to be disability allowance, carer's allowance and the domiciliary care allowance. What we tend to find is that because of the medical information required, it is often the case that new information becomes available for the appeal. For example, a person might apply for disability allowance and give us information from their doctor, but they may not necessarily have submitted a consultant's report or more technical medical information. When it comes to the appeal that is then provided and they can be successful on appeal. The big issue really is the process around the medical schemes – the disability schemes. What we would like to see, ideally, and what we say to people through the various organisations, is that people would submit all of the information on day one, so that the same information that is the basis for the application becomes the basis for the later appeal. In reality, information comes later. There are behavioural reasons why a person might do that, which is that if they submit the appeal sooner and they are ultimately successful their payment is backdated to the earlier submission date. People may be concerned about the time it takes to get the information together, which pushes back that start date. The other issue is that there may be an issue around the expense or they have difficulty getting appointments for expert reports and therefore it is not something they would do unless they really have to at the appeal stage. That is the main issue.

I am open to look at them if there are cases that Senator O'Reilly wants to send them to me, but I am not aware that there is a particular issue with those who are self-employed. Generally speaking, the contributory schemes are based on the number of contributions and the allowance schemes are based on a means test.

I know at times it can be difficult to try to establish what means are available to a self-employed person, because they are so different. With employees now we have more or less real-time access to Revenue information so we know what a person got paid last month or last year. Self-employed people report pretty much two years in arrears.

It is back to the communication piece that Deputy Wall talked about. There is a lot of information here that I know people would not be aware of. How is the Department getting that out? Is it working with accountancy bodies? In some cases I find that accountants might not advise their clients correctly. Does Mr. Hession see any difficulties there?

I think there have been difficulties. I am not sure how widespread it is. I know people have been advised in certain ways, for example, in particular in a farming situation, on whether somebody should be an employee or self-employed. They have taken particular advice, which has had subsequent consequences for their entitlements. We certainly communicate. We have a lot of information available publicly through gov.ie. We have specific information pack and a leaflet on the entitlements of self-employed people and how the system works. It is something that we are constantly working on to try to raise awareness of our schemes. As Deputy Wall referenced, the self-employed can be a little bit harder to reach in the sense that they are quite diverse and are spread through different sectors. That is certainly something we can take back but I am not sure whether we can talk directly to the accountants in terms of the entitlements and their onward communication with their customers, but it is a fair point and we will take it on board.

I will also pick up on something Deputy Guirke talked about, which is the number of young people coming and going from Australia and Canada for years and then returning. Is the Department coming across many difficulties there with breaks in contributions?

Those issues arise in a number of ways. They can be very particular so it is hard to make general statements about what people's entitlements may be. Generally, overseas contributions and their use in the Irish system are governed by bilateral agreements between Ireland and other jurisdictions. There is also a process of voluntary contributions. Self-employed people in particular come in and out of self-employment over periods, but they can make voluntary contributions and that maintains their record for the year in question. There are some rules around that. I think you have to five years' contribution beforehand or it has to be five years since your last contribution. I am told a person has to have ten years of contributions and it has to be within five years of their last contributions before it can be made. It is something like that, but there is a process because we acknowledge that with self-employment there may be periods of instability where a person is not in operation. There is a process of voluntary contributions where people can fill in the gaps in their record. The international situation is largely governed by international arrangements.

There are also difficulties with people who may be living in the Republic and working in the North.

Usually, when it comes to our entitlements, there is a habitual residence condition. It varies depending on the schemes but if you are claiming an assistance payment or means-tested payment, you have to be habitually resident here. It can vary then in terms of the benefit payments or the ones that are PRSI related. Karen will tell me if I am right. We also have a convention with the UK in terms of how they are governed. If I am in Monaghan and working in Derry and I become unemployed, I get JB first. Is that right?

Yes.

And then vice versa.

I thank Mr. Hession.

I thank the witnesses very much for coming in and talking about this very important issue. I thank the officials and everybody on their team for all their work on this area - self-employed people.

I will make a few opening comments and then ask some questions. I look at this in a way from a social justice or a social contract perspective. There is a floor through which no one should fall. I am conscious that there are some people who are self-employed, usually by themselves – they are usually freelancers - who may be on lower incomes and find themselves in difficult situations, maybe from illness, underpayment of an invoice or where it takes ages for something to come through, or there is a drop-off in work where they actually are falling through that floor. There is a real question here about how social protection can help people make sure that they are not falling through that floor. I know the Department is focused on that and it is working on that.

I might give just a few stories to illustrate some of the points here. I acknowledge in particular the question on reporting in arrears. It has rightly been said that the Department does not get a great sense of self-employed people and what they are earning until two years after the fact. There is a real risk of overpayment or somebody getting entitlements that they should not.

I would press Mr. Hession. That seems like an administrative issue that could be solved in some way, in terms of getting some integration with banks or some other way of understanding what is the person's income or what is the more reflective live sense of where they are.

I was in a taxi recently and talking to the taxi driver. He said he was called in for jury duty and but cannot attend because, as a self-employed person, if he stops working, he does not earn any money. There is a question there on the social exclusion that results from these kinds of things. If people are unable to participate in civic life because self-employment does not have the kind of associated benefits one might get in the PAYE system, we have a real issue there. I would hope that taxi drivers can be a part of jury panels. That would probably be beneficial to all of us.

I recognise there are many different types of self-employed people. As Mr. Hession pointed out in his remarks, they include people who make money from investments, people who are landlords and all those kinds of things. I want to focus specifically on what I would call the freelancer group or solo trader, such as an architect who works out of a co-working space. I myself worked in a co-working space for many years and met a lot of these people. In that particular instance, there were two major dynamics that came to the fore. The first was the question of how they could access any kind of support whatsoever if they got ill. That was really difficult for people. The second dynamic is a harder one to illustrate. Essentially, in a lot of freelancing work, you are not getting a steady pay cheque. You are not getting a monthly income. You are often getting a big invoice one quarter, you do not know if you are getting one for two quarters and then it kind of comes in. That happened to me in the past. There is a question there about the volatility of the income cycle for these people and how we ensure in that instance that there is some support for people if they are at the lower end of that cycle and they do not know if they are going to get that next invoice or contract. It would be fair for the Department to say that it will give that support but the money might be owed back to it. That would be fair. As a former self-employed person, I would have signed up to that and thought it reasonable. I would like to hear Mr. Hession's thoughts on how the Department manages that.

Lastly, the issue of voluntary contributions is an important one. Perhaps the communication on that could go a little further with the self-employed population, that they might get better benefits or better social protection if they make certain contributions on a more regular basis, above and beyond what is available or what is legally required today. That would be an important part of how the Department responds to the self-employed population. It brings them a little more into the social protection envelope.

We are certainly tuned in to what the Deputy is saying about the freelancer and the changing nature of work, and also people who combine self-employment with employment. They might be people who are working in an IT company but are also doing consultancy or somebody who is a teacher and also plays in a wedding band. One can have all sorts. The experience of the pandemic and the pandemic unemployment payment, PUP, is that it flushed a lot of that out. PUP was a very simple, effective and quick payment but it threw up loads of questions. Some of the most difficult ones relate to people who are both employed and self-employed because we can see they are employed at a lower level of income but there is other income still to come and if we are doing a pay-related scheme, we do not know their full income.

One important part of the system is the supplementary welfare allowance system, which is the safety net to the safety net. Basically, if somebody is without income and needs support, that is there. The community welfare officers who run that are at higher executive officer level. They are experienced people. Our normal deciding officers are at clerical officer level. We always say a person should never be in a position where they cannot heat their home or do not have the basics to get through and that is what that system is there for.

There are various types of payments under that. We call them additional needs payments. Urgent needs payments are ones where a person will have the money but they do not have it now, and sometimes they are on a pay-back basis. Those supports are available throughout the country and on a very flexible basis. They are there to make sure, as I say, there is a safety net, a non-judgmental support for people who really need it. The thing with a safety net is that as a starting point, one does not want to dive straight into the safety net. It is there just in case.

The coverage for self-employed people has improved over the years. We are now at a stage where we have approximately 90 schemes, there are only three they do not have at present and the most important of those really is illness benefit. We are looking at that. As we discussed earlier, we are looking at extending that to self-employed on an opt-in, or certainly an optional, basis. There are two other schemes and these are the occupational injuries benefit, which is what it sounds like, that people have an injury at work and it more or less pays the same as illness benefit, and then health and safety benefit, which is mostly to do issues around breast-feeding, etc. Largely that family of illness benefit schemes is the area where self-employed do not have coverage. That is on the agenda. The contribution rate will need to be paid for through additional PRSI. Overall, self-employed people get much better value for money from the system than employed people. We do an actuarial review and there is a whole chapter which goes through that.

On illness benefit, it is important that people have cover. There are different dynamics, of course, with a self-employed person when it comes to illness. For some people, such as the taxi driver who was given as an example, if they person do not work, they do not get paid. If a person has employees, that may not be the case so they may not opt-in. People will make that judgment.

Broadly speaking, even with the freelancers or people who have maybe a fallow period where they are between projects, they are between contracts or they are waiting for an invoice to be paid, they are also eligible for the jobseeker's allowance. We have tweaked the rules for self-employed people. With an employee, there is a four-in-seven rule in terms of the days of unemployment. That does not apply to the self-employed so there are some adjustments.

In terms of the income, it is done on a pragmatic basis. If somebody has five years' income, we will make a reasonable judgment on a tell-us-we-are-wrong basis about the next two years. A person may say that his or her income was artificially high for those few years and he or she was working on a particular project that is no longer in place and that it will be lower. We will listen to that and we will adjust. It is not in our interest to make incorrect assumptions about somebody's income that we then have to go back and revisit and look at all of the payments. That is not good for the customer and it is not good for us either. We try to make reasoned judgments. Broadly speaking, the system, for all its being more art than science, generally seems to hold up but we are mindful that we are relying on the information and what people are telling us. Broadly speaking, we have found that they hold true.

The overall picture with self-employed is that since 2016 there are five or six new schemes that they have become eligible for. The last part is illness benefit. It will be tricky for them but there is a programme for Government commitment to look at it on the basis of voluntarily paying higher PRSI.

In terms of the awareness of voluntary contributions, the Deputy has a point there on whether people are aware of it. It is quite a low rate. The voluntary contributions are really for pension purposes only and it is not for the wider ones. The rate of payment is €650 for a full year. It is not an onerous contribution for a full-year's pension.

I hope that covers the Deputy's questions, unless there is something I have missed.

There is maybe one supplementary which is on the application burden, for lack of a better term. Some people have come to me about jobseeker's allowance, in particular, when they were dealing with an invoice not coming through, they had lost some work or whatever client relationship had fallen down. When they go in to try to get the jobseeker's allowance, it is not as easy or as quick as they may have thought it might be, particularly if they had PAYE experience in the past. There is a question mark there about how we can make that a little bit easier for people who are in genuine need and how we verify it. Obviously, the Department has a responsibility, as an actor in the State, to make sure that they money is being spent appropriately and people are saying things that are true.

I totally get that, but I would hope that we would get to a position where it is a little bit easier that somebody can be authorised on the same day rather than having to go into lots of accounts or prove this about this client, that about that client or whatever. That has been the experience I have heard from several people who have come to me with cases. I would like to hear from Mr. Hession on how he might think about adjusting that.

We have moved a lot of our schemes online. Jobseeker's allowance is also online. In a case like this, because it is means tested, it will not be the same day. Jobseeker's pay-related benefit is almost instant because it is-----

That is not available to self-employed people.

That is not available. They are on a different scheme. Jobseeker's benefit for the self-employed came in in 2019. They can also receive the jobseeker's allowance, which is the means-tested one. That does require input and there may be queries back and forth. In terms of our processing times on those, they are more or less on target. I mentioned the supplementary welfare allowance earlier. One of the main things we use it for is to give people a payment while their applications are being processed because we are conscious that when people come to us, their income situations could be critical. We cannot have a situation where we say to people that their files are quite complex and it will take us a bit of time to decide the matter and they are left without income in the meantime. What supplementary welfare allowance does is cover that payment pending the decision. There is that support. We are happy to make people aware of that as well.

I thank Mr. Hession.

I thank Deputy Hayes very much. From my perspective, Mr. Hession's statement outlines how, from 2017, there has been a lot done for the self-employed, which is good to recognise today. Much was done in 2017, 2019 and again in 2025. Certainly, from all of us members, the one that stands out is the illness benefit. That really is a challenge. When a person loses their job, they can apply for jobseeker's benefit for the self-employed or the invalidity pension, etc., but the challenge has always been the illness benefit. It is good to see that it is in the programme for Government and that work is going on on it. In terms of timeframes, when does Mr. Hession expect that to be at a public consultation stage? This committee would like to get involved more at that stage. I thank Mr. Hession for his commitment to revert to us.

We do not have. We are at the stage where it is really within our own team at the moment. We will then have to bring it to a wider government discussion around timetabling. Our thinking is quite developed that we will be in a position to have those conversations, I would hope, later this year or maybe early next year. However, we have to get approval through the wider government system on that. Obviously, we have a lot of other programme for Government commitments that are quite live at the moment, so we will try to make schedules.

That is good, but maybe-----

When it does become available and we have more detail, I am certainly happy to come in and make a presentation to the committee. I am sure the Minister will be very glad to bring it up with the committee.

That is a good estimate as an indicative date anyway.

I will expand a bit more on Deputy Wall's and Deputy Hayes' point about the opt-in side of things in terms of the voluntary contributions or the higher contributions. Can Mr. Hession explain in simpler detail how he would see it working?

That is one of the major decision points in the work we are doing at the moment. There are a number of risks to how that might work. One is that people will say that if they want additional health cover, they can just buy it themselves, so why would they pay PRSI? Then, they suffer an injury or get ill and change their minds, but at that stage, they are not in a scheme. The other thing is that the way insurance works is that everyone contributes. We all take out car insurance, but only some of us crash our cars. If we all crashed our cars, our car insurance would be €20,000 or €30,000 per year, but it is not because we do not, so it keeps the cost lower.

It is very difficult to cost or predict the behavioural elements of it. In simple terms, we would like to provide a window where people could opt in, and after that, I think we would need to lock them in. There are a million ways we could look at that, however. We will have various regretted decisions where people do not opt in. We are open to suggestion as how it might work practically but it is something we do not do. We have only done it in class P, which literally has three people. The committee could literally have them here and ask them how they find it; it is that small a group.

That is an interesting statistic, all right.

It is probably our smallest scheme. It just shows the Cathaoirleach that we do try to cover everybody.

Mr. Hession should not say much more because he might identify them.

It is quite a novel thing that we are wrestling with - how do we make it practical for people and how do we make sure? One thing we learned from the Covid pandemic was that we would prefer people to be covered. If you look at the composition of self-employment, it is very diverse. There are a lot of people in farming and construction. We do not want people doing physical, difficult jobs when they are not well. It is not good for them and it is a risk for them. People need to have cover so that they can recover their health. That is important.

Is Mr. Hession thinking of a timeframe to opt in for, say, 12 months or two years before people can access the illness benefit or is it a case that they can opt in today and avail of it tomorrow or the day after?

That all has to be decided. We have not even discussed that with the Minister yet. Basically, we are working off the text of the programme for Government, which is an optional element. In theory, a person could say they would like to be signed up for illness benefit and to have that taken from their PRSI for evermore. If the world were a simpler place, that would be the end of it but in reality, we know that there are no simple customers in our business. We know the reality of the mess in people's lives and trying to put in something that is practical. The principle would be that it would have to wash its own face in terms of the PRSI costs and it would have to be workable so that we could administer it consistently and the person could know what his or her entitlements were with no ambiguity. Beyond that, we are looking at various options that work and we are genuinely open to any suggestion.

Mr. Hession mentioned earlier that the self-employed availed of the illness benefit during Covid. Did many self-employed people apply for that at the time? Would Mr. Hession have that figure to hand?

We do have a figure, but I do not know what it is off the top of my head.

It would be an interesting figure to bring to the committee. Just out of interest, we could see how many availed of it at that time.

The Cathaoirleach might forgive me if I have this wrong, but my recollection is that their claim rate was proportionate to the numbers within the wider group. They were not more or less likely to claim; it was about what we would expect for an employee who was making a claim.

I thank Mr. Hession. Does Senator O'Reilly have a supplementary question?

I want to go back to the question I asked Mr. Hession about self-employed people who applied for assistance and how many were successful. He said 42% were favourable-----

I am sorry; I was giving the Senator the 2026 figures. What I would like to do is come back to the Senator. That is not self-employed. They are just for the first quarter of 2026. They are just what I have in my brief. I will come back to the Senator on what the appeal figures are for the full year in 2025.

For self-employed people.

I will see if we have that breakout. About one third of self-employed people are also employees. They are not just purely self-employed. We might not have the details on PRSI class if they are on means-tested payments. I am just not sure whether we break out our statistics that way. In other words, if it is a benefit scheme, we are very much dealing with a class S person. If it is means tested, it is more about what a person's income is as opposed to what class he or she is. I do not know off the top of my head what we have but we will certainly provide whatever we have.

Mr. Hession might also provide the data on the main reason appeals were refused.

We do have some information. There is an annual report published by the appeals office. It is statutorily independent. It publishes an annual report and data, so we will see what we can garner from that.

If the committee could get that information, that would be really good, too. Mr. Hession might provide us with the reason applications were refused and the reasons they were refused on appeal.

Generally speaking, by far the most common reason is around the medical schemes and there not being sufficient medical evidence of the person's entitlement. In contribution schemes, the person does not have enough contributions and, on a means test, he or she exceeds the means. They tend not to be esoteric reasons for the refusals.

We will certainly provide whatever we have.

I will give an example. I know a self-employed painter who fell and broke both his wrists. He had no income. He was not entitled to payment and was refused.

To which payment was he not entitled?

He was not entitled to any payment. He was refused for all payments. He got no support.

In that case, he would not be entitled to illness benefit because he is class S. If he applied for the supplementary welfare allowance, it would be based on whatever income was in the house. There is an income test. Perhaps he had a partner or another income in the house that put him above the limit. That may have been the case. If the Senator wants to send the details of the case, we will look at it.

I have the details.

I cannot guess which case the Senator is talking about.

I know, and I cannot say. We did everything to try to help that person. He had huge overheads.

That is the difference with jobseeker's benefit for the self-employed. The business is still there. He is just sick. Illness benefit for the self-employed is intended to help that kind of person.

I welcome that the Government is considering the matter, but it needs to be expedited.

We will get the views of the Senator under the public consultation.

On a point of information, I want to follow up on something. Mr. Hession said that one third of self-employed people have some PAYE income as well.

It is one quarter.

That is fine. If he has it, could he share any information on the distribution of income of self-employed people? It is fine if he were to follow up with that information. I am wary because some self-employed people are doing extremely well. Other self-employed people have PAYE employment, and the self-employed aspect would be a top-up of that PAYE income.

I have a table here that I will share with the Deputy. The average income of PRSI contributors is €43,000. The average income for PAYE returns is €46,000 and for self-assessed income is €34,000. Some 21% of class S contributors are in the bracket of €25,000 to €50,000. The next biggest share is in the bracket above that, from €50,000 to €75,000. Some 44% are in the €100,000-plus bracket. That is the percentage of PRSI income. I beg your pardon. It is the percentage of people. It is basically a bell shape. What we are seeing is that most people are in the bracket between €15,000 and €50,000. It sort of tails off after that. I apologise. I was reading the PRSI table. Of 402,000 self-employed people, 110,000 are in the bracket from €25,000 to €50,000. If you picture a bell curve for employees, the self-employed are on another bell curve, slightly behind the first.

It is important for us to recognise that, in general, this is a population that is earning less than the average PAYE earner. In that world, you would hope that the social protection system would be more rather than less active. It is important that we get this illness benefit correct.

On additional PRSI contributions, I am conscious that in the context of the Social Insurance Fund, it is not really like for like. You do not necessarily pay in and get the same amount of money back out. What is Mr. Hession's sense of the fund washing its face in respect of the contributions that come in and the payments that go out to self-employed people?

We do an actuarial review every five years. What we know is that the average person gets more out of it than he or she ever puts in. That is particularly the case for self-employed people. If I am an employee, the combined contribution of what I put in and my employer puts in is 15.45%. For a self-employed person, the figure is 4.2%. An appendix to the actuarial review looks at value for money for class S, and that class gets the best value for money.

We know that the fund has a significant excess at the moment. It is, in fact, a record excess. However, by approximately 2033, the money going out will exceed the money coming in. That will become a much bigger problem to the point where out to 2076, the deficit will be €500 billion. What the Government has done is to put together a PRSI roadmap that includes quite modest increases in PRSI for the period 2024 to 2028. The actuarial review states that you would need to keep doing that until 2076 in order to get the fund to balance.

That is an incredibly important matter for the Government and the Oireachtas to consider. The sustainability of the Social Insurance Fund is absolutely critical. It strikes me that if you are dealing with a self-employed population that has a slightly lower income, on average, than the PAYE population, they are probably more susceptible or vulnerable to things such as major health shocks and cost-of-living crises. That can have longer term effects on an individual in his or her working life in terms of contributions and ability to earn. There is a question sometimes because the actions you take now can have very long-term effects, particular for individuals and their overall working lives. I wholly accept the point about the difference in the contributions and the returns, the 15% versus the 4% in PRSI contributions. However, I am conscious that if that is the reasoning for not providing certain social protection supports to self-employed people, we may be compromising ourselves in the future, if that makes sense, in respect of that self-employed person and his or her capacity to earn.

The programme of Government is saying we should meet halfway. It will provide illness benefit, but you will pay for it. That is what the Government did for pay-related jobseeker's benefit and some of the increases that came in. Over the years, people have said that if we want Swedish benefits, we should pay Swedish levels. With jobseeker's pay-related benefit, that was what the Government did. It asked people whether they were okay to pay for it and they said they were. The proposal for illness benefit in the programme for Government gives people that option.

I thank Mr. Hession.

An awful lot of self-employed people who pay and contribute feel that when something happens, they are not supported. I am happy to see the Government looking at that issue and I suggest it should be expedited.

The Senator has said that twice now. I thank Mr. Hession, Mr. O'Neill and Ms Byrne. They are going to provide some additional information through the clerk to the committee. That is very welcome. The witnesses also said that while they are going through this process, it does not stop any member of this committee from making their own examples. Senator O'Reilly offered the very good example of a painter. That was a good example to highlight. Prior to waiting for a public consultation, those examples are very welcome in the interim.

I thank the witnesses for their attendance and for providing the material in advance of this meeting. It is very much appreciated.