POLITICIANS WILL NOT return to work next week to debate the cancellation of some Pandemic Unemployment Payments, following a heated final sitting of the Dáil before its summer recess.
Shortly after midnight, the government defeated a request by Sinn Féin to have Tánaiste Leo Varadkar and Social Protection Minister Heather Humphreys return for questions next week about why the PUP was cancelled for some people who travelled abroad. Smaller opposition parties complained that the government was attempting to stifle their speaking rights, and a number of TDs called for a 40-minute debate on the changes.“The aim of it is to ensure that smaller, left parties and groups and independent groups have less of a prominence in those debates,” Solidarity TD Mick Barry said.
When the Dáil returned, the government voted to stop the debate from taking place, although a number of points of order were raised by both coalition and opposition TDs.Tánaiste Leo Varadkar accused some TDs of “arrogance and nastiness”, claiming the increasingly fractuous scenes witnessed throughout the evening had been witnessed in the Dáil for too long.