Irish Examiner View: Airport checks on PUP recipients a step too far

A near-empty Dublin Airport today, as it was confirmed over the weekend that the Department of Social Protection have stopped Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment and other social welfare payments for recipients who have travelled abroad for non-essential purposes. Picture: Sasko Lazarov/RollingNews.ie

Over the last five exceptional months, the Irish public has been willing to accept a degree of State control unprecedented in modern times. In the interests of public health, we accepted when offices closed. 

Then schools. Then shops and restaurants, café and bars, and hairdressers.