Within months, Covid-19 has fundamentally reconfigured the relationship betweenthe market and the state in Ireland. The ‘Great Lockdown’ has administered ashock to global patterns of production and consumption not seen since the GreatDepression (Gopinath, 2020) causing unprecedent levels of job-loss. In Ireland, thehardship of this job-loss has been partially cushioned by the social securityresponse to the crisis, and the introduction of a Pandemic UnemploymentPayment. For the hundreds of thousands of citizens receiving this and relatedpayments, welfare has replaced market earnings as their means of subsistence.This is a major adjustment not only in the economic lives of these citizens butalso in the ‘productivist’ footing of Ireland’s welfare state.