Ms Ita Mangan:

Exactly. We are not saying it is sacrosanct.

I draw the attention of members briefly to page 65 of the report on which we show other possible packages. We do not provide a detailed analysis of the consequences of these packages, but we do show the numbers who would be affected and so on. We have finished the report. Unless we are asked by the Minister to revisit these issues, we will not be doing so, but there is no great difficulty in the Department of Social Protection making the relevant analysis if it is decided on principle to proceed with this proposal.

On whether the savings should be targeted at child care services, I should have emphasised in my opening statement that we were looking exclusively at child income supports. We were not looking at services. However, we acknowledge the importance of services. Everybody on the committee is very clear on their importance.

On a personal level, were all the savings from child benefit to be targeted at child care or related measures, I would be extremely happy. However, that is not for the advisory group to recommend because it is not what we were asked to do. As I stated, everyone is highly conscious of the role services play in improving poverty outcomes.

In response to Senator Moloney regarding the make-up of the advisory group, it is composed in almost equal numbers of external experts and departmental representatives. As the Senator noted, it did not - this obviously was the choice of the Minister and the Government - include any of the pressure groups. However, we invited and received submissions from all the pressure groups. My understanding was the idea was this would be purely an expert group in the sense that those involved would try to come up with a cold analysis of what was possible, without being involved in any particular lobbying for any particular area. A number of the submissions we received from lobby groups and NGOs favoured the targeting of the pot, if you like, of payments towards the lower end of the scale. However, I think a lot of pressure groups would find it difficult to find the point at which such targeting should occur, just as have we. However, they played a significant role in sending in submissions, all of which were taken into account.

As the Senator correctly noted, the numbers receiving child benefit are 1.16 million and approximately 73,000 children, or rather their parents, receive family income supplement. Consequently, there is no doubt but that child benefit is a much more important issue than is family income supplement. One feature that I found to be quite alarming is that almost half of the children of this country are living in social welfare households. Something like 47% or 48% are living in households that are receiving weekly social welfare payments. While a few of these households, namely, those which are in receipt of insurance payments, might be adversely affected by the proposals suggested here, the vast bulk of them would not be affected by the proposals. Perhaps the most worrying point is not that they would not be affected by the proposals but the current position whereby so many children are living in households that are dependent on social welfare. The solution to this is not better or worse child income support payments but is employment and getting people off social welfare. This is one of the greatest issues that must be addressed but again, our group was not tasked with looking at that particular issue.

I will leave it to the Department to answer in detail the question of how it will be administered. As Ms Teresa Leonard fairly pointed out, it cannot be administered unless there is a decision by the Government to go ahead with it. Nevertheless, I note that significant numbers of children are already in households receiving means tested qualified child increases. They are already being means tested. Moreover, farmers are already being means tested for farm assist and all sorts of other payments. Consequently, means testing is not new or particularly difficult for the Department of Social Protection. There may be some delays in respect of means testing some of the people but there is no particular difficulty about it. For example, farm income in the Department of Social Protection's means test is entirely based on the actual income from the farm and not on the capital value of the assets or anything like that. There is no suggestion in any of this that there would be any change to the manner in which the Department of Social Protection means tests people who are applying for benefits. Moreover, the number of new people to be means tested under the system would not be as large as the number of beneficiaries would suggest because a highly significant number of them are already being means tested, for example, for disability allowance, jobseeker's allowance or whatever it is.