Ms Mary Kennedy:

The actuarial review did a full examination of what the Social Insurance Fund will look like up until 2066 if we do not change what we are doing at the moment. That produced some stark figures relating to the level of contribution that would be required if we want the Social Insurance Fund to break even. We have the figures in the actuarial review and I can certainly come back to the committee with them. I simply do not have them in my head at present. It was a general review of the Social Insurance Fund. The main purpose of the actuarial review was to review the Social Insurance Fund having regard to the people who will be coming up to pension age and so on and how well it is funded to meet the requirements over the period from 2010 until 2066.

One of the things we asked the review group to do specifically, because of the issue of the self-employed, was to consider the cost required to provide two specific types of benefit, namely, jobseeker's benefit and invalidity pension, for self-employed people. The first thing the group examined was the level of contribution required to fund the State pension. Self-employed people currently pay 4%. The figure the consultants calculated for the appropriate contribution for a self-employed person was 15%. Using that as the level of contribution required for the State pension, the incremental additional cost for jobseeker's benefit was 16.5%.

Then, the cost for jobseeker's benefit plus State pension plus invalidity pension was 17.3%. That is where those figures came from.