Ms Alice-Mary Higgins:

I would echo that. When we are looking at the question of genuinely seeking work and the way we consider and configure the criteria around that, the National Women's Council strongly believes that the jobseeker's transitional payment should be used and looked to for qualified adults, particularly those within jobless households. The reality is that 50% of qualified adults are engaged in some form of work. By recognising that there is such a thing as genuinely seeking and being available for part-time work, one will not only accommodate and recognise care and recognise that it is not a zero sum game between breadwinner and carer but that care is shared in many modern families and the breadwinning role can be shared, one that will bring women into the system and recognise that 36% of the women in the workforce are working part time. Part-time work is a reality that is increasing. As well as looking at extending the jobseeker's transition model as a really strong and workable model for qualified adults, there is also a need to look at some of the activation programmes and training we have and to make sure they are working for part-time work and accommodate flexible hours so that part-time work is not equated with precarious work but that people are provided with routes into genuine progression and careers that work around flexible hours.

I did not raise the issue of spouse swap to say that we should necessarily bring it back. I was saying that looking to the potential for activation for both adults in a jobless household is important. Even in terms of the priorities as listed and discussed, I would think that jobless households with a jobseeker's claimant and two unemployed adults should be very much a priority group in terms of activation because conditionality is coming into that household through one individual. If voluntary measures were introduced for the other individual in that household, we saw from the ESRI report yesterday that positive motivation and incentives, initiations to act and the possibility of long-term economic security in terms of one's pension are the things that motivate people into work.

Voluntary contributions to pensions have become quite difficult because the threshold has been raised in terms of being allowed to make voluntary contributions for people coming back into the workplace after a long period of absence. That should be looked at so that the long-term security of being in the system with a pension becomes more achievable rather than seeming impossible because one is starting from a disadvantage.