Mr. Cormac Staunton:

Second, the question of why we have the most unequal distribution is really interesting. We need to examine further why Ireland's distribution is the most unequal before taxes and transfers are taken into account. There are some points to make on this, however, and they are included in the handouts we submitted. We have a quite low employment level overall. I am not referring to the unemployment level. Some 65% of working age adults are in employment. It is 70% for men and only 60% for women. Therefore, only 60% of women of working age are actually in employment. By contrast, countries such as the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark have a figure of 76%. In Sweden, 80% of working age adults are actually in employment. One needs to ask why the Irish rate is low. A reason could be the cost of child care, for example. Perhaps for certain families it is not economically viable to have a second person working and paying child care costs. This is just one example of many that could be examined.

On the other issues, I was asked whether we should consider public services and factors such as the cost of living. The figures account for cash, and Ireland is very heavily weighted towards cash payments. We are not accounting in these figures for public services and the cost of living. As I stated in my presentation, TASC is to produce a report that will attempt to examine inequality in the round. It takes into account how we deliver public services. It will examine wealth and the cost of living in Ireland and how such factors affect overall economic inequality, not just income inequality or the distribution of income, which we were considering today.

On the question of inequality falling in the immediate aftermath of the crisis, I tried to address in my presentation the point that the inequality rate falls because something happens either at the bottom or the top.

The point I tried to address in my presentation is that inequality decreases because something happens either at the bottom or at the top. In Ireland, because of the crisis, incomes at the top were squeezed and pushed down. The income floor provided by the social protection system and the fact that it was not changed radically meant that nothing happened at the bottom. Therefore, we had a contraction. Now, the income floors have not changed, more people are working and incomes are going up, but the underlying inequality is still in place and, therefore, we are probably going to see a stretching of the distribution of income again.

The payments themselves do not address the underlying causes of inequality. In fact, the crash caused the major contraction. It was not because anything underlying had changed or because Ireland necessarily became a more equal country structurally. It was the crash or crisis that really caused it.