Mr. Niall Egan:

As regards Deputy Byrne's query about the rate of consistent poverty for lone parents, the one-parent family payment scheme has been around since 1997, but despite that time and the large investment in it - it peaked at approximately €1.2 billion in 2009 - lone parents have always been more at risk of consistent poverty than the population at large. For the past couple of years they have been more than twice as likely to be at risk of consistent poverty than the population at large, despite the structure of the one-parent family payment. That issue has been around almost since the scheme was created. We cannot keep going as we are with the one-parent family payment. Something has to change in respect of the reforms. We will talk about that later.