Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No Minister for Finance goes into a budget without knowing he or she has a number of policy levers. To pass the equality test, all the policy levers with an influence must be pulled. It would not be possible to deliver very significant relief to people on low income but it is possible to do so when the minimum wage is increased, exempting those people from USC or reducing the rate. In that case, there can be a number of policy instruments for delivery. It is not an exact science and there are still anomalies. I have spent much time trying to see if we could do anything for people on approximately €25,000 or €26,000 who are single. If we examine the bands, we can see that they come out worst in percentage terms, but I could not find a way of doing that without seeing knock-on effects to distort the pattern elsewhere. We will revisit that in the next budget if we are around.