Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has raised several different issues. I will try and go through them sequentially, if I can, with the exception of the lone-parent issue. That is something we already discussed in detail.

Reference was made to the review of the impact on the national minimum wage to income thresholds. We figure we can do a report on that quickly. It is quite straightforward and we could easily have it to the committee in less than three months.

The Deputy also referred to the household benefits package. Essentially, I think the Deputy is referring to cases where someone moves back to the house. That person might be a grandson or daughter who has moved back to the house. The household benefits package is worth approximately €11.50 per week. If a young person is not working, the household benefits package would not be lost. If the person has come back and is working, he must be earning €400 per week. For that person to make a contribution of €11.50 to the cost of running the house is not a great deal to ask. I would expect a person who moves back to live with his parents to cough up €70, €80, €100 or €200 to help to cover the costs. I do not see why it would make sense for us to continue to pay the household benefits package to a household that has someone in it who is working and earning. It would be extraordinarily expensive and I do not think it would be right. It is entirely reasonable that a younger person who moves back to live with his parents to save for a house or whatever should contribute €12 per week to the running of the house. In fact, that person should contribute more, in my view. Certainly, I did when I was living with my parents. The figure was far more than €11.50. I see no role for the welfare system in that scenario.

Certainly, we can undertake some work on the eligibility criteria for jobseeker's benefit. The three-day rule is tricky and it is difficult to find a solution to it. Like many things, when I first got this job I thought this would be a no-brainer. However, it gets tricky because if we change the criteria from three days to a certain number of hours, we would then open up jobseeker's to a large number of people who do not currently claim it. That would represent a significant cost. The way of avoiding that is to reduce the level to a smaller number of hours. This would mean many people who now work three days would lose out. It is like many of these things in that it is often only when we realise why the rules are what they are that we realise why it might not be so wise to change them. That said, I have no difficulty in giving the committee some figures and numbers as part of a report.

The question of the averaging system in the State contributory pension was raised by Deputy Smith and Deputy O'Dea. Again, this area is far more complicated than people may think. The State contributory pension works based on contributions. People put money into the fund and at the end, when they retire, money comes out of the fund. The fundamental difficulty in recognising anything that is not a financial contribution to the fund is that it devalues the pensions of those who have made a financial contribution to the fund. Effectively, it would represent a tax on the financial contribution made by others. It is done, in part, already with the homemaker's credit, but it is not cost free. It imposes a cost on the taxpayer and it also devalues the contributions of those who have paid in. The whole point of the contributory principle and the Social Insurance Fund is that people pay in and then the cash comes out when people retire. If people start to put in credits and non-financial contributions, it is not going to work because people do not want to be paid their pensions in credits.