Ms Simonetta Ryan:

There are a lot of different things going on there. We have the two different schemes - invalidity pension and disability allowance. They are different schemes and have different conditionality. One is based on contributions and the other is means-tested and the payment rates are slightly different. It always becomes complicated if one tries to merge two schemes because it does not lend itself to it. We are doing a lot on the ground with people and are developing our services to engage with people. If the committee would like it, we can talk a little about what we are doing. We recognise also that we have a lot more to do and that is what hopefully will come from the work we have done on the Make Work Pay and the article 5.1 group. Part of that is to look at how one helps people who need more supports and what are the options as one goes forward. All these things, to some extent, have to be iterative, because one has to try different ways of working to see what is going to work.

The Senator talked about the full-time or part-time option. As regards part-time, we have the part-time capacity benefit for people on illness pension. That is a good scheme. Given that disability allowance, DA, is different, the way it is dealt with in DA is through the disregards. There is an option for people on DA to work and to still retain quite a lot of benefits for quite a long time.