Dr. Claire Keane:

We assume property tax is split between the couple and we levy the tax on whomever says he or she is the owner of the property. The impact tends to be the same within couples because they are co-sharing a property. From memory, we did not separate that out. We did break down the results as to how much is due to different taxes versus benefit changes. If there were massive disparities in property ownership among men and women, for example if all single women did not own their own property and single men did, then there would be differences. We did not tend to see much of a difference of income tax and property tax hits among groups such as single people. As I said, within couples we are assuming that it is divided between them.

It is really difficult to get at the information on user charges for other things, even if we think about indirect taxation. Currently, we are expanding the model to take account of indirect taxes such as valued added taxes, VAT, and carbon taxes. It is relatively easy to get our heads around how that impacts on income groups to see if those poorer or richer are paying more. I cannot think of how that is possible by gender. I do not know how we could divide out and assign by gender costs among people living in a household which pays for all of these things together. I do not think that is practical. We have tried to focus on something where we can provide a practical application and use by Government. Wider gender budgeting would probably examine whether people are paying more or less for different services. An example would be whether certain education training courses are mainly availed of by men or women and if there is a gender impact. In a way this work feeds into wider budgeting so there would be additional work on top of this. We are not saying that this is it. We feel though that people's cash and disposable incomes are an awful lot of what influences their well-being, so that is why we focused on these cash and non-cash transfers where we can. I am not sure that answers the Deputy's question.