Willie O'Dea (Limerick City, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The reason the Chairman was asking that question, if I may be so bold as to look into the recesses of his mental process, is we are starting the process of negotiating a budget. We have all been given the figures and they are fairly tight, unfortunately, and that position will not be improved in the event of Brexit going wrong. Various justifications have been advanced over the years for this policy of treating people under the age of 26 differently to normal adults but there has been no cost-benefit analysis, or any study as to whether it met its original objectives. In my view, it has not and, even if it had, that would be irrelevant now because we are at full employment and people are anxious to avail of any educational or training opportunities that are out there.

We have invited our guests here so that we can put forward their views in conjunction with budget negotiations and as part of our talking to the Government. The first question we will be asked is how much will this cost. We have a figure for extending the full rate to everybody up to the age of 26 and removing the discrimination completely and it is pretty expensive because we are going to have to find money to increase pensions, jobseeker's benefit, disability payments, etc. It would be nice to have some sort of a ballpark figure. We would be able to work it out ourselves if we could get numbers for the people our guests are trying to accommodate under the age of 26. It will be a percentage of that cost so we will be able to work that out ourselves.