Mr. Neil McDonnell:

It depends on how it is divvied up between the State and the employer, notwithstanding the point that Ms King made earlier. I absolutely appreciate that the majority of social insurance is collected for pensions and we both acknowledge that that contribution for State pensions, contributory and non-contributory, is grossly underfunded and represents a liability on the State that is almost twice the size of our current national debt, to put it in context.

Unfortunately, in many areas of the public service, what are called uncertified sick days or contractual sick days tend to be viewed as an entitlement and are taken up and used in full in many areas. The average across the public service in 2019 was a 4.2% absence rate, which equated to 9.2 days per employee.

Without committing to a figure, I noted Dr. Bambrick referred to payments across Europe. The average replacement by the employer in those regimes is 65% of gross wages. That introduces an element of moral hazard. By all means, if someone is ill, they are ill, but that approach recognises that someone will not get 100% of their pay while they are ill. That incentivises both sides to return to work as quickly as possible. Employers would also have to know if any of the current illness benefit will be available to employers in the calculation of what would be paid. In the absence of knowing what is on the table from the State side, I could not give the Deputy an answer to his question.