Joe O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

On Senator Gavan's first point, I agree that the base rate needs to go up. I will say that very often people have associated financial supports as well, such as an the increase for a qualifying child, child benefit, other supports outside of my Department, such as the housing assistance payment, medical cards and so on. However, I agree with the Senator that we need to do something significant about the base rate.

On the Senator's point about in-work poverty, I refer to commitment 20. We have a target to further improve Ireland's EU ranking for in-work poverty by reducing it to 2%. This is a real issue and I am glad the Senator has raised it. This speaks to the issue I raised earlier on having other sub-targets as well, but I recognise in-work poverty is certainly an issue. From my engagement with officials in the Department, I know they recognise that. There are also efforts to address it in the context of the working family payment and the threshold relating to it.

The living wage is the Senator's main point. There are things my Department can do but there are also things that other Departments can do. That is where the living wage and pay rates in general come in. One of the reasons we have the interdepartmental group is so that we can join the dots with regard to how we support work from an income support point of view in the Department of Social Protection, but also from the wage rate point of view in the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment.

Is there something else I have not touched on, brief as my answers were?