Professor Niamh Moloney:

When one thinks about tax and welfare and how they interact together, ultimately, it boils down a lot of the time to impact and distributional consequences and how different groups with different characteristics, features and long-term journeys through life, and different needs interact with the two systems. In our kind of exercise where you are standing back and looking at the system, that is part of what we are doing. We are looking at how different constituencies and cohorts are supported and protected by the tax member systems. Society has evolved, and where we are now in 2021 is somewhat different from where other commissions on tax and welfare would have been over earlier periods. It is very important for us to have that kind of lens on the society we are in and the society we are becoming, as it changes and as we look at how tax and welfare operate.