Ms Josephine Feehily:

We were able to establish what the typical pattern was, relative to the 40 years' contribution. I remember the secretary had that material for us at one of our meetings. It will be easy to get those data because that question was asked.

I refer to the self-employed. The Deputy noted that he agreed with me. The structure of self-employed PRSI is kind of odd, apart altogether from the fact the rate is very low. Low-paid, self-employed persons pay 10%, while low-paid workers pay nothing. It is odd. The floor is €500 if a self-employed person earns €5,000, so it is effectively a rate of 10%. PRSI for workers goes the other way. It goes up as one earns more. The PRSI percentage for the self-employed is flipped and that is kind of odd. We make that observation as well.