Mr. Sean Broderick:

In response to Deputy Ó Cuív's question on the €25 top-up, we are asking people to come out to work for five days a fortnight or 19.5 hours per week for €25. I am sure everyone here is well aware of travel costs at the moment. What we are doing is asking people to dig into their social welfare payments to support themselves coming out to work.

The means test has become very stringent for people on schemes. One issue we have come across involves a second property that somebody might have inherited. It is the value of the property that is taken into account rather than the income coming from it. In many cases, it has been passed on to a grandchild. One outstanding case of mine involves somebody who inherited a house. The value of the house was taken into account and the participant must now leave the scheme until they can come up with the funding to get the house transferred to their daughter.