Mr. Kieran Culhane:

On the issue of carers, if there is data out there, there is always the possibility that we could do analysis but we are statisticians and we sometimes need a nudge from a policy Department or a researcher to tell us what to look at or what questions to ask.

Previously, with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, we did an analysis of maternity benefit and paternity benefit, the take-up rates and employment outcomes of claimants on both of those schemes. If there is data out there on carers, such as the carer's allowance or other data sets out there that could be looked at more, and if the data is in the system somewhere, there is potential to do that using administrative data sources as well.