Dr. Karina Doorley:

I will answer on the working families payment. The working families payment is one of those payments that is actually very well targeted at low to middle-income households; that group of households that is very hard to target through the tax and welfare system. The working families payment actually does target them very well.

The working families payment was increased in budget 2022 by less than forecast inflation. It did not, therefore, keep pace with inflation whereas many other payments did. There is certainly scope there to index that this year. There are other ways to expand the working families payment. At the moment, it is payable to low-income families who have children, so it is really sort of targeted at families with children. In other countries such the UK and the US, their form of in-work benefit that is sort of similar to the working families benefit is also paid to low-income people without children. This helps to encourage people into the labour market. It increases the benefits of work compared to welfare and is a really effective anti-poverty tool. We did some work together with the Department of Social Protection earlier this year looking at all the possible ways to reach the consistent poverty target of 2% by 2025. The working families payment really delivers the most bang for your buck in terms of reducing poverty so for every extra euro spent on that, it reduces poverty by more than all of the other instruments. The only other-----