Mr. Ciar?n Lawler:

We hold a pre-budget forum every year involving the community and voluntary pillar and other stakeholders. We meet bilaterally with the community and voluntary pillar twice at official level. We receive all the pre-budget submissions and they are read and analysed. We look at research from the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, and research from the Vincentian Partnership for Social Justice on the minimum essential standard of living. All of that is fed into the decision-making process in the annual budget. There are choices to be made. There is no doubt about that. There are across-the-board rate increases, which are very costly, and then there are targeted measures for specific groups of people, namely, those who are at higher risk of poverty. This year was slightly different in terms of the budget because a lot of one-off lump sum payments will be made in the current year, including two double-payment weeks and a lump sum payment to carers, people with disabilities and those on the working family payment and the living alone allowance. It is slightly different this year and the decision in that regard was taken to address the current cost-of-living crisis.

On benchmarking, I was involved in a group more than 20 years ago, the social welfare benchmarking and indexation group, that looked at this issue and made certain recommendations. It was a social partnership group. I have been involved in the issue from a policy perspective on and off for the past 20 years. One big step that has been taken recently is the response to the report of the Commission on Pensions. The commission recommended a benchmarking and indexation approach for State pensions. That was a commitment in the roadmap for social inclusion and previously in the roadmap for pensions reform. From next year, the Department will be preparing a statement for the Government on how that will be implemented and what the figure will be. The way it will work is that a benchmark will be set of 34% of earnings. We will look at that and what value it gives, we will look at inflation and what that would give and then we will produce a figure that represents the rate at which the benching should be. It might sound simple and small but it is a huge step in terms of what the Deputy is talking about in regard to benchmarking and indexation evidence using particular indicators. It has been a long time coming but it is a big step forward.

We also have a commitment in the roadmap for social inclusion to look at a process for working-age payments, which will be far more complex. There are lots of different rates of payments and they are all for different purposes and contingencies. Now that we have a decision on pensions, we can turn our attention to that issue in the coming months.