Dr. Seamus McGuinness:

The downside to UBI is that it can be hugely expensive. In addition, we do not know what the impacts of inequality and poverty are and some people can be made worse off so there is a need for supplementary top-ups to take those people up so that they are not negatively affected. The alternative to the UBI approach depends on the objectives. There is an approach where you can identify a subset of individuals and target minimum payments towards those individuals. That is called a guaranteed minimum income scheme. We have something running for people in the arts sector. It has somewhat the same principles as UBI. It is not means-tested but it is not universal and it is targeted towards particular groups of people or subsets within the population. It could be targeted towards individuals or households at most risk of poverty. We looked at it across the board and evidence suggests that those kinds of guaranteed minimum income schemes which are targeted towards particular groups of individuals are shown to have more positive impacts on poverty rates than the evidence that has come from the UBI pilots.