Dr. Se?n Healy:

I want to address two things. One is the issue of basic income and the question the Deputy raised. I would totally agree with Ms O’Brien that income adequacy is critical in all of this. There is no point in putting a whole lot of effort into something that winds up not providing income adequacy. In that context, as we discussed earlier about what the rate should be and so on, it has to go towards the real poverty line as set out and particularly the MESL rates and so on. That will not happen overnight and we are fully aware of that.

It is 21 years since we first proposed that the Government’s next step towards basic income should be a universal basic pension, that is, that there should a universal State pension. We already have a child benefit which, in a way, is a universal payment for children. It is not nearly adequate enough and so on, absolutely. However, the structure is there. The pension could easily be put into place as a basic income.

The comment that Ms O'Brien made is absolutely true, that there is a policy system, whether on the political side with politicians or maybe more importantly among some officials, that is very negative about this. My contention is that what these people are doing is ignoring the changing world of work and ignoring the future we are going to move towards and that basic income would be a much better way of building a future that had a place for everybody. Part of that approach involves services. I love the phrase “wraparound services”, for unemployed people absolutely, but they should not be just for them. There should be wraparound services for our whole population, combining universal basic services with universal basic income. That is the target. They are factors of the social contract and to deal with them, we need to look at our social contract. We are not going to do it tonight but that is the level we need to look at. Discussions need to take place about levels of welfare and programmes for social enterprise, and so on. We also need to look at the basic thing that holds it all together, namely, the social contract. Ireland’s social contract is badly broken. We see that day in, day out with the kind of reactions we have out there. We need to deal with that. The way to deal with it is to have a policy debate, a serious, public debate on a new social contract. We argue that we need a new social dialogue in order to generate a new social contract. That is what we want. Ms Rogers wants to make a point in response also.