Neasa Hourigan (Dublin Central, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I will finish on two questions of my own. I will start on basic income. Representatives of Social Justice Ireland know I am a fully paid-up advocate for basic income so we do not need to start with the merits of it. I was involved in my party’s work on that. I agree with Social Justice Ireland's rejection of the commission’s position on it. The section on it was not particularly detailed. When I hear people using language around universal basic income that says we need other concrete proposals, I always think that is telling. Perhaps it is just an idea they are uncomfortable with. We often fall into the trap of discussing universal basic income as a panacea for everything and that is never the suggestion. It has to be alongside universal access to housing and services. It does not always make sense to me why people cannot grasp that universal access to financial security would be part of a universal safety net. An area I struggle with sometimes in researching this is how we get right the targeted measures around poverty in the implementation of a basic income. I do not expect universal basic income to solve employment or issues around gender balance and childcare, but how we calibrate a system to get to that targeted poverty is something I struggle with and I would be interested in any thoughts the witnesses might have.