Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will make one comment. As we know, lots of people are in relationships and do not have children. Many more people have children later in life than would have before. The measure of not having a dependant for the purposes of jobseeker's benefit is a kind of null set. It is invalid because claimants who have a working partner and no dependant children will not show up as having a dependant because the partner will have his or her own income and you cannot claim for a working partner. It does not tell us how many of the claimants who have no dependents have partners who are working. A large number of people live in relationships. Any casual observation in a clinic would tell you that.

It is the relationship that counts here. Therefore, a huge number of people would be excluded or would lose their payment very early under this. I would not like to be sitting in a clinic answering questions about why we had cut it to a six-month period rather than extend it to a year. While it is true there would be a short-term benefit for someone on jobseeker's benefit, nobody knows that when they go onto the benefit.