Mr. R?n?n Hession:

I thank the Deputy. The sound was not all that clear, so I will go through what I have. I think I caught almost everything, but if there is anything I miss, she might let me know.

On the two-tier system, at the moment, those who have the two years' contributions get a six-month duration on jobseeker's benefit and for those who have the five years, it is a nine-month duration. The current system is already distinguished with respect to duration by the length of the contributions and it also pay-related in the sense that people's rate of jobseeker's benefit is related to their prior income on a banded basis. In reality, those bands have not really kept pace with developments in the labour market, so we end up with 85% of people in the top bands and the other bands are not that meaningful.

The Deputy mentioned a floor and that came up in Deputy Donnelly's contribution as well.

The floor at the moment in jobseeker's benefit is €98.70 and the floor in the PRB, in the strawman at least, is €100. In terms of duration-----