Mr. R?n?n Hession:

The Deputy's first question was about a person who lost their disability allowance when they got married. I am afraid it is a feature of the means test that it is done on a household basis. It is not so much the marriage as the fact that they are living together in the same household. Even if they were not married but were cohabiting, it would be the same. The means testing is there to try and target scarce resources and that, if there is other income in the house, the income need reflects that and that reflects the payment. That is a feature. I know it is also an issue that has come up with carers where people give up work to care for someone and find their partner's income is taken into account. It is difficult and I appreciate that. We had our national carers forum yesterday, so we met with carers directly and not just the representative groups. Many carers attended and we heard first hand of the difficulties that creates for them.

On the arts issue, I know that has been raised and it is one a number of members of the committee have an interest in. We do not operate the social welfare system on a sectoral basis. Whether a person is self-employed as a website designer and gets a two-month contract for €2,000, or is a musician, performer or writer who gets a bursary from the Arts Council, we need to make sure we do not have differential treatment just based on the sector that person is in. Whether a person is working in IT, publishing, music or farming, income is income. We try to stretch it over the period of the work so it does not arrive in a lump and distort the picture of the person's income. The basic income for artists was intended to try to address some of the unevenness those in the arts face, where they will have a short period of work followed by fallow periods. The intention was to try to stretch that. That is not being led by us but by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. It is trying to address it and give that sort of stability. It is on a pilot project with quite a small number of people.

The Deputy also mentioned a report for a child born with blindness. I did not pick up whether that was a general question on the way information passports through the system or whether the Deputy had a particular case. I do not know whether the parents had a claim or whether it had come up in the context of a claim. Domiciliary care allowance sounds like the most likely payment, but it would be unusual to have regular requests like that.