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

You are chasing your tail when measuring against the median income. That is one of the things that always amazed me. To a point, in a booming economy, we will never catch up. People's lifestyles could be improving and poverty levels increasing all the time and on the other hand if there is a very deflated work market you could apparently have a lot more people getting the median income, or a percentage of the median income, and they might be a lot worse off if the economy was in decline and if welfare rates had not gone up. The people I represent who are on welfare, and they have come to me about this, are not worried so much about the median income. They are worried about their buying power. Why do we not measure poverty rates against their buying power, that is, against the basket of things people who are on social welfare generally buy? I am talking about people whose main income is social welfare. I am not talking about people who get contributory pensions and other very good incomes; there are plenty of those. I am talking about people who are social welfare dependent and very susceptible to poverty.