Dr. Tom McDonnell:

I know; I would miss it terribly. The point is that that is a good way to manage the public finances over a medium- to long-term picture. It really shows us things then. For example, this is budget 2024 but if we were also looking at budget 2028 we can start to see those ageing impacts on the economy. We would be looking at a slightly slower level of growth and what is happening. It is not just focused on whether we had a transitory tax boom this year because maybe we will not in 2028. I think that is helpful.

On the Deputy's points about disabilities, I could not agree more. We would see the disability allowance as being one of the working-age payments, with unemployment benefit being the other major one for working-age people. Of course, that applies to everyone, not just working-age people. I completely agree with the Deputy. We need to fully account for the cost of disability on a day-to-day basis for people who are experiencing a disability. That would almost be top of the list of things we would promote in budget 2024 with regard to resolving that issue, which has been a problem for a while now in terms of adequacy of income.

We also have an issue around people who are experiencing disabilities having access to the labour market. That would relate to things like easier working from home options, flexible working and things like that. The public sector can lead on this by providing a very safe and good environment to become a champion for bringing people experiencing disabilities into the labour force. It does not have to be a on a five-day-a-week basis or a 40-hour week basis but finding some way to bring people in if they are able to do that and want to do that is very important. We need a strategy for including people experiencing disability in the labour market and in society. It is not just about giving them adequate incomes.

I take the Deputy's point on the working-family payment. It is about increasing incomes for people on the lower to middle levels. The tax commission proposed that it would be income-tapered, so the amount of money a person would get would drip down as their market earnings increased. Therefore, that would keep the marginal effective tax rates because if you lose income as your income goes up, that is effectively a tax.

The Deputy talked about increasing tax bands for lower and middle-income people. Our broader point about taxes is that on a net basis, we do not think there should be tax cuts but that does not mean there is not scope for reform within the tax system at all. We are not saying that. Certainly it is a feature of the system rather than a bug that people on low incomes pay extremely low income tax and USC levels compared to people on lower incomes in other EU countries. They are very low effective rates but we see that as a good thing. The marginal effective tax rates are very low. Why would we have high tax rates on lower-income workers when on the other side we may then have to give them additional welfare payments just to keep them out of deprivation? It just does not make sense. There is certainly scope for movement at the bottom of the distribution. Mr. Nugent may have views on that as well.

Regarding college fees, we would see that as effectively a State subsidy. It is a subsidy like any other welfare subsidy in many respects. It is giving families money to do something because they are in a particular circumstance. We want their child to be able to have the opportunity to go to college. We do not want them not to go to college because it is too costly. Again, the Commission on Taxation and Welfare said that these tings should be income-tapered, so it should not be a binary "Yes" or "No" but a reduced subsidy as a person goes up the income distribution. Obviously the more generous the State is on that the more costly it is and then that becomes a budgetary issue. That would be my sense of how you could approach it.

On the infrastructure and the train card, there are a lot of ways on the infrastructure side that we could do relatively cheap things that could be quite helpful. It does not always have to be big enormous projects and in many cases it will not be. Mr. Nugent may have some follow-on comments.