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

The Chairman knows what happens in real life. He knows that all sorts of circumstances arise, which we hear when we sit in our clinics, that people who have worked all their lives often really do not understand. In particular, for women who provided care but are coming through the system and were not in the era of full employment, or were not in the era of two always working and being forced to work to get a house, survive and pay the bills, it will be a long time for this generation. Even in the five years things have dramatically changed in that direction, as there has been huge unemployment. This committee needs to examine this matter. The Chairman could also suggest that we invite in representatives of the bodies that represent the unemployed. I spend my life looking at people's contribution records and calculating. There are so many calculations that can be done. For a dependant adult, one would run into walls with that one. In terms of funding, there is the non-contributory pension, the TCA, a much more complicated TCA structure and there is the average system. We have clear systems at the moment. Now, we are going to the average of the TCA for a dependant adult and the non-contributory pension.

Small farmers are particularly badly hit. They were not allowed to get a credit if they drew down farm assist. The Department has consistently refused to give them credit for the years a person receives farm assist whereas if they had taken the disadvantage in the means test and gone on jobseeker's allowance and kept farming, they would have got the credit. This committee needs to determine a lot of issues even though the general scheme looks neat and tidy on paper. We should also look at the situation for bigger families with more spread out families.