Professor Mary Murphy:

We argue that the social protection system would administer it, probably on behalf of another agency, so it is not an income support. That takes one a little bit of the way around social valuing. So it is somewhere in between an income support and a wage in terms of how people would feel about their right to it.

The Deputy mentioned the 20% of people who are not of working age because they are beyond the working age. Again, when one asks people, a certain majority say that they want the provision not as a wage but we would be open to the idea that a certain number of people might like to see it as a transitional period in their lives where they could have it as a labour market structured activity, and they may be able to get some education and training that could enhance the skills that they might be developing, and move on from that and progress from it, if and when the caring activity ceases to be a feature of their lives. There are advantages to seeing it for some people as a labour market support and that can be designed into the system that we are proposing. However, we are saying in the first instance that we should get the overall model right and then we can build in these variations on a theme.