Mr. R?n?n Hession:

We have not projected an increase in the overall number.

There is nothing that we are doing in this Green Paper that would change the group of people who are eligible for the payment, except for the change from 16 years of age to 18 years of age. The primary changes within that group are the payment levels. In a quick exercise, we examined approximately 1,000 cases in the system. When we put them into categories 1, 2 and 3, we found that the Green Paper’s proposals, as currently posited, would incur an additional cost of in or around €130 million. The new approach would have a similar perimeter in terms of definitions. It would then be a question of where people sat in the three tiers, who would get the higher payments and, instead of spreading our employment supports across the entire cohort, how could we direct them at a particular cohort who could work with more support.

The Deputy made a valid point about-----