Marc Ó Cathasaigh (Waterford, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Mr. Hession is giving me flashbacks to my secondary school debating days when I used this precise analogy. It is that old.

I agree with Deputy Donnelly on the word "customer". Something about it does not sit right with me. I do not have a better alternative suggestion but there is something about it that grates. Deputy Ó Laoghaire pointed to the critical paragraph which mentions people being required to engage and offers of employment being appropriate to their capacity and circumstances. There is subjectivity in this. We can say the current Minister has been very strong in stating what she wants but that is this the current Minister in this economy. We are worried about a future Minister in a different economy when things could be more rigorously applied should the State finances be in more straitened circumstances. We want to clearly delineate that what we want to speak about is the opportunity to work and not the obligation to work. The reason we want to create this opportunity for work is about personal betterment but it is also an antipoverty measure. In terms of the impact on poverty, is it too early in the day to run simulating welfare, income tax childcare and health policies, SWITCH, modelling on this? Has SWITCH modelling been applied to see what the Department could expect the antipoverty impacts to be if we went with something akin to this straw man approach?